I am an environmental and labor economist at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). I use theory and data to study how beliefs affect decisionmaking, the role of information—especially professional forecasts—in shaping beliefs, and the effect of forward-looking behavior on empirical analyses. Much of my work focuses on estimating damages from climate change, accounting for how individuals and groups anticipate and adapt to those changes.

News and updates

2023-02-20

Danny Bressler will be presenting new work, joint with me and Andrew Wilson, at the EEA meeting in New York. We show that humid heat is especially devestating for the health of children and young adults.

2023-02-10

New publication! Adjusting to Rain Before It Falls shows that factor adjustment costs combined with projected increases in rainfall volatility will routinely lead to climate change damage. This effect is missing from all prior equilibrium-based analyses of climate impacts. Lots more in the paper: construction sector is especially vulnerable to these effects, current seasonal rainfall forecasts help construction firms but at the expense of workers, construction firms lose 10% of profit from unanticipatable rainfall shocks.

2022-10-13

New policy forum paper published in Science. We discuss the research implications of the SEC’s proposed climate risk disclosure rule, which will hopefully be finalized any day now.

2022-03-21

I will be presenting new work on the value of weather forecast improvements at the NBER on March 24th. The talk will be streamed on Youtube here.

2021-12-21

Two of my graduate students, Anna Papp and Vincent Bagilet, have put together a great set of simulations, example datasets, and code to work through many of the new two-way fixed effects/dynamic diff-in-diff methods. The code and data can be found on Anna’s Github page here. This could be a really helpful resource for students and researchers learning about these methods, so let me know if you find it helpful.

2021-12-01

I will be presenting new work on the value of weather forecasts, joint with Derek Lemoine and Laura Bakkensen, at University of Arizona on December 14th.