Department Seminar Series

Friday, May 5, 2023 | Andrew Platinga, PhD, Professor of Resource & Land Use Economics, UC Santa Barbara | 3:30 PM | Location TBD

Andrew Plantinga’s research focuses on the economics of land use, climate change, and forests. Particular emphasis is given to the development of methods for econometrically modeling land-use decisions, the analysis of environmental policies that affect private land-use decisions, and the modeling of land development pressures. A current project, funded by the National Science Foundation, analyzes how risk salience affects decisions by public land management agencies to allocate wildfire management projects.

Andrew Plantinga is also the director of the Productive Landscapes Group at the UCSB Environmental Market Solutions Lab (emLab).

Friday, February 24, 2023 | Katrina Mullan, PhD, Environmental Economist, University of Montana - Missoula | 3:30 PM | Location 111

Dr. Katrina Mullan an environmental economist at the University of Montana, working on the behavioral responses of rural households to changes in natural resources, and to alternative policy mechanisms for conservation. She focuses mainly on deforestation in international contexts, and examines the implications of both deforestation and forest protection for rural development. Mullan carries out quantitative empirical work, primarily using household survey data, in conjunction with remote sensing data on land cover and other types of spatial data.

Friday, January 27, 2023 | George Lowenstein, PhD, Simon University Professor of Economics and Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University | 3:30 PM | Location BU 123

His research focuses on applications of psychology to economics and, more recently, applications of economics to psychology (e.g., economic analyses of boredom, insecure self-esteem, and of the reluctance to thank and apologize). Specific interests include belief-based utility, the psychology and economics of attention, learning and forgetting, motivational feeling states associated with cognition (e.g., boredom, curiosity and mental effort), intertemporal choice, bargaining and negotiations, psychology and health, law and economics, the psychology of adaptation, the role of emotion in decision making, the psychology of curiosity, conflict of interest, various aspects of sex, unethical behavior, and issues involving research ethics.

Friday, October 27, 2023 | Jared Rubin, PhD, Professor/Co-Director, Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics and Society, Chapman University |3:30 pm | Location TBA

Jared Rubin is an economic historian interested in the political and religious economies of the Middle East and Western Europe. His research focuses on historical relationships between political and religious institutions and their role in economic development. His book, Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge University Press, 2017) explores the role that Islam and Christianity played in the long-run “reversal of fortunes” between the economies of the Middle East and Western Europe. It was awarded the Douglass North Best Book Award for the best research in institutional and organizational economics published during the previous two years, awarded by the Society of Institutional and Organizational Economics. He is the Co-Director of Chapman University’s Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics and Society (IRES) and the President of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (ASREC). He graduated with a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2007 and a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 2002.

Friday, October 13, 2023 | Johanna B. Mollerstrom, Associate Professor, George Mason University | 3:30 pm | Location TBA

Johanna Mollerstrom received her PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 2013. Her general research topics are experimental and behavioral economics, gender economics, and public economics. In particular, she is interested in questions related to demand for redistribution, social preferences, and gender. Among others, her work has been published in the Review of Economics of Statistics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Public Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Experimental Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 

Friday, September 22, 2023 | Hilla Skiba, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Finance and Real Estate at Colorado State University (CSU) | Time & Location TBD

Hilla Skiba is an Associate Professor in the Department of Finance and Real Estate at Colorado State University (CSU). Her research interests are mainly in the areas of investments, international finance, ESG Investing, institutional investors, and real estate finance. Specifically, her recent work deals with cultural influences on financial decision-making, underdiversification and performance, and the behavior of real estate market participants. Hilla’s work has been published in such journals as the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Real Estate Research, and Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. Her research has earned several awards including the best paper award at the Asian Finance Association meetings. She served as the department chair at CSU from 2019-2022. She received her Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Kansas. Prior to joining CSU in 2015 she was Assistant Professor of Finance and Macdonald Family Faculty Fellow of Finance at University of Wyoming.

Friday, September 15, 2023 | Volodymyr Lugovskyy, PhD, Assoc Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Indiana University | 3:30 PM | Location TBD

Born in Ukraine, Volodymyr has previously held faculty positions at University of Memphis and Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Lugovskyys main research interests are in international trade, particularly in the variety gains from trade, trade costs, and patterns of specialization. He also has projects in experimental economics. He has taught courses in microeconomics, statistics, game theory, and international trade. He has published papers in the Journal of International Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Money Credit and Banking.

