UH Mānoa is particularly strong in energy, environment and resource policy, which often requires interdisciplinary research. This workshop is organized by UHERO and facilitates interaction among faculty and graduate students in UHERO, Economics, Engineering, NREM, DURP, SOEST and more. We also hope to draw participation from visitors and professional economists and policy analysts around the State. Work in progress is strongly encouraged!
Seminars will take place at the Miller Room. The seminar can also be attended online via Zoom on Mondays from 12:00pm – 1:15pm. Subscribe to the WEER mailing list to receive the Zoom link and further information on upcoming sessions.
Class Credit:
Graduate students can obtain ECON 696 credit from Professor Lynham.
Fall 2025
For graduate students taking the seminar for course credit. Discussing logistics for the seminar.
No Seminar
A Spatial Model of Multi-destination Trips: An application to commercial fishing
Abstract:
High-resolution spatial-temporal mobility data are generating new insights into human behavior. Motivated by these insights, we construct a novel model of a multidestination trip that incorporates simultaneous discrete and continuous decisions on extensive and intensive margins, including location choice, time and effort allocation at each site, travel route, and trip length. While we apply the model to commercial fishing, multidestination trips are present, for example, in recreation and tourism, natural resource hunting and gathering (e.g., timber, fuel woods), and transportation planning. In the fishing literature, the prior research on fishing trips focuses on choosing discrete fishing locations, treating all other trip decision margins as exogenous. We show analytically that all decisions are interconnected and conditional on the underlying vessel capital. Applying state-of-the-art numerical methods for mixed integer optimization, we compare the spatial patterns of a forward-looking vessel to a myopic vessel that essentially represents the behavioral model underpinning the large discrete choice literature in fishery and recreational demand on site choices. We find that vessel heterogeneity leads to different spatial patterns of resource use, including sites fished, effort allocations, and trip lengths. We demonstrate the policy usefulness of the model by considering the distributional impacts of a fuel tax or removal of a fuel subsidy. The existence of high-resolution data in environmental and natural resource economics opens up the possibility of a unifying framework of resource use, such as the one developed here, as differences in spatial and temporal data availability that led to methodological divergences become homogenized.
Harnessing Education for Climate Action: A Randomized Experiment in Bangladesh Secondary Schools
Abstract:
This study uses a cluster-randomized controlled trial, implemented across 140 Bangladeshi schools to evaluate the impact of climate change educational materials on students’ knowledge about and attitudes toward climate change, STEM interest, and pro-environmental behaviors. Neither a light-touch nor a more intensive information intervention had significant effects on student outcomes. However, we find substantial demographic variation in students’ knowledge and interest related to climate change and science. Female students, despite lower math performance, showed higher science interest and engagement and contributed more when choosing to donate to climate causes. Older students (15+ in eighth grade) consistently underperformed on climate and math quizzes, expressed less interest in science, and were less likely to donate to climate causes.
Fisheries subsidies reform in China
Abstract:
Subsidies are widely criticized in fisheries management for promoting global fishing capacity growth and overharvesting. Scientists worldwide have thus called for a ban on “harmful” subsidies that artificially increase fishing profits, resulting in the recent agreement among members of the World Trade Organization to eliminate such subsidies. The argument for banning harmful subsidies relies on the assumption that fishing will be unprofitable after eliminating subsidies, incentivizing some fishermen to exit and others to refrain from entering. These arguments follow from open-access governance regimes where entry has driven profits to zero. Yet many modern-day fisheries are conducted under limited-access regimes that limit capacity and maintain economic profits, even without subsidies. In these settings, subsidy removal will reduce profits but perhaps without any discernable effect on capacity. Importantly, until now, there have been no empirical studies of subsidy reductions to inform us about their likely quantitative impacts. In this paper, we evaluate a policy reform that reduced fisheries subsidies in China. We find that China’s subsidy reductions accelerated the rate at which fishermen retired their vessels, resulting in reduced fleet capacity, particularly among older and smaller vessels. Notably, the reduction of harmful subsidies was only partly responsible for reducing fleet capacity; an increase in vessel retirement subsidies was also a necessary driver of capacity reduction. Our study demonstrates that the efficacy of removing harmful subsidies depends on the policy environment in which removals occur.
