Mostafa Shartaj

Curious about what environmental and natural resource economists think? Check out this research with @johnwhitehead81.bsky.social and Tim Haab
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Conservation Priorities and Environmental Offsets: Markets for Florida Wetlands (Forthcoming Article) - We introduce an empirical framework for valuing markets in environmental offsets. Using newly-collected data on wetland conservation and offsets, we apply this framework to evaluate a set of decentralized markets in Florida, where land developers purchase offsets from long-lived producers who restore wetlands over time. We find that offsets led to substantial private gains from trade, creating $2.4 billion of net surplus from 1995–2020 relative to direct conservation. Offset trading also generated new hydrological externalities. A locally differentiated Pigouvian tax would have prevented $1.6 billion of new flood damage while preserving more than two-thirds of the private gains from trade.

Forthcoming in the AER: "Conservation Priorities and Environmental Offsets: Markets for Florida Wetlands" by Daniel Aronoff and Will Rafey.

The Social Value of Hurricane Forecasts (Forthcoming Article) - What is the impact and value of hurricane forecasts? We study this question using the universe of landfalling US hurricanes between 2005–2022. We find that forecasts drive adaptive protective expenditures, and that erroneous underforecasts result in a significant increase in total hurricane damage. Using a theoreticallygrounded approach for estimating the marginal value of forecast improvements, we find that improvements since 2007, after the implementation of a national policy to improve hurricane forecasts, have reduced total costs by 19%, averaging $2 billion per hurricane. These benefits far exceed the annual budget of the policy and of all federal weather forecasting.

Forthcoming in AEJ: Economic Policy: "The Social Value of Hurricane Forecasts" by Renato Molina and Ivan Rudik.

An important trade off to be aware of. I wish the sample size was larger. However, It's probably still a good idea to not incorporate AI for teaching (esp. for coding) untill the trade offs of AI use are better understood.

We are recruiting a Canada Impact+ Research Chair in Climate‑Based Risk Management in Food & Agriculture—up to $8M over 8 years for work in climate risk, ag/environmental economics, finance, and modeling.
Apply/share: viprecprod.ad.umanitoba.ca/default.aspx...
More info: umanitoba.ca/research/res...

A little bit late, but I'm looking to hire a postdoc at Cornell to measure the private value of soil health improvements in US ag. A 2-year gig.

Well suited for an ag/resource economist or data scientist w/ interests in soil health and solid programming & econometric chops.

ad coming soon!

Humans killed millions of vultures. Now people are paying the price. The near-extinction of vultures in India has had severe consequences.

A truly heartbreaking article linking the deaths of children from rabies to the collapse of vultures in India

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Drought influences human-wildlife conflict in California, very cool paper! Results seem consistent with our work on human-wildlife conflict in BC: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

📢 Out now in the 🍁November 2025 issue🍁of #JAERE! 📢
"Hotelling Meets Wright: Spatial Sorting and Measurement Error in Recreation Demand Models" by Jacob T. Bradt ( @jtbradt.bsky.social ).
Read it here: buff.ly/3YiBhqQ
📈📉 #Econsky

We are hosting virtual Replication Games on Friday November 13th, 2025 with @ukrepro.bsky.social ro.bsky.social. This is our 2nd year collaborating with UKRN. Psych, public health, pol sci and econ studies will be reproduced!

Register here: www.surveymonkey.ca/r/I4R_Replic...

ABSTRACT This article examines how political messengers, and not the message, influence attitudes toward renewable energy infrastructure amid an increasingly polarized climate change debate. Focusing on wind power, a highly politicized issue, and solar energy, less contentious, we conducted an experimental survey in Germany. We assess how either a far-right or an environmentalist critic affect acceptance of renewables. Importantly, our analysis examines support for renewables in forest areas, focusing on a conflict between climate action and local environmental protection. Our findings reveal that the messenger impacts attitudes regarding wind energy. Criticism of wind turbine expansion by an environmentalist actor leads to greater rejection, while a similar critique by a far-right actor results in increased acceptance, i.e. a backlash effect. No such influence was found for solar energy. We explain these diverging findings by differences in politicization. Our findings have important consequences for understanding key dynamics of the public debate and political conflict over climate action.

New article!

Climate action versus environmental protection? How far-right and environmentalist messengers shape public attitudes towards renewable energy infrastructure in forests, by @manesweisskircher.bsky.social and Matthias Diermeier.

doi.org/10.1080/0964...

🚨I4R is looking to hire postdoc fellows in public health and computer science!

The postdoc will join a team of researchers and help mass reproduce studies in leading public health journals or develop AI replicator agents.

Info 👇

Why Don’t Struggling Students Do Their Homework? Disentangling Motivation and Study Productivity as Drivers of Human Capital Formation Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

This is a pretty remarkable paper and seems to suggest "grit" is not necessarily the driving force behind student achievement:

www.nber.org/papers/w3427...

Peer-reviewed publications from IFPRI researchers This week’s collection features new research household food security and maternal dietary diversity in Ethiopia, evaluating large-scale government investments in fertilizer adoption, the impact of ran...

📚 The latest edition of Weekly Reads from IFPRI is now online on LinkedIn!

🔗 Read more here: on.cgiar.org/470wovH

@cgiar.org

I’ve got a new working paper with @danielavidart.bsky.social, hot off the press. We develop a new method for measuring the risk preferences of agents in the past, and apply it to the U.S. from 1890-1920.