Friday, September 8, 2023 | Daniela Puzzello, PhD, Professor of Economics, Indiana University | 3:30 PM | Location TBD

Daniela Puzzello is a Professor of Economics at Indiana University. Professor Puzzello’s research interests are in economic theory, experimental economics and monetary economics. Her research integrates theory and experiments to study social norms of exchange, welfare improving trading institutions, mispricing in asset markets and the impact of monetary policies on economic outcomes. Daniela’s research has been published in several journals, including American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Economic Theory, European Economic Review, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Mathematical Economics and Journal of Monetary Economics. 

Friday, December 2, 2022 | Matthew Kotchen, Professor of Economics, Yale University | 3:30 pm | Location BU 129

Matthew Kotchen is a professor of economics at Yale University, with a primary appointment in the Yale School of the Environment and secondary appointments in the Yale School of Management and the Department of Economics. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a fellow of the CESifo Network. Professor Kotchen's research interests lie at the intersection of environmental and public economics and policy. Kotchen joined the Yale faculty in 2009 and has held previous and visiting positions at Williams College, University of California (Santa Barbara and Berkeley), Stanford University, and Resources for the Future. Professor Kotchen has also served as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Washington, DC, the visiting chief economist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and as a member of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022 | Jacob Hochard, Knoblock Assistant Professor of Conservation Economics, University of Wyoming | Location BU 123

Jake Hochard is an applied natural resource economist and returned to the University of Wyoming’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources in 2020 after earning a PhD in economics from the University of Wyoming in 2015. From 2015-2020, Jake was an assistant professor and research scientist with East Carolina University’s Department of Economics and Coastal Studies Institute and a faculty fellow with the US Environmental Protection Agency, North Carolina Agromedicine Institute, and Center for Natural Hazards Research. Jake’s work combines geospatial analysis, mathematical modeling, and empirical analysis to examine feedback between natural and human systems with the goal of engaging with stakeholders to support natural resource policy and management decisions. Recent projects funded by the National Science Foundation, US Environmental Protection Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, and other sources focus on constructing a set of Wyoming Natural Wealth Accounts, assessing the downstream environmental and human health impacts of animal agriculture, measuring the effect of natural disasters on birth outcomes, and synthesizing large datasets to predict groundwater contamination risks following major storm events.

Friday, November 11, 2022 | Steven Beckman, Professor of Economics (Ret.), University of Colorado at Denver | 3:30 pm | Location BU 307

Steve Beckman is Professor of Economics (retired) at the University of Colorado at Denver with a research focus on microeconomics, experimental, and behavioral economics and their implications for markets.

Wednesday, November 9, 2022 | Nino Abashidze, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Wyoming, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources | 3:30 pm | Location BU 307

Nino’s research, which is highly interdisciplinary in nature, focuses on exploring the health and property value impacts of locally undesirable land uses on neighboring communities. Specifically, she examines the effect of utility-scale solar installations on residential and agricultural property values. She also analyzes the impact of negative land uses that are known point sources for environmental contaminants on health outcomes among the elderly and infant populations in surrounding communities.

Friday, November 4, 2022 | Wai Yan Siu, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Wyoming, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources | 3:30 pm | Location BU 123

Wai Yan's research integrates social and environmental data to better understand the impact of human activities and urbanization on the environment, in which she relies on econometrics analysis and geospatial programming. Her primary research fields are natural resource and environmental economics, with special interests in the nexus of natural resource conservation, land use, and public policy evaluation. 

Wednesday, November 2, 2022 | Alessandra Cassar, Professor of Economics, University of San Francisco | Zoom Seminar

Alessandra Cassar is a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Economic Science Association and a former co-director of LEEPS Lab (Learning and Experimental Economics Projects of Santa Cruz) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her MA in Economics from Bocconi University, Milan, in 1996, and her PhD in International Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2001. Cassar is passionate about investigating the origins of preferences and their role in development. Through laboratory and field experiments across the world, her studies focus on the contributions of evolutionary processes to shaping human behavior. Her current research concentrates on the under-studied areas of female competitiveness; the consequences of conflict and disaster victimization for altruism, trust, religiosity, risk, and time preferences; and the role of social networks for economic outcomes. She is also researching how to design programs to overcome individuals’ internal constraints to support economic empowerment.

Friday, October 28, 2022 | Abhi Ramalingama, Appalachian State University

3:30 pm | Location BU 307

I am a Professor in the Department of Economics at Appalachian State University.

 

My research interests are Experimental Economics, Behavioural Economics, Organisational/Managerial Economics, Inequality, and Political Economy.

 

For more information about my work, please follow the links below.

