Publications
The 1960 Tsunami in Hawaii: Long-Term Consequences of a Coastal Disaster
On May 23, 1960, a devastating tsunami struck the city of Hilo on the island of Hawaii. This tsunami provides a unique natural experiment as the tsunami was unexpected, and the other Hawaiian Islands, which were not hit by the tsunami, provide an ideal control group that enables us to precisely identify what happened to the […]
Read MoreIntegrating fast feedback and GIS to plan for important agricultural land designations in Kauai County, Hawaii
With increased affluence worldwide, planning for and preserving land for agriculture and conservation have become important goals in many communities. In Hawai‘i, the identification and designation of Important Agricultural Land (IAL) was first proposed at the 1978 Hawai‘i Constitutional Convention and approved by voters the same year. The state is required to conserve and protect […]
Read MoreElectric utility regulation under enhanced renewable energy integration and distributed generation
The economic environment for electric utilities is changing in the United States given increased penetration of distributed generation and limited rooms for sales growth. This paper reviews the recent development of relevant policies in the United States and their economic impacts. This review indicates both challenges and opportunities in improving the policies to enhance distributed […]
Read MoreForecasting in a Mixed Up World: Nowcasting Hawaii Tourism
We evaluate the short term forecasting performance of methods that systematically incorporate high frequency information via covariates. Our study provides a thorough introduction of these methods to the tourism literature. We highlight the distinguishing features and limitations of each tool and evaluate their forecasting performance in two tourism-specific applications. The first uses monthly indicators to […]
Read MoreBenefit-cost analysis of watershed conservation on Hawai‘i Island
In landscapes around the world, growing attention is being paid to the link between forest structure and water resources. More clarity is vital for informed decision making, especially as water scarcity continues to increase in many regions across the globe. The objective of this study is to estimate the volume of freshwater yield saved per […]
Read MoreBy the Time I Get to Arizona: Estimating the Impact of the Legal Arizona Workers Act on Migrant Outflows
In 2007, the State of Arizona passed the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) which required all employers to verify the legal status of all prospective employees. Replicating existing results from the literature, we show that LAWA displaced about 40,000 Mexican-born people from Arizona. About 25% of these displaced persons relocated to New Mexico indicating that […]
Read MoreGlobal Value Chains and Changing Trade Elasticities
The trade collapse of 2008-2009 and the anemic trade growth since then raise the question of whether trade elasticities may be undergoing fundamental structural change. A potential source of such change is the spread of global value chains (GVCs), which have brought a marked increase in the use of intermediate goods and changes in the […]
Read MoreWhere do social preferences come from?
Where do preferences for fairness come from? We use a unique field setting to test for a spillover of sharing norms from the workplace to a laboratory experiment. Fishermen working in teams receive random income shocks (catching fish) that they must regularly divide among themselves. We demonstrate a clear correlation between sharing norms in the […]
Read MoreMethods of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus
This paper focuses on a collection of methods that can be used to analyze the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. We classify these methods as qualitative or quantitative for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research approaches. The methods for interdisciplinary research approaches can be used to unify a collection of related variables, visualize the research problem, evaluate the issue, […]
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