Check it out! Feedback is welcome.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/chcof...

A Swedish economist just dropped a paper where he used data from a quarter of a billion chess.com games to test a classic Q: do “hot hands” exist?

Finding:

✅ Wins predict wins
❌ But wins don’t cause wins

Using random piece assignment, he finds that win streaks exist; but they’re just noise.

Migrating to new economic opportunities in cities, rural Indian families don't mechanize, they downsize their farms. Their neighbors produce more as land and crops markets adjust, from @raamadhok.bsky.social, Noack, Mushfiq Mobarak, and Deschenes https://www.nber.org/papers/w33854

(2) We have launched a new tool: Paper Skygest Bookmarks! This is a list of posts about papers that you have liked. You need to like the post *containing the url*; it doesn’t matter whether you like the post while using Skygest.

Hi Skygesters! We have 2 updates.
(1) We are starting to do research to improve and study Skygest and want everyone on board! See our thread here for details regarding data and consent.

Lives Versus Livelihoods: The Impact of the Great Recession on Mortality and Welfare*

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Lives Versus Livelihoods: The Impact of the Great Recession on Mortality and Welfare,” by Finkelstein, Notowidigdo (@profnoto.bsky.social), Schilbach, and Zhang: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

All of my top 6 camping spots on the planet burned to the ground in out of control forest fires this week.

Climate change is here and the impacts are brutal.

You probably know that randomized controlled trials (RCTs)--wherein some randomly assigned treatment is compared to some randomly assigned control--play a huge role in science.

It's hard to imagine where we'd be without them.

But here are a few historical facts that you might not know about RCTs.

You've heard of the many analysts projects, right?

Scholars give the same dataset/question to a bunch of researchers & they still get different answers.

Why is that?

Data cleaning!

This is consistent with Gelman's "garden of forking paths." Small coding decisions often drive results.

Do Tuition Subsidies Raise Political Participation? (Forthcoming Article) - Civic externalities motivate education expenditures, but estimates of the civic returns to large-scale education subsidies are scarce. We use 16 million financial aid applicati...

Forthcoming in AEJ: Economic Policy: "Do Tuition Subsidies Raise Political Participation?" by Daniel Firoozi and Igor Geyn. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

✨ Just accepted ✨ in JAERE:

"Group size and threshold uncertainty in common-pool resource dilemmas" by Philip Brookins and Weston Watts

Read it here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

#EconSky 📈 📉

🆕 Just accepted 🆕 in JAERE:

"The Distributional Consequences of Incomplete Regulation" by Danae Hernandez-Cortes (@hernandezcortes.bsky.social)

Read it here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

#EconSky 📈 📉

Camp Resources XXXI Call for Abstracts We invite graduate students and young professionals to submit research abstracts to Camp Resources XXXI, which will be held August 3-5, 2025 at the Cambria Downtown Asheville Hotel. The workshop will begin with a reception on Sunday evening, August 3rd, with presentations starting early Monday morning, August 4th and concluding mid-afternoon on Tuesday, August 5th. Presentation Formats & Travel Support Camp Resources is a workshop designed for graduate students and young professionals to present their research in a relaxed but serious environment. We do not expect a paper. However, a clear, well-organized, twenty-minute presentation describing a completed or emerging research project has been standard fare. We also include shorter, 8-minute research sketches that are ideal for students in the early stages of dissertation work. Through the generous support of NC State’s Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Resources for the Future, Industrial Economics, and Georgia Tech’s School of Economics, we will partially defray travel expenses for those giving regular presentations and, in a more limited way, those giving research sketches. All graduate students, young professionals, and faculty are invited to attend, although we cap attendance at 70 people. A modest registration fee will be charged. Submission Information Short abstracts not more than 500 words may be submitted at: https://go.ncsu.edu/camp_resources. To receive full consideration, you must submit by Friday, May 23, 2025. You will be asked to include a short, 2-page vita with your abstract. We will notify presenters of accepted abstracts by June 9th. Questions? Contact enviro_econ@ncsu.edu or Roger von Haefen at roger_von_haefen@ncsu.edu.

JEEM is happy to be a sponsor of Camp Resources XXXI in Asheville, NC. #econsky

Graduate students and young professionals, be sure to submit your abstracts by May 23.

Details here: cenrep.ncsu.edu/events/camp-...

🌬️ Just accepted 🇧🇷 in JAERE:

"The Effects of Renewable Energy Projects on Employment: Evidence from Brazil" by Danae Hernandez-Cortes (@hernandezcortes.bsky.social) and Sophie Mathes (@s-mathes.bsky.social)

Read it here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

#EconSky 📈 📉

Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Wolf [Mahihkan (Cree), Tha (Denesuline), Amaruk (Inuktitut), Canis lupus] Occurrences on the Summer Range of the Eastern Migratory Cape Churchill Caribou Population in... Wolves (Canis lupus) function as a top predator across diverse ecosystems including the sub-arctic, and they have been managed in often controversial ways. Communities and scientists are increasingly ...

Latest pre-print:

Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Wolf [Mahihkan (Cree), Tha (Denesuline), Amaruk (Inuktitut), Canis lupus] Occurrences on the Summer Range of the Eastern Migratory Cape Churchill Caribou Population in the Hudson Bay Lowlands of Manitoba

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...