 Google Scholar profile and my Researchgate profile.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022 | Sinne Smed, University of Copenhagen

3:30 pm | Location BU 307

Sinne Smed's research interest focuses on behavioral economics and consumer behavior, with emphasis on explaining the underlying reasons for consumer behavior and how the public can regulate consumer behavior through information provision and taxation. Furthermore, she has done a considerable amount of work on demand for organic foods and labelling. She teaches two courses in Econometrics both at BA and MSc level. She actively participates in the public debate, especially concerning taxation of foods, and works as a temporary advisor for the WHO on that matter.

Wednesday, September 28, 2022 | James Murphy, University of Alaska at Anchorage 

3:30 pm | Location BU 209

Dr. James Murphy is a Professor of Economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). He arrived at UAA in 2006 as the visiting Rasmuson Chair of Economics, and decided to remain at UAA as a full-time faculty member after his tenure as Chair ended in 2011. Prior to arriving at UAA, he was on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Davis and studied experimental economics as a pre-doctoral fellow at the University of Arizona. As part of a university partnership to develop a new experimental economics program in China, he is also a visiting professor at Nankai University and Chairman of their new Nankai Vernon L. Smith Experimental Economics Laboratory.

Dr. Murphy’s research focuses on the use of experimental methods to address environmental policy and natural resource management issues.

Friday, September 23, 2022 | Jennifer Raynor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

3:30 pm | Location BU 121

Jennifer Raynor is an Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has been on the faculty since 2022. Before moving to Wisconsin, she was an Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University and a Research Economist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Raynor’s research focuses on the economics of fisheries and wildlife management, with an emphasis on measuring the feedback between human and natural systems. She strives to inform on-the-ground decision-making and works closely with state and federal resource managers to design and evaluate conservation policies. Her main topical interests include human-carnivore coexistence, marine spatial planning, and non-market valuation. 
Raynor graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Economics at LeMoyne College. She then earned an M.A. in Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, followed by an M.S. in Environment and Resources and Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 
 
 

Friday, March 25 | Nathan Chan, University of Massachusetts

3:30 PM | Location BU 123

Dr. Chan is an Associate Professor in the Resource Economics department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His primary research interests are in the fields of environmental economics and public economics. Before arriving in Amherst, he was an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Colby College. 

Friday, April 8 | Ben Gilbert, Colorado School of Mines

3:30 PM | Location BU121

Ben Gilbert is an applied microeconomist who studies the relationship between public policy, energy and natural resource markets. His research addresses problems in energy supply, energy efficiency, marine resources, regulation, firm and industrial organization, and the housing market.

Before becoming an economist, Gilbert was a news reporter covering emerging energy technology. Gilbert holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA in Economics and English from Whitman College. He was previously an assistant professor of Economics at the University of Wyoming and an affiliate of the University of Wyoming Building Energy Research Group.

Friday, April 15 | Alexander James, University of Alaska Anchorage

3:30 PM | Location BU121

AAlexander’s research and teaching interests broadly include environmental and resource economics. He is also interested in analyzing a variety of economic problems using experimental methods, especially those related to non-market valuation and public policy.

Friday, April 22 | Leaf Van Boven, University of Colorado Boulder

3:30 PM | Location BU121

Dr. Van Boven is a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Boulder. His research interests include folk psychology, or everyday understanding of emotions and of social psychological processes in the self and in other people; Judgment, decision making, and behavioral economics. 

Friday, April 29 | Daniel Houser, George Mason University

3:30 PM | Location BU121

Dr. Houser is Professor and Chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason University, where he is also Director of Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith’s Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science (ICES), a research institution focused on advancing the newest frontiers of Experimental and Behavioral Economics. A multi-disciplinary scholar, Houser has published over 100 articles in fields including economics, finance, political science, psychology and general science, and has published over a dozen “top 3” articles across these fields that have appeared in outlets including American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Finance, American Journal of Political Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Friday, March 4 | Kevin Berry, University of Alaska Anchorage

3:30 PM | Location TBA

Kevin Berry is an environmental economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage. His current research projects include fisheries management under uncertainty, coastal erosion and community capacity building, and the continuation of work on invasive species and infectious disease. His primary interest is in research that aids policymakers in responding to a rapidly changing world by preemptively investing in risk mitigation efforts. This includes identifying individual responses to environmental change to better understand individual behavior and modelling policy responses at the government and global level.

Friday, September 24 | Paul Turner, SVP Business Development, Hecate Energy

3:30 PM | COB 121

Title: Kári Energy: Wind Energy from Iceland for the UK.

