Unitization of Oil Reserves in Alaska and the Supply Elasticity of a Common Pool Resource
By Emily Bailey
Unitization, a common but not omnipresent policy that is lauded in both the economics and environmental world for its efficiency, attempts to solve the “tragedy of the commons” common pool failure of oil production by creating a system in which all those with interests in one reserve produce jointly and split profits accordingly. This paper empirically demonstrates what other researchers have hypothesized – that unitization reduces the elasticity of supply with respect to price. It then extrapolates to potential impacts this policy could have on the environment at large by forecasting a future production path based on the model from the previous section. Finally, it demonstrates how unitization could slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Advisor: Christopher Timmins | JEL Codes: Q38, Q48, Q54 | Tagged: Alaska, Climate Change, Oil, Oil Production, Oil Reserves, Unitization
After the Storm Impacts of natural disasters in the United States at the state and county level
By Danjie Fang
Empirical research on the impact of natural disasters on economic growth has provided contradictory results and few studies have focused on the United States. In this thesis, I bridge the gap by examining the merits of existing claims on the relationship between natural disasters and growth at the states and county level in the U.S. I find that climatological and geophysical disasters have a small and negative impact on growth rates at the state level, but that this impact disappears over time. At the county level, I find that tornados have a slight but negative impact on per capita GDP levels and growth rates over a five year period across three states that experience this natural phenomenon. Controlling for FEMA aid, I find that there may be upward omitted variable bias in regressions that do not include the amount of aid as a variable. I find evidence that FEMA aid has a small but positive impact on growth and per capita GDP levels at both the county and state level.
Advisor: Christopher Timmins, Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: O11, O40, Q58 | Tagged: Aid, County, FEMA, Natural Disasters, State, United States
Understanding the Value of Amenities: A Study of the Land Value Determination Process in Hangzhou, China
By Ching-Ching Chen
This paper seeks to investigate the determinants of land within Hangzhou China. There are two main goals that the research paper will attempt to address. The first is to build upon existing research on land pricing in terms of the theories outlined by the monocentric city and hedonic pricing models. Second, the paper will use a dataset of Hangzhou land sales transactions between the years of 2003 and 2011 to investigate the possible existence of “luxury residuals” among commercial and residential land parcels. Nonetheless, due to the presence of large residuals, while Chinese consumers value certain amenities is not fully captured by these results. Rather, a number of case studies or outliers are used to fully examine the influences of these amenity variables in driving extreme prices. The result support the hypothesis that China, located at the bottom of Kuznets environmental curve, values amenities at extreme levels as a result of scarcity.
Advisor: Charles Becker, Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: Q51, R0, R14, R52 | Tagged: Empirical Analysis, Hangzhou Land Price Appreciation, Hedonic Pricing Model, Kuznets Curve, Monocentric City Model
