Information for Graduate Students:
Subhrendu K. Pattanayak

I urge all graduate students to read the following paper before deciding on topics, committees, and methodological focus of your thesis or dissertation research:  Shively, G., R. T. Woodward and D. Stanley. 1999.  "Strategy and Etiquette for Graduate Students Entering the Academic Job Market". Review of Agricultural Economics 21(2):513-26.  Please click on the paper title to link to Gerry Shively's website, which provides a pdf copy of this paper.

My research falls into three areas:

You can get more information on any of these topics by clicking on the label.  Most of this research has relied on specifying testable hypothesis by applying economic theory to environment and development policies, conducting field experiments to collect household survey (microeconomic) data in developing countries, matching the survey data with meso-scale environmental and social statistics, and estimating econometric models to generate policy parameters and recommendations.  This research has translated into several peer-review publications and research contracts, and contributed towards building a program of research (described in great detail in my CV).  I invite students to participate in any of these research domains.

I also invite students to work on the following relatively clean and comprehensive data sets to answer questions in one of the three domains listed above:

In addition to working on these topics and data sets, there may be opportunities for Sometimes we do a readings courses or an independent study (e.g., program evaluation in environmental economics [with Dave Butry] and environmental health [with Na Sangli]). For example, this semester we are doing a discussion of social interactions (see below) for more details.

EVALUATION OF FOREST ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
This domain is in area of research that has witnessed major policy innovations and, thereby, generated significant research needs – evaluation of forest ecosystem services.  We have applied rigorous empirical methods to systematically identify, quantify, and monetize the ‘natural insurance’ from forest protection.  The initial body of work focused on non-market services from tropical forests and included flood protection, soil conservation, drought reduction, non-timber forest products, and household fuelwood consumption.  We have expanded this conceptual and methodological strategy to consider non-timber services in the U.S., including carbon-sequestration, water quality, forest aesthetics, and wildlife habitat protection.  Top?
PRACTICAL METHODS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ANALYSIS
This domain relates to developing practical methods for environmental policy analysis.  For example, we have developed a new ‘benefits transfer’ methodology for the measurement of non-market benefits using an approach titled ‘preference calibration’.  This approach improves on existing practices for benefits transfer by tying economic theory (i.e., constrained utility maximization logic) to benefits analysis and by applying information from empirical valuation studies to numerically calibrate preference functions rather than relying on the more commonly used unit-value approach.  Subsequently, the calibration logic has been extended to estimation of parameters of utility function by applying a method of moments approach to meta-data sets on economic values for changes in water quality, air quality and mortality risk.  Top?
ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
This domain addresses the economics and geography of environmental epidemiology, focusing on diseases such as malaria and diarrhea that are substantively affected by environmental degradation and that contribute significantly to the global disease burden.  This research addresses three types of policy questions:
(a) what are the geographical and ecological determinants of diseases and behaviors, controlling for socio-economic factors,
(b) what are the socio-economic consequences of diseases, and
(c) what are the policy options for influencing household and community behavior to minimize disease exposures and/or mitigate disease outcomes.
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS - an EMAIL based READINGS class
This is a discussion with Katie Dickinson (Duke), Shubhayu Saha (NCSU) and Simone Bauch (NCSU).  The broad plan is that each week one person would generate a 3 page summary on the paper of the week. This summary should focus on the nature of the social interaction and how it was empirically handled (given the circularity problem). State any estimates of social interactions/multipliers/spillovers and what might have happened if the approach was not used (some authors present a counterfactual scenario). Also, include key references from this paper. As we move further along the semester and discuss more papers, the summary should discuss how the article fits into the context of the others (what did it add or expand on what was already known). The summary is due to the rest of the groupby Monday.

By Thursday, others should’ve read the article and write back to the whole group with comments. The original summary writer (or others) are welcome to offer clarifications, or just let it pass till the next article. I will gladly serve as moderator.

It would be nice to cap all this off with a final product (in the last 2 weeks of the semester), which is how this discussion and literature fits into the dissertation idea you have. If things have moved along far enough and it is clear that the 3-4 applications (each of you developing 1) represent an interesting extension of the social interactions literature to environment and development issue, I would propose it as a panel at a conference (e.g., NEUDC/Camp Resources) or a special issue of a journal.

Our list of papers is as follows (I will update as the weeks go by):

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Last Updated September 25, 2004 by Subhrendu Pattanayak