Dr. Paul Turner is a the Vice President for Business Development at Hecate Energy LLC. Turner earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from New Mexico State University in 1991 and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wyoming in 1996. An independent power professional for over 25 years who brings a unique and deep understanding of energy market trends, power project development and opportunities across the energy technologies including wind, solar, thermal and energy storage. 

Friday, October 8 | Jacqueline Doremus, California Polytechnic State University

12:00 PM | Location BU 123

Dr. Jacqueline Doremus is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Cal Poly. She is interested in better understanding how firms in developing countries impact environment and development outcomes as well as evaluating environmental policy effectiveness. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2015 with a PhD in Economics and has worked at the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.  She returned to the Republic of Congo on a Fulbright fellowship, collecting data in the north for her paper on the unintended impacts of Forest Certification on households’ nutrition outcomes.

Visit Dr. Doremus' website here

Friday, October 22 | Charles Sims, University of Tennessee

12:00 PM | Presented via Zoom

Charles Sims is the Director of the Energy and Environment Program at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville.  His research interests center on environmental and natural resource economics with a specific emphasis on the role of risk and uncertainty in natural resource, environmental, and energy policy.  His past research has investigated issues related to invasive and endangered species, forest management, infectious diseases, green energy, and climate change adaptation.  Sims’s work has been published in refereed journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. 

Friday, November 5 | Thorsten Janus, University of Wyoming 

3:00 PM | COB 121

Dr. Janus is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at the University of Wyoming and the 2021 receipeint of the Tom and Judy Crocker Junior Faculty Research Award. The Crocker-Powell award was created from a generous donation by Tom Crocker and Judy Powell and recognizes research excellence by junior faculty members in the Department of Economics.

Thorsten will present his winning paper: "Where do Commodity Earnings Go?"

Friday, November 19 | Jo Albers, University of Wyoming

12:00 PM | BU 209

Time to Think: Using Sabbatical to Step Back, Develop Insights, and Trust My Process

Having returned from a Covid-restricted sabbatical last spring, Jo Albers will describe how she used that time to think and develop insights on both new and long-standing research interests. With examples from papers on seasonal migratory species and protected areas, Jo will discuss her process for weaving together her real-world observations, the academic and policy literatures, and her research results to find her own perspective on the big picture and priorities for next steps. She will also spend a few minutes talking about the development of a potential short course, “Using Markets and Property Rights for Conservation in Costa Rica,” and about specific papers and projects she has been pushing through the research pipeline. 

Friday, December 3 | Amy Ando, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 

12:00 PM | on Zoom

Dr. Ando helps conservation agencies and groups maximize the benefits people glean from investments to protect nature. She helps conservation agents decide where conservation should be, how long conservation contracts should last, and how we can reduce the risk of future conservation failure. She quantifies the benefits people gain from the environment and studies how those benefits are distributed among different groups of people.

Email economics@uwyo.edu for the link to join the seminar. 

Friday, April 30 | Janet Currie

12:00 PM | Zoom

Dr. Janet Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the Co-director of Princeton's Center for Health and Wellbeing. She also co-directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is the President of the American Society of Health Economics, has served as the Vice President of the American Economics Association, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and of the American Academy of Art and Sciences. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Society of Labor Economists, and of the Econometric Society, and has honorary degrees from the University of Lyon and the University of Zurich. She was named a Nomis Distinguished Scientist in 2018.  

Friday, March 12 | Anna Dreber

9:00 AM | Zoom

Dr. Dreber is the Johan Björkman professor of economics at the Stockholm School of Economics mainly doing meta-science and behavioral and experimental economics. She is also a Wallenberg Scholar, a member of the Young Academy of Sweden and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). Dr. Dreber is also affiliated with the Department of Economics at the University of Innsbruck and the Credence Goods, Incentives and Behavior group. Currently she is mainly interested in replications and predicting replication outcomes as well as new hypothesis tests. 

Friday, February 12 | Marta Serra-Garcia

12:00 PM | Zoom

Friday, January 29 | Dorothea Hilhorst

9:00 AM | Zoom

Dr. Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute for Social Studies at Erasmus University in The Hague. Her focus is on aid-society relations: studying how aid is embedded in the context, impacts on governments and society, and is shaped by the manifold actions of actors in and around programmes for protection, service delivery and capacity development. She has a special interest in the intersections of humanitarianism with development, peacebuilding and gender-relations. Her research has taken place in settings affected by disaster, conflict and fragility, including Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka. Her current research includes disaster governance in high-conflict, low-conflict and post-conflict societies.