ARE PhD students Will Troske and Ignacio Oliva each presented ongoing work, titled "Global warming, inequality, and dependence on the environment" and "The Behavioral Impact of Sulfur Fuel Content Regulations in Maritime Shipping" respectively. 

Stanford University Hoover Fellow Milan Quentel, who will be joining Universidad Carlos III de Madrid as an assistant professor in 2026, visited the lab to present his work on the optimal siting of renewable electricity infrastucture. Renewable energy has enormous welfare potential, yet development around the world remains slow, in part because residents protest the amenity impacts of wind and solar parks.

UC Davis ARE 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.

Leslie Sanchez, research economist at the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station presented on Native American water settlement negotiations. Water use in the western United States remains highly concentrated in irrigated agriculture, in part because the first in time, first in right tenets of appropriative water law have insulated irrigators, as senior appropriators, from legal challenges to their water use.

Laura Quinones presented ongoing research on PFAS, also known as “Forever Chemicals," that have become prevalent in domestic water supplies. The long lasting nature of these pollutants is worrisome and highlights the need for policy intervention. The discrepancy between state and federal regulation has led to unequal testing across the US. Data availability is sparse across states and limits our ability to perform policy evaluation surrounding these chemicals.

ARE Ph.D. student Stuart Morrison presented his work on customer responses to variable electricity pricing in Australia. It is becoming increasingly common for energy providers to charge residential consumers a price that is driven by daily electricity markets, rather than a conventional, flat fee. Economic theory suggests that residential consumers will adjust their behavior as prices change throughout the day. But there are many margins along which this adjustment might occur.

Erica Chuang, Ph.D. candidate in the University of California San Diego Department of Economics, presented on principle of targeting for environmental externalities. Economists generally agree that in terms of tax and subsidy structure, Pigou is king. However, market-based instruments that imprecisely target externalities are common, and the degree to which imprecision matters for the objectives of those policies has yet to be fully explored.

Matt Dudek presented his work on the impact of grid-scale battery storage capacity on electricity prices in California. A key barrier to expanding renewable energy production is the daily mismatch between intermittent generation and electricity demand. For example, despite a massive expansion in the low marginal cost solar power production, electricity can only be produced from these sources when the sun is shining.

Yuexuan (Kelly) Wu presented ongoing research on the impact of a deforestation moratorium in Indonesia. Since 2000, Indonesia has seen a 17% reduction in forest cover. Much of the forest loss can be attributed to fires that are used to permanently clear land for agriculture. If the moratorium is effective, we should expect that land-clearing fire activity decreases in areas impacted by the moratorium relative to areas that are not impacted by the moratorium.

Madeline Turland recently presented her job market paper, which explores the factors driving human migration in response to the threat of wildfires and how people's risk preferences impact their choice of where to live. Many individuals opt to move to areas with lower wildfire risk as a strategy for risk reduction. To measure the impact of changes in wildfire risk, she developed a novel data set by using a quirk of California insurance markets.

Laura Alcocer Quinones presented her work on the challenges of aggregating source-level measurements of PFAS for use in policy analysis. Although monitoring for PFAS is common around the United States, the methods and frequency of monitoring are not standardized.

Laura Alcocer Quinones presented plans for a study estimating the health effects of exposure to PFAS (per and polyalyfluoral substances) in drinking water. Exposure to PFAS is associated with kidney disease and complications during pregnancy, such as preeclampsia. However, little is known about the precise relationships between health outcomes and exposure to PFAS through drinking water.