Research

I study how land and housing markets adjust to environmental change, with a focus on market frictions that hinder land-use change and reallocation.

Job Market Paper

Land Assembly: Outsider Bargaining with a Network

Abstract: Assembling complementary assets from multiple owners is common in economic activities but often leads to severe holdout problems. This paper uses land assembly as a concrete context to study how asset networks and bargaining order affect assembly success and surplus division. I develop a sequential bargaining model on a land parcel network and introduce pivotality and assembly centrality to characterize bargaining positions of landowners. The model predicts that pivotal owners can extract significant surplus; acquisition order also matters: purchasing peripheral parcels first can improve bargaining positions of remaining central owners by reducing alternative assembly options. Using over 570,000 parcel transactions in U.S. land assembly projects from 2007--2022, I find that an additional pivotal parcel nearly doubles the average parcel price of an assembly project; more central parcels sell for higher prices when purchased later in the sequence. The price effect of pivotality is greater in states with stronger restrictions on eminent domain.

Draft | Slides

Working Papers

Creative Destruction or Lasting Decline: Evidence from Post-Disaster Recovery
with Ariel Ortiz-Bobea and Jiong Wu

Abstract: Why do some local economies rebound from destructive shocks while others fall into persistent decline? We study how large-scale physical destruction reshapes spatial economic dynamics by linking over one thousand wildfires across the United States to parcel-level transactions and tax assessments. On average, disasters reduce both land and building values in the long run, but impacts vary systematically with pre-disaster local productivity. Low-productivity areas suffer enduring losses, middle-ranked areas recover quickly, and high-productivity areas experience “creative destruction,” realizing sustained gains. Nearby unburned parcels follow similar trajectories through long-lived spillovers, revealing strong spatial interdependence in recovery. These patterns show that localized destruction can either hinder, restore, or accelerate growth depending on pre-existing productivity levels. These results underscore the importance of spillovers and coordinated investment in shaping urban resilience.

Slides | Draft coming soon!

Getting Endorsement from Heterogeneous Experts
with Suraj Malladi

Abstract: An agent has a quality initially unknown to her and a set of experts. The experts vary in their ability to discern the agent’s quality, and the agent chooses who to approach for approval. An expert only wants to approve a high type agent, whereas the agent wants to get approval regardless. There is an N-shaped relationship between the prior belief about the agent's quality and her choice of expert. When experts are very pessimistic, the agent approaches a careful expert to avoid outright rejection. When experts are moderately pessimistic, the agent wants less scrutiny, hoping that errors play in her favor. At moderately optimistic beliefs, the agent seeks careful scrutiny, as she is confident in her quality. When the market is very optimistic, the agent again seeks a less careful expert who would rubber stamp her case.

Publications

Large increases in public R&D investment are needed to avoid declines of US agricultural productivity
with Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, Robert G Chambers, David B Lobell
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, 2025) [code + data]

Winner of the 2026 AAEA Quality of Communication Award

Abstract: Increasing agricultural productivity is a gradual process with significant time lags between research and development (R&D) investment and the resulting gains. We estimate the response of US agricultural Total Factor Productivity to both R&D investment and weather and quantify the public R&D spending required to offset the emerging impacts of climate change. We find that offsetting the climate-induced productivity slowdown by 2050 will require R&D spending over 2021 to 2050 to grow at 5.2 to 7.8% per year under a fixed spending growth scenario or by an additional $2.2 to $3.8B per year under a fixed supplement spending scenario (in addition to the current spending of ~$5B per year). This amounts to an additional $208 to $434B or $65 to $113B over the period, respectively, and would be comparable in ambition to the public R&D spending growth that followed the two World Wars.

Agricultural credit association efficiencies over time and with mergers [Master’s Thesis]
with Loren W. Tauer
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review (2023)

Cornell Dyson Best Master Thesis Award
The Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Outstanding MS Thesis Award of Merit

Abstract: Efficiencies of Agricultural Credit Associations of the US Farm Credit System are measured quarterly from 2005 through 2020. A slacks-based measure based on the directional distance function is used with non-performing loans included as an undesirable output. This permitted efficiency scores to be measured by type of defined input or output. Generally, most Associations were highly efficient, but there was deterioration in mean efficiency over the years 2008–2018, a period of financial difficulties in the US agriculture. Efficiencies of Associations that merged or consolidated were tracked before and after these activities. Mergers and consolidations often led to increased efficiencies.

A vulnerability index for priority targeting of agricultural crops under a changing climate
with Calum G. Turvey, Jiajun Du, Ariel Ortiz-Bobea
Climatic Change (2021)

Abstract: In this paper, we evaluate a single-index polymorphic production function that relates agricultural output to temperature and precipitation. The advantage of this new approach to measuring agricultural vulnerability under climatic change is that a single-index measure of vulnerability can capture a range of climate responses including plateau effects. The approach identifies plateau effects in the crop yield-weather relationship and provides overall fits consistent with higher-order polynomial fitting. We apply the technique to corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton at the USA county level. We illustrate its computation and use as a critical policy variable.

Work in Progress

1. Mechanism Design for Large-Scale Voluntary Land Assembly with Yuxuan Ma

We study the optimal design of voluntary land-acquisition mechanisms for assembling parcels from owners with private valuations, with applications to managed retreat and habitat conservation.

2. Unmanaged Retreat: Housing Investment and Relocation under Wildfire Risk with Ariel Ortiz-Bobea

We examine whether nearby wildfire exposure leads households to reduce investment in their properties or relocate before experiencing direct damage.

3. Disasters, Property Tax Assessments, and Tax Burden Inequality with Ariel Ortiz-Bobea

We study how property tax assessments respond to disasters: whether delays in reassessment create unequal tax burdens and whether disasters exacerbate existing assessment regressivity.

4. Business Investment and Relocation after Destructive Disasters with Jiong Wu

We examine how business investment and relocation responses to destructive disasters vary with pre-disaster local economic fundamentals.

5. Persistent Temperature Effects on Agricultural Productivity Imply Large Climate Change Damages with Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, David Lobell

We study how temperature shocks affect agricultural productivity over time and how the persistence of these effects shapes projected climate change damages.

6. Global Agricultural R&D Needs under Climate Change with Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, David Lobell

We estimate the additional public agricultural R&D investment needed to offset projected climate change impacts on agricultural productivity worldwide.

7. Climate Change, Pollen, and Respiratory Allergies: Evidence from U.S. Healthcare with Qingli Fan, Jing Li, Daniel Katz, and Ariel Ortiz-Bobea

We examine how climate change affects pollen exposure and the resulting burden of respiratory allergies using U.S. healthcare data.

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