Mackenzie Jones

Mackenzie Jones is a Ph.D. Candidate in Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at the Ohio State University. She is currently a graduate fellow and has worked as a research assitant on 1 NSF funded project and 2 USDA NIFA funded projects during her Ph. D at OSU. 

Mackenzie got her undergraduate degree in the applied mathematic department where she worked on an interdisciplinary and community engaged sustainability project using differential equations to model algae growth and water polution and then on a coupled nio-economic system of phosphorus pollution and social welfare leading to two publications and one out reach publication. This started her interest in sustainabilty, however her research interests have evolved over time from modeling specific bio-physical dynamics to modeling how those dynamics impact communities which use these resources to generate well-being. This intial training in scientific modeling, system dynamics, and engaging communities informs and provides a unique perspective to the research she conducts presently at the nexus of regional and resource economics where the majority of her work involves using a spatial equilibrium approach to measuring inclusive wealth. 

Her job market paper provides a theoretical framework for calculating inclusive wealth when regions are open, population flows across borders, and there is an inter-dependence between captial stock and population flows. This paper then calucates the first inclusive walth index at the county-level in the U.S. theincluding novel estimates of human productivity, health, natural, and produced captial; and analyzes the biggest drivers of dcreased wealth. One of her essays uses a structural spatial equilibrium model which accounts for inter-dependency of captial stock flows and population to explain the growing inequality of inclusive wealth across regions. She then uses this sorting model to estimate the maximum sustainable population of each city such that inclusive wealth is non-declining over time. Her third essay considers the impacts of regional sorting, communiting, spatial spillovers on the valuation of produced captial through urban spatial and hedonic medoling. Another working paper with a research group extended sustainability analysis of the Great Lakes region which caluculates sustainability as non-decling inclusive wealth over time along with meeting an additional constraint of a downscaled planetary for net carbon emissions which accounts for local ecosystem services.

Adviser: Dr. Elena Irwin