Research

Risky Business: How Coastal Housing Markets Respond to Near-Miss Disasters (Job Market Paper) 

I explore how property markets respond to new risk information provided by severe weather events by focusing on near-miss disasters, defined as those that could have caused significant harm or damage, but by chance, did not. Using data on single-family home sales from Miami-Dade County, I estimate how two near-miss hurricanes, that occurred following a unique period of calm, impacted sale prices in hurricane evacuation zones. Leveraging unique non-coastal variation amongst these zones, I estimate a hedonic property model within a difference-in-differences framework and find that home prices in hurricane evacuation zones decline by 3% to 13% after the first near-miss and further decline by 3.5% to 9.2% following the second near-miss hurricane of a higher intensity. This paper is one of the first to show that markets internalize the risks associated with locating in a hurricane evacuation zone. 

Estimating the Short-Run Costs of Groundwater Depletion: Measuring the Intensive and Extensive Margin Impacts of Decreasing Well Capacity, with R. Aaron Hrozencik and Taro Mieno

We leverage mandatory well tests in the Colorado Republican River Basin to estimate the economic costs of ground-water depletion.  Relying on within-well variation in well yield, a flow rate defining the amount of water a given well can pump in a given amount of time which is determined, in part, by groundwater availability, we estimate a two-way fixed effects model to produce the first empirical estimates of the effects of decreasing well yields on water use per acre, total water use, and total irrigated acreage.

Funding for Shoreline Protection: A Model of Beach Nourishment Decisions Along the Atlantic Coast 

Beach nourishment is a local public good and the dominant form of shoreline protection in the U.S. This paper develops a theoretical model based on the median voter theorem to analyze why some at-risk communities nourish their beaches while others do not and whether local or federal funds are primarily relied upon. The answers to these questions depend on the distribution of benefits within a community. As the benefits of nourishment become more heavily concentrated among a smaller proportion of the population, nourishment is less likely to occur as a lack of local support will impede implementation.