Colby Gray was among those chosen as a 2021-2022 ADVANCE Faculty Fellow. ADVANCE focuses on cultivating faculty equity, inclusion, and success by providing resources, recognition, and relationship buliding that are critical to quitable and successful collaboration in the 21st century academy. ADVANCE Faculty Fellows provide recommendations and feedback to the ADVANCE leadership team about programming, liase with their departments to promote ADVANCE, and inform ADVANCE about equity and inclusion initiatives at the department level. One faculty member per department or academic unit is chosen to serve as the ADVANCE faculty fellow each year. 
Clinical decisions made in the delivery setting as to whether to employ vaginal delivery or cesarean section are often made under high pressure, and with great uncertainty, and have serious consequences for mother and baby. Now, a
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Nilesh Shinde, a Post Doctoral Research Associate publishes article "Collective Property Rights Lead to Secondary Forest Growth in the Brazilian Amazon" in PMAS. View the article here. -
Assistant Professor Matt Woerman publishes paper in Journal of Environmental Economics & Management. View it here. -
Professor Dave Keiser has two new publications in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about it here. -
Assistant Professor Brandyn Churchill recently had a paper accepted at Journal of Human Resources in which he and his coauthor studied how thin-ideal media affects the weight-related health behaviors of adolescent girls and young women. View the paper here. -
Assistant Professor Debi Prasad Mohapatra awarded the Robert F. Lanzillotti Prize for best paper in anti-trust economics at the International Industrial Organization Conference. View the paper here. -
PhD Student Dhiroj Koirala Publishes Op-ed "Climate Change: G7 Leaders Must Scale Up Commitments & Cooperation with the Developing World" in South China Morning Post. View the article here. -
Professor Nathan Chan publishes paper on environmental economics and racial inequality. Read more here. -
Assistant Professor Brandyn Churchill recently published a paper in Journal of Health Economics in which he and his coauthors studied how consumers and firms respond to public policies intended to prevent risky health behaviors. They found that state policies prohibiting adolescents from using indoor tanning beds significantly reduced tanning-related information-seeking behavior and indoor tanning bed use. They also found sizable reductions in tanning salon sales, especially for establishments located near middle and high schools, resulting in fewer tanning salon openings and more tanning salon closures. Read the article here. -
Resource Economics Professors Christoph Bauner and Nathalie Lavoie published article, "The Costs of Eating Gluten Free" in Applied Economics Letters. This article studies the price and nutritional composition of gluten-free products in comparison with gluten-containing items. They conclude that unless gluten-free products are medically prescribed, consumers should carefully weigh all product characteristics when choosing between gluten-free and gluten-containing versions of the same product. You can view the article here. -
David Keiser, Professor in the Department of Resource Economics, recently published a research paper in the American Economic Journal in which he and his co-authors examined the impact of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan on their housing market. “This paper uses the unfortunate events surrounding the Flint crisis to understand how housing markets respond to a major public policy failure and subsequent efforts to address it.” Read more. -
Assistant professor Lucy Xiaolu Wang recently published a paper on the effectiveness of the Human Brain Project (HBP) Forum, an online collaborative platform that allows neuroscience researchers to ask, and respond to, questions about the latest breakthroughs and obstacles in the field. The complete paper, "Collaborating neuroscience online: The case of the Human Brain Project forum," is available online at PLOS ONE and as a Max Planck Institute discussion paper. -
Assistant Professor Lucy Xiaolu Wang's article, "Pharma's expensive gaming of the drug patent system is successfully countered by the Medicines Patent Pool, which increases global access and rewards innovation" was published in The Conversation. View the article Here. -
Resource Economics student Kaleigh Hill was named Fall 2022 Rising Researcher in recognition for her outstanding research, scholarship and creative activity in a variety of fields. View the article here. -
Assistant Professor Matt Woerman's paper "Intermittency or Uncertainty? Impacts of Renewable Energy in Electricity Markets" wins the 2022 USAEE Young Professional Best Paper Award. Co-authored by Assistant Professor Paige Weber from the Economics Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this paper decomposes the overall effects of renewable resources on electricity markets outcomes by separately estimating the impacts of renewables' intermittency and renewables' uncertainty. You can view the paper here. -
Assistant Professor Mansvini Singh delivers Keynote Lecture virtually at the 2022 Herston Health Precinct Symposium. View more. -
Assistant Professor Lucy Xiaolu Wang published "Global Drug Diffusion and Innovation with the Medicines Patent Pool" in the Journal of Health Economics. View more. -
Ground-level ozone continues to damage health, even at low levels: An essay in The Conversation by Jamie Mullins -
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Welcome to Resource Economics
At the Department of Resource Economics, we tackle complex questions about how to use our environmental, natural and human resources. By researching important societal problems and gathering and analyzing data, we offer policy solutions that move the needle on today’s most pressing issues. Our undergraduate and graduate programs focus on industrial organization, environmental economics, natural resource economics and health economics. And our award-winning faculty produces groundbreaking research that impacts how we approach our world.
