Welcome
I am a PhD candidate in Applied Economics at Oregon State University on the 2026–27 economics job market.
My research examines interactions between private land use and natural disaster risk, and how privately rational decisions can generate large-scale social costs and benefits. I use causal inference methods, spatial datasets, and natural resource economic theory to understand how disaster risk drives landowner adaptation. I then ask how this adaptation can change future risk, generate externalities, and create a role for public policy. My work contributes to the climate change adaptation literature, as well as the rapidly growing wildfire literature in economics and the natural sciences.
My job market paper examines how changing wildfire risk in the western United States has affected private forest management decisions, providing the first empirical test of long-standing economic theory. Linking confidential plot-level forest inventory data with wildfire perimeters and fire-season weather, I find that more wildfire activity and warmer, drier weather shocks lead landowners to harvest earlier and plant at lower densities. A bioeconomic Monte Carlo simulation shows that this adaptation has reduced forest volumes by 7–10% since 2000. However, adaptation also changed the amount of fuel on the landscape. In the 2020 wildfire season, landowner adaptation caused $63–72 million in damages from increased wildfire PM2.5, but produced $28–58 million in climate benefits from lower CO2 emissions. Overall, adaptation produced net social damages, but a policy requiring landowners to reduce fuels after harvest could create net social benefits.
Job market paper: Landowner Expectations of Wildfire Risk Have Accelerated Harvest, Reduced Volume, and Altered Fuel Loads in Western U.S. Forests PDF Slides
References
David J. Lewis (advisor)
Professor and Castle Chair in Resource and Rural Economics, Oregon State University
Jennifer Alix-Garcia
Professor of Applied Economics and Hector Macpherson Endowed Professor of Land Economics, Oregon State University
Steven J. Dundas
Associate Professor, Oregon State University