This dissertation investigates the impact of noise pollution on residential properties in the Phoenix metropolitan area. It leverages quasi-random changes in flight paths to and from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, focusing on the adoption of the NextGen policy and subsequent flight path reversal upon court intervention. NextGen aimed to reduce flight costs by using computer-algorithm-generated optimized flight paths. In addition to estimating the value of quiet, this dissertation analyzes the distributional welfare impacts of policies that spatially alter noise pollution exposure, residential sorting, and environmental justice. In Chapter 1, the capitalization effect of noise pollution on the housing market is examined. Findings reveal that a mere 1 decibel increase results in a 1% reduction in property values. Furthermore, the chapter examines the distributional impacts of flight path changes across various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of residents. I find that initially, computer-generated flight paths benefited neighborhoods with a higher proportion of Black residents. However, a court-ordered reversal ultimately left them worse off than before the initial change. Chapter 2 introduces a residential sorting model designed to assess welfare effects and simulate market responses to alternative policies. The estimated average marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) to avoid noise pollution stands at $3,038 per decibel, with variations based on household demographics. Additionally, a Pigouvian tax on airplane passengers to compensate for noise pollution amounts to approximately $16 per one-way flight, notably comparable to the carbon tax for a similar journey. Various counterfactual scenarios regarding noise pollution exposure are explored to inform policy decisions. Chapter 3 addresses two challenges in using property transaction data to estimate the MWTP to residential exposure to noise pollution. First, ignoring information frictions among home buyers may bias estimates of the MWTP for an amenity. Second, changes in the amenity of interest may affect other endogenous amenities, further complicating the identification of MWTP. I address both challenges using a novel instrumental variable based on spatial variation in the salience of noise pollution caused by hourly variation in flight paths due to wind direction. I find the mean MWTP for a one-decibel reduction in noise pollution be $4,742.

Functioning freshwater ecosystems are widely recognized as a planetary boundary for the continued human inhabitation of our planet, but little is known about the tradeoffs at the nexus of food, energy and water. In this dissertation I explored the effects of hydrologic variability in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) on rice production and functional structure of fish catches. I then examined the tradeoffs at the intersection of fish and rice harvest as a function of hydrologic variability and modeled production under novel engineered hydrologic scenarios. I modeled rice production using a Multivariate Autoregressive State Space (MARSS) model and mechanistically tested for the effect of saline intrusion. I found rice production to be heterogeneously affected by hydrology; in saline afflicted areas, floods had a positive effect size on production, whereas in non-saline afflicted areas, floods had a negative effect size on production. To address hydrologic filtering of the functional structure of fish catches, I collected thousands of specimens from over 100 LMB species in collaboration with Cambodia’s Inland Fisheries Research and Development institute and the Royal University of Agriculture. LMB fishes comprise a large portion of the 1,200 known species in the basin and have historically provided a substantial amount of animal protein to 60 million people in the region. Using an RLQ, co-inertia analysis, I found four functionally relevant morphological trats that were significantly associated with hydrologic variation—mouth position, maxillary length, relative body depth, and relative head depth. These traits are associated with many of the threated species in the LMB, which make up a large portion of the 1200 known species in the basin and have historically provided a substantial amount of animal protein to 60 million people in the region. To examine the tradeoffs within food systems, I used MARSS maximum likelihood estimation to forecast fish and rice production throughout the LMB under different hydrologic scenarios. I end my dissertation with an opinion piece on NexGen Mekong Scientists, a program I started in 2020 with funding from the United States Department of State.

In this paper, a novel model of Hotelling duopoly is introduced that explains horizontal product variety as the result of consumer preferences, expanding on and meshing the works of Hotelling (1929) and Neven (1985). From this model, two opposing forces from consumer preferences are found that impact the variety and price decisions of firms: market share revenues and price revenues. As firms face consumers with highly linear (weak) preferences over variety, the profit incentive is to simply capture the market by offering products that appeal to the middle consumer. However, as firms face consumers with highly quadratic (strong) preferences over variety, the profit incentive is to carve out and exploit a market segment by offering a distinct variety. Thus, observed product variety between minimal and maximal differentiation is emergent from consumer preferences, as firms face a balance of price and market share incentives.

This paper will explore the existing relationship between direct air capture (DAC)technology and energy justice (EJ) principles. As DAC is a nascent technology that is transitioning from the R&D phase to the deployment phase, a standard for typical scaling practices has not yet been established. Additionally, since the industry of DAC aims to capture at least 10 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2050, and at least 20 Gt/yr by 2100, the scaling practices of this technology will have a significant impact on communities around the world. Therefore, in this thesis I argue that if DAC is not scaled equitably, it will negatively impact the communities hosting the technology, and would develop a negative reputation which could slow down the overall scaling process. On the flip side, if DAC is scaled equitably, then it could create a positive effect by being deployed in underserved and marginalized communities and providing an economic benefit. This could result in DAC having a positive reputation and scaling more rapidly. In order to understand how the field viewed the integration of EJ principles into the scaling process, I interviewed representatives from DAC companies, experts in energy justice from NGOs and academia, and local government officials. These interviews were semi-structured, open-ended and conducted anonymously. Through these interviews I was able to refine my arguments and put forward a set of guidelines that the industry could use to scale DAC with equity and justice as core principles.