2022 ANNUAL NEWSLETTER
The Department of Resource Economics is pleased to release our 2022 annual newsletter. Click on the image to learn more about what's new in the department, including our growth - we are now home to almost 400 undergraduate majors!
Looking for More Information
Interested in learning more about our programs? Take the first step: Connect with us now!
Spring 2023 Seminars
The department of Resource Economics is pleased to present the Spring 2023 seminar series. All seminars will be available in person in Stockbridge 303 unless stated otherwise below.
Friday, March 3, 10:30am -12:00pm | Laura Gee
Department of Economics, Tufts University
Specialty: Applied Microeconomics, Behavioral/Experimental Economics
Title: TBA
Friday, April 14, 10:30am - 12:00pm | Jane Kolodinsky
Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, University of Vermont
Specialty: Food Systems Policy
Title: TBA
Friday, April 21, 10:30am -12:00pm | Michael Darden
Department of Economics, Johns Hopkins University
Specialty: Health Economics and Health Econometrics
Title: TBA
Friday, May 5, 10:30am-12:00pm | Pun Winichakul
Department of Economics, Smith College
Specialty: Public and Behavioral Economics
Title: TBA
Friday, May 12, 10:30am-12:00pm | Rich Sweeney
Department of Economics, Boston College
Specialty: Environmental & Energy Economics, Energy Policy, Industrial Organization, Applied Microeconomics
Title: TBA
Thursday, May 18, 10:30am - 12:00pm | Ethan Ligon
Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley
Specialty: Applied Microeconomics
Title: TBA
Computer Science Meets Behavioral Sciences: Interdisciplinary Research Focuses on Heat Resilience in the Age of Climate Change
As high temperatures become more frequent and intense due to climate change, UMass Amherst scientists are developing interdisciplinary research aimed at helping communities increase resilience to extreme heat by monitoring physiological, mental and behavioral health factors.
Tauhidur Rahman, assistant professor of computer and information sciences, and social scientist Jamie Mullins, assistant professor of resource economics,received a $75,000 planning grant from the National Science Foundation’s Smart and Connected Communities program to fund their project.
Now recruiting graduate students for NSF funded program focused on equitable energy transition
Resource Economics associate professor Christine L. Crago is co-PI on two grants totaling $6.3 million from the National Science Foundation. The grants will fund a new graduate training program, ELevating Equity VAlues in the Transition of the Energy System (ELEVATE) which aims to ensure that the transformation of the electric grid is both sustainable and benefits all members of society equitably, an aspect of energy transition not often considered in policymaking or public discourse. “I’m really excited to be looking at equity and distributional impacts of the renewable energy transition,” says Dr. Crago. “As we promote an energy system dominated by renewable energy, we want to carefully consider the impact of more renewables on energy prices and control of energy assets, and their subsequent impacts on equity.”
