PRE-DOCTORAL PROGRAM

Rebecca Toseland

Rebecca is Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Economics and an M.A. student in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Rebecca is broadly interested in environmental and natural resource economics, and her research focuses on the evolution and evaluation of property rights and spatial management based approaches in fisheries management. She is currently working on a project evaluating the impact of a network of marine protected areas implemented at the Northern Channel Islands on the Santa Barbara Area red sea urchin fishery. Rebecca holds a B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from Yale University. She was a summer graduate fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in 2010 and a summer graduate student researcher at the National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) at EPA in 2008. When she’s not hard at work in her office, you can find her swimming, biking, and running in the Santa Barbara sunshine or wherever her travels may take her.

Kathrine Veie

Kathrine is a PhD candidate in Environmental Economics at University of Copenhagen. She studied economics and econometrics at the University of Essex and the European University Institute. Before entering the PhD program at University of Copenhagen, she worked at the Danish Economic Councils in Copenhagen, an independent think tank advising the Danish Parliament on economic issues.

Kathrine's research interests are environmental economics and applied econometrics. Her thesis concerns applications of the hedonic method for valuation of environmental amenities. Currently, she is working on estimating demand for peace and quiet.

Aside from her research, Kathrine enjoys spending time outdoors, learning new languages and watching old movies.

Andrew Waxman

Andrew is a third-year PhD student in Applied Economics at Cornell University concentrating in the fields of environmental and urban economics. His research, under the direction of Dr. Antonio Bento, examines the sustainability of urban growth via the role of transportation systems and housing markets. His research combines economic theory of urban spatial structure with the modeling the demand and supply forces in transportation markets. Part of his work involves development of a novel structural econometric method to overcome identification challenges in estimating demand where markets are overlapping with spillovers in the form of congestion. Andrew completed his undergraduate work in Economics with honors at Stanford University and has a master's in Development Economics from Oxford University. Andrew likes to whitewater kayak and mountain bike with friends for fun.

Daniel Brent

Daniel is in the fourth year of the Economics Ph.D. program at the University of Washington.  After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Daniel worked for the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington D.C.  His interests are in environmental economics and applied econometrics, with an emphasis on water resource economics.  Currently Daniel is incorporating Bayesian econometrics with the hedonic price model to test for climate change adaptation in agriculture. 

In addition to his research interests, Daniel enjoys cycling, basketball, skiing and teaching.

Sapna Kaul

Sapna is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Tech. She completed her bachelors and masters degrees in economics in India and also has some teaching experience. Sapna's areas of research interests are environmental economics, parametric and nonparametric econometrics, and health economics. Currently she is working on the trade-off between bias and efficiency of different methods for environmental valuation such as the benefit-transfer method and contingent valuation method. In her first study, a meta-analysis of over thirty studies was conducted to identify factors that reduce or improve the accuracy of benefit-transfers. To gain richer insights, parametric and nonparametric regression techniques were used to estimate the meta-regressions.

Aside from her research work she loves traveling, hiking, dancing and watching movies. She also enjoys cooking and trying out new recipes.

Matthew Reimer

Matthew Reimer is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis.  He entered the program under the supervision of Dr. James Wilen in 2008 after completing a B.A. (honors) degree in Economics at the University of Calgary. Matt has accepted a position beginning Spring 2013 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Alaska, Anchorage. Matt’s primary research interests are in environmental and resource economics, and microeconometrics.  The focus of Matt’s dissertation is on the dynamic and spatial aspects of a marine harvester’s production process and how these aspects relate to resource exploitation under various regulatory institutions.  In particular, Matt is currently exploring the effects of introducing catch shares in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands crab fisheries on the various spatial and dynamic decisions that harvesters make over the course of a fishing season.

Matt also enjoys various outdoor activities such as mountain and road biking, rock climbing, and skiing.

Amy Binner

Amy is an applied environmental economist. After completing her undergraduate degree in economics at Trinity College, Cambridge, she continued her graduate studies specializing in environmental and resource economics at University College London. She is currently researching the spatial features of environmental resource services from both theoretical and empirical perspectives as part of her Ph.D. research at the University of East Anglia. During the summers of her undergraduate degree she worked for Professor Robert Neild on research topics related to the financial history of Trinity College.

Her main research interests include spatial econometrics, non parametric estimation methods and environmental valuation techniques. She is especially interested in the relationship between hedonic analysis of house prices and equilibrium sorting models, and applications of these methods to the design and evaluation of policy.

Keith Evans

Keith is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University. Keith completed his Ph.D. at Iowa State University under the direction of Dr. Joseph Herriges, Dr. Catherine Kling, and Dr. Quinn Weninger. Keith's primary research interests are in environmental and resource economics, and microeconometrics. His current research focuses on the behavior of individuals under dynamic settings of uncertainty with learning and on recent advances in estimating Hicksian measures of welfare for non-marginal changes in spatially delineated amenities. Dr. Evans' recent work has involved studies regarding the behavior of fishing cooperatives, markets for tradable property rights, and the remediation of Superfund sites.

Keith is a native of northern California. In his spare time he enjoys disc golf, playing guitar, and spending time with his wife Courtney and two children Jade and James.

Alexander James

Alexander is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford, Center for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies. He was born and raised in Chico, California which is also where he completed his undergraduate degree in economics. Alex received his Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming in 2012 where he completed field courses in environmental/ natural resource economics, financial economics and development/international economics.  Alex's research interests include development economics, environmental economics and behavioral economics.

Though he rarely gets out of the office, when he does he enjoys hiking, cooking and traveling.

Kevin Novan

Kevin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis as of the Fall 2012. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California, San Diego. His primary fields of interest include energy and environmental economics. Kevin's research focuses on exploring how policies can mitigate the environmental impacts of the electricity sector. His current projects study the emission reductions provided by renewable electricity and the resulting health impacts.

In addition to his research interests, Kevin enjoys bike touring, cooking with his wife Samantha, and spending long weekends with his family at Hayden Lake, Idaho.

Congwen Zhang

Congwen Zhang joined the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech in 2007 as a Ph.D. student. Wen received her B.S. and M.S. in Economics from Wuhan University, P.R. China. Her research specialty is in environmental and resource economics. Her research is focused on the nonmarket valuation methods including the hedonic price methods and quasi-experimental methods. Applications of her research include the evaluation of the effects of arsenic in drinking water, "green-certification" hotel, aquatic invasive species in freshwater lakes, surface water quality, and 9/11's impact on people's attitudes toward Muslims. Her current work focuses on estimating demand for lake water clarity in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

In addition to her interest in economics she enjoys reading, hiking, traveling, yoga and spending time with her fat chinchilla!