Limited liability and disaster underinsurance
Abstract:
We examine the strategic substitution between mortgage debt and disaster insurance. Our model shows that mortgages, which can be defaulted on or placed into disaster forbearance, provide implicit insurance against disaster losses, crowding out formal coverage. Using a novel proprietary dataset linking millions of loan-year observations to property-level insurance, we provide the first direct evidence of this mechanism. Higher loan-to-value (LTV) ratios significantly reduce voluntary flood insurance uptake, while coverage increases with hazard risk and recourse costs. After Hurricane Harvey, uninsured loans were three times more likely to default, underscoring implications for mortgage policy and disaster risk protection.
No Seminar
Subsidizing the tragedy of the commons: Evidence from fuel subsidies in Mexican industrial fisheries
Abstract:
Governments worldwide spend billions subsidizing the very practice that depletes the ocean: overfishing. While fuel subsidies in fisheries are regarded as a leading cause of overfishing, there is little empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. Here, we analyze nine years of high-resolution data on fisher-level fuel subsidy allocations, fishing activity, and fisheries production in Mexico’s shrimp trawl fleet to empirically test whether fuel subsidies drive overfishing. By leveraging year-to-year variations in the subsidy policy, we find that when an economic unit receives a fuel subsidy, it increases its fishing effort by 40.6%, with similar responses observed for fished area and landings. Subsidies also expand the spatial footprint of fishing, disproportionately exploiting some grounds and revealing the spatial consequences of a non-spatial policy. These findings provide causal evidence that fuel subsidies drive overfishing and support urgent global calls to eliminate harmful fisheries subsidies.
Little-to-no industrial fishing occurs in fully and highly protected marine areas
Abstract:
There is a widespread perception that illegal fishing is common in marine protected areas (MPAs) due to strong incentives for poaching and the high cost of monitoring and enforcement. Using artificial intelligence and satellite-based Earth observations, we provide estimates of industrial fishing activity in fully and highly protected MPAs worldwide, in which such fishing is banned. We find little to no activity in most cases. On average, these MPAs had just one fishing vessel present per 20,000 square kilometers during the satellite overpass, a density nine times lower than that of the unprotected waters of exclusive economic zones.
The Efficiency of Dynamic Electricity Pricing Schemes
Abstract:
The marginal cost of electricity fluctuates hour-by-hour, yet retail customers typically face flat prices. Using data from all seven US wholesale markets and a new method to evaluate alternative rates set in advance that accounts for equilibrium price effects, we estimate efficiency gains from time-varying price schedules that better align price with cost. We have three main results. First, time-of-use rates and critical-peak pricing, the two most common time-varying rate plans, each correct about 10% of mispricing. Second, more complex rate structures based on historical prices often backfire. Third, an alternative structure, real-time pricing with price ceilings, can capture most potential efficiency gains.
Value of Nā Ala Hele Trails System: A Revealed Preference analysis
Abstract:
The increasing pressures from visitor overuse and natural events pose significant challenges to the management, maintenance, and future sustainability of Hawaiʻi’s Nā Ala Hele (NAH) trail system. Heightened physical damage and resource degradation from overuse, combined with limited staffing and budgets, create substantial management challenges. Understanding the factors that influence trail choice inform sustainable management strategies. Using a random utility model with mobile device location data, we examine the recreational site choices of both tourists and residents to identify how travel costs, visitor characteristics, and trip types influence trail selection. These insights can help managers anticipate demand patterns, allocate resources more effectively, and implement policies that balance recreation access with ecological preservation.
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Waikiki SLR
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Spatial Spillovers and Two-Way Fixed-Effects
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