NatuRE Policy Lab

UC Davis ARE assistant professor Eric Edwards presented his work, joint with Sara Sutherland, examining the political and economic determinants of the supply of national park land. Political science and economics offer a variety of models on how a government provides public goods under competing economic incentives across institutions, but empirical evidence remains limited. In this paper, Eric and Sara examine park additions and budget allocation decisions by the U.S.

ARE PhD candidate Bruno Pimenta presented his work on how deforestation in the Amazon responds to drought, and how this response differs between private and public land. Climate change has made drought events in the Amazon more frequent. Manmade deforestation can further deteriorate the region's climate, and weather conditions may also influence a farmer's decision to deforest. The Brazilian Amazon is a mosaic of public and private lands, and farmers in public lands may not have incentives to manage their lands sustainably.

ARE PhD students Stuart Morrison and Ignacio Oliva each presented ongoing work as a part of the 3rd Year Prospectus Brown Bag series, which allows ARE students to workshop the ideas that will (or may) make up their prospectus. 

UC Davis economics PhD student Matias Solorza presented his work on the regional economic impacts of natural disasters in Chile. Matias' work analyzes the macroeconomic responses of Chilean regions to extreme weather-related shocks, such as floods and wildfires, using local projections. Unlike the positive effects observed in some developed countries, his findings reveal a persistent decline in regional GDP and a temporary reduction in private consumption.

Takefumi Fujimoto, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo, visited the NatuRE Policy Lab and presented his research on bycatch species with commercial values in Japan’s purse seine fishery. In 2023, large- and medium-scaled purse seiners in the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea introduced individual quotas (IQ) for horse mackerel and chub/blue mackerel. Because of the two fishes' biological migration patterns, chub/blue mackerel, which has a commercial value, are often caught together with horse mackerel.