Upcoming departmental seminars are listed below
All seminars will take place in Room 250A, Agricultural Administration Building (2120 Fyffe Rd.) from 10:30 a.m. - 12 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Light refreshments will be served starting at 10 a.m., before the start of the seminar.
Title: Co-Benefit Premiums Can Justify Nature-Based Climate Solutions
Abstract: Nature-based climate solutions (NBS) provide carbon mitigation benefits while also offering co-benefits for biodiversity and human well-being. Yet, current carbon pricing models primarily focus on carbon sequestration, often overlooking these additional ecosystem services. This article proposes a "co-benefit premium" that would add financial incentives for NBS projects targeting high-risk areas with broader benefits, like storm protection for vulnerable communities. Using global mangrove restoration projects as examples, we demonstrate how co-benefit premiums could encourage investments in locations that maximize both carbon storage and resilience. This approach could align climate mitigation efforts with sustainable development, optimizing environmental and social impacts globally.
Title: Deforestation: A Global and Dynamic Perspective
Abstract: We study deforestation in a dynamic world trade system. We first document that between 1990-2020: (i) global forest area has decreased by 7.1 percent, with large heterogeneity across countries, (ii) deforestation is associated with expansions of agri-cultural land use, (iii) deforestation is larger in countries with a comparative advantage in agriculture, and (iv) larger population growth leads to deforestation. We build a model in which structural change and comparative advantage determine the extent,location, and timing of deforestation. We show analytically and quantitatively that,if agriculture is complementary in demand to other sectors, global reductions in trade costs reduce global deforestation, even if such shocks increase deforestation when expe-rienced only by an individual economy. In our calibrated model, a 30 percent reduction in global agricultural trade costs increases steady-state forest share for world area by 0.5 percentage points, taking decades to occur. In the cross-section, countries with a comparative advantage in agriculture expand production at the expense of more deforestation there.
Title: Information and Food Safety in Agricultural Households
Abstract: A distinctive feature of agricultural production in the Global South is the dual role of farming families as both food consumers and producers. This characteristic can be leveraged to address food safety market failures by nudging smallholder farmers to adopt food safety technologies to promote the safety of crops they produce and consume, especially in settings where food safety regulations or incentives are absent. We present evidence that informing producers about the safety of crops cultivated and stored for own consumption encourages increased demand for agricultural inputs that enhance food safety. In a randomized controlled trial with groundnut-cultivating farmers in Senegal, participants were randomly assigned to three groups: i) those informed about their crop’s safety, ii) those informed about both village-level and own crop’s safety, and iii) those given no safety information. Moreover, the gender of the respondent was selected randomly. Demand for two food safety agricultural inputs was measured using an incentive-compatible experimental auction. Results show men and women increased demand for inputs when their crop was unsafe. However, their responses to village-level food safety benchmarking information differed: Men’s demand remained unchanged, while women’s demand decreased. The findings suggest that because smallholder farmers are both producers and consumers, relatively inexpensive diagnostic testing or simply raising awareness about food safety risks can be a cost-effective way to increase the adoption of divisible food-safety technologies and safe food production.
Title: Group Coaching and the Scalabiliy of Graduation Programs: Evidence from Three Field Experiments
Abstract: Multifaceted graduation-style programs have shown promise in alleviating poverty, but their scale-up is hindered by the high costs of individualized coaching. We conduct randomized control trials in Uganda, the Philippines, and Bangladesh to compare the effectiveness of group-based versus individual coaching in graduation programs. Our experiments involve more than 15,000 households across diverse contexts, including refugee settlements and varying program scales. We find that group coaching reduces per-participant costs by 15-20% without compromising program impacts on consumption, food security, asset accumulation, income, or subjective well-being. These results hold in both short- (1 year) and longer-term (4 year) follow-ups. Moreover, we find no evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects, suggesting that group coaching does not disadvantage specific subpopulations. Our findings demonstrate that group-based coaching can significantly enhance the cost-effectiveness and scalability of graduation programs.
Title: Plagiarism in the Social Sciences
Abstract: This presentation reports the results of a survey of economics journal editors about their definition of plagiarism and known cases. They found that nearly 24% of responding editors encountered one case of plagiarism in a typical year. In addition, this presentation reports the results of another survey of 1,200 professionals in the economics profession. That survey found that many of the respondents were not aware of the distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism. In addition, that survey found that a substantial portion of the reported cases of plagiarism could be classified as ‘hierarchal’. In addition, this presentation reports the results of a follow-up survey of social science journal editors. That work investigated what, if anything, has changed in regards to how journal editors react to suspected plagiarism and if the definition of plagiarism has changed. There is great variation within disciplines regarding the appropriate definition of plagiarism or punishments but fairly consistent agreement across disciplines. Finally, this presentation shows survey results of 1215 management researchers, including editors, researchers, and reviewers, about their views and experiences with four types of academic misconduct: plagiarism, self-plagiarism, coercive citations, and questionable reviewing practices. Findings show that misconduct (research that was either fabricated or falsified) is not encountered often by reviewers nor editors. Yet, there is a strong prevalence of misrepresentations (method inadequacy, omission or withholding of contradictory results, dropping of unsupported hypotheses).
Title: Real-Time Information & Public Transit Ridership
Abstract: Reducing barriers to information can have significant impacts on changing people's travel behavior. We show that Google's launch of real-time transit information into Google Mpas increases public transit ridership. Our findings are based on a panel data set that combines information on public transit utilization with information on Google Maps' staggered arrival into different cities and transit agencies. Ridership per capita is 13% larger in each month at least three years after the rollout of real-time information into Google Maps relative to the three years prior to the roll out. City residents reduce car trips and opt for transit during their daily commutes. We see suggestive evidence of improved air quality.
Title: Regulators Mount Up? Consumption Decisions, Political Engagement, and Companies' Interests in a Climate-conscious World
Abstract: States and the political processes that underpin them appear increasingly ineffective at regulating externalities, most strikingly greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, individuals are increasingly self-regulating to reduce externalities, e.g., by reducing driving and flying, installing solar panels, and choosing climate-friendly diets. There is evidence that fossil fuel companies have sought to cultivate such conscientious consumption ideas through ad spending. We ask if the two trends are causally related: are individuals less likely to engage in the climate cause through political participation when encouraged to do so through their consumption choices? And if so, what does the magnitude of any such effect compared to and alongside any direct effects on spending imply about companies' (and society's) interest in emphasizing individual responsibility? To investigate, we ``embedded'' a randomized control trial (RCT) within Scandinavian administrative data. We recruit participants through the digital mailboxes used for official communication with citizens in Sweden. The treatment involves an app that tracks all spending, with vs. without a corresponding carbon footprint calculator. We link the transaction data with administrative records of political participation---whether the participant voted in the 2024 EU elections, etc.---as well as surveys to collect detailed information about political attitudes, preferences, and participation (e.g., party choice in the EU Parliament election, participation in collective action, beliefs and attitudes towards policies, etc). In our initial results, we find that emphasizing personal responsibility for climate action crowds-in political action for climate change in Sweden. That is, for a pre-registered subgroup within our sample (deontologists), exposure to our treatment led to higher participation rates and greener party choices in the EU election. This subsample also expressed greater support for climate change policy and were more likely to cite climate change as a key factor in their party choice.