Christine Crago, resource economics, presented at the September 19 Western Massachusetts Solar Forum. To achieve access to the alternative energy source as well as “access to the financial benefits of solar, we need a better understanding of these mechanisms behind low uptake of solar in low-income and minority communities,” said Crago.
Jill Fitzsimmons, resource economics, is part of a research team set to receive $1.19 million to study solutions for managing cranberry fruit rot, a long-standing problem in the cranberry industry. The award is part of a larger $4.1 million USDA-NIFA (U.S. Department of Agriculture–National Institute of Food and Agriculture) Specialty Crop Research Initiative Grant.
We would like to congratulate Professor Debi Mohapatra and Professor Lucy Xiaolu Wang as being recipients for this year's award. Professor Mohapatra and Wang worked alongside Professor Christopher Boone and Elizabeth Evans on Building Health Economics.
As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration explores front-of-package nutrition labeling to help American consumers make healthier eating choices, a new University of Massachusetts Amherst study finds that a food labeling system introduced by the French government in 2017 resulted in healthier products. The study of Nutri-Score, a voluntary labeling system that assigns a simple letter grade based on nutrition, is believed to be the first to examine how food manufacturers responded to the change.
Tihitina Andarge, assistant professor of resource economics, Sean McBeath, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Mohammad (Kiron) Shakhawat, a civil and environmental engineering postdoctoral researcher, have been awarded $15,000 to employ a citizen science approach to collecting drinking water samples and testing them for “forever chemicals,” persistent substances that resist breaking down.
Resource Economics Professor Nathan Chan and Professor Susan Stratton Sayre of Smith College have developed a new method to assess the equity implications of carbon taxes, which are among economists' favored solutions to address the looming threat of climate change.