Environmental concerns are increasingly becoming one of the most difficult challenges society faces during this century. From an economics perspective, this imposes the need to incorporate the environment as a relevant factor in the decision-making pro- cess in order to achieve the necessary efficiency that supports a sustainable future. This dissertation encompasses two essays that tackle environmental economic prob- lems using two different approaches, which ultimately complement each other in their outcomes. First, using a fully theoretical approach, I study how environmental cam- paigns from firms can impact their environmental reputation measured by the belief that consumers have about how clean their production technology is. I found that environmental campaigns can work as effective signals, fully revealing the firm’s type and allowing for novel reputation dynamics. Second, I take an empirical/quantitative approach to study how different types of water rights generate differences in the de- mand for water rights in Colorado. Using the most comprehensive data on water rights transactions in the US West, I can leverage a property of water rights to use the seller’s characteristics as instrumental variables to estimate the demand for water rights differentiated by type of water right. I provide, to the best of my knowledge, the first comparison of different water rights regimes within one overarching water market. I found that, as hypothesized in previous literature, more flexible water rights have higher demand thus moving more water at a given price. Taken together, these two essays show how relevant environmental topics are in a wide range of situations, providing new evidence on the incentives to build reputation once environmental ac- tions are taken into account, and also on how the demand for a natural resource is impacted by the rules that governs its usage and tradability.

There is a growing interest among policymakers and economists in quantifying the relationship between climate and economic output. Previous studies have demon- strated a clear relationship between temperature on economic growth but they generally do not report significant impacts of rainfall in regions outside of developing countries. Using gridded panel data, this paper estimates the effects of the number of days during the growing season with no rainfall on per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the areas of the United States over the Ogallala and Mississippi Aquifers. Measuring precipitation in terms of growing season dry days instead of aggregate rainfall levels reveals a strong negative relationship between rainfall deficits and economic growth.

Research on California water markets has historically made two inaccurate assumptions regarding water rights: that water is a one-dimensional commodity, and that every water rights holder is in the market to sell. In reality, water is a bundled good that comprises varying attributes, and the decision to become a seller often has more to do with politics than price. This thesis analyzes the heterogeneous dimensions of a water right to explain the evolution of supply, demand, and price in California water markets. A dataset of 712 short-term surface water transfers in California from the period of 1990 through 2016 is analyzed to explain market trends and model the price of water. The data comes from a proprietary dataset of water transfers provided by WestWater Research, LLC (WestWater). Transfer data is distinguished based on variables such as buyer and seller experience, perennial crop plantings, seasonal timing of sale, buyer and seller region, water-year type, and end use. A variety of figures present summary statistics of the data. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression is used to identify variables that are statistically significant in estimating the unit price of water in dollars per acre-foot ($/AF). The regression shows that State Water Bank (SWB) purchases, Environmental Water Account (EWA) purchases, environmental end use, North of Delta (NOD) seller location, the San Joaquin Valley Water-Year Index (San Joaquin Index), total perennial crop acreage, and purchases made by South Coast buyers were statistically significant at the 95% or 99% confidence interval. These variables were included in the final econometric model to estimate price.

Regulatory agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), recognize that decisions regarding occupational health are often economically driven, with worker health only a secondary concern (Ruttenberg, 2014). To investigate the four National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) long-standing health concerns—welding fumes, crystalline silica, noise, and musculoskeletal disorders—a mixed methods research is conducted. Fourfold structuration, a holistic communication process with roots in indigenous/ancient knowledge, is used to organize data and facilitate making tangible relationships of health to productivity and profits that are abstract and often stated by industries, such as construction, as difficult to quantify. From both construction trade worker and occupational health and safety expert interviews data/codes are developed. For the qualitative method, the codes are organized into a constructivist grounded theory depicting the construction industry with regard to its foundation – profits. A theoretical exercise translating the qualitative codes into potential productivity losses is presented as a way for quantifying the abstract relationships of health to productivity. For the quantitative study, the data/codes are used to develop a comprehensive list of practices, barriers to, and catalysts for addressing health in construction. A significant quantitative finding is that occupational health and safety (OSH) experts are not traditionally involved at the highest levels of the OSHA Hierarchy of Controls, where the greatest opportunity to prevent exposure to health hazards is possible. Organized via a holistic framework, this research emphasizes our primary responsibility to each other as highlighted in recent NIOSH worker health agendas.