Benjamin A. Jones, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Economics University of New Mexico Office: ECON 1022 Phone: (505) 277-5304 Email: bajones@unm.edu |
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I'm an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of New Mexico and an Affiliated Research Faculty of the National Institute for Risk and Resilience at the University of Oklahoma.
Prior to coming to UNM, I completed a one-year postdoc at the University of Oklahoma where I studied the externalities of hydropower production on the Colorado River. I specialize in environmental and natural resource economics with a particular emphasis on the epidemiological/health dimensions of environmental economics. My research focuses on the connections between nature, human health, and well-being through changes in environmental quality and the provision of ecosystem services. I'm interested in capturing, measuring, and otherwise understanding how shocks to the natural environment impact health. I see this work as contributing to the broader literature on environmental and ecosystem determinants of health and social welfare in coupled human and natural systems. I'm also interested generally in issues related to natural resource management in the presence of externalities, including in areas of energy development, public lands use, and water resources. Some specific topics that I study include: indirect health effects of invasive species, urban afforestation/deforestation and health, wildfire smoke health effects and costs, occupational hazard costs of uranium mining, hydropower externalities, LED light at night externalities, and the indirect health impacts of air pollution that occur in coupled human and natural systems. Two methods I primarily use in my work are: (i) modern causal inference econometric techniques, and; (ii) theoretical dynamic optimization models and numerical simulations. For (i), I exploit instances of natural or quasi-experiments using modern applied econometrics to credibly investigate relationships between nature, human health, and well-being. For (ii), I construct and numerically simulate bioeconomic-health models of coupled human and natural systems to dynamically study optimal environmental and natural resource management in the presence of human health externalities. Hence, I employ both dynamic economic models and applied microeconometrics in my research. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS [full list available here]:
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Water Resources and Management
Trees and Human Health
Invasive Species Management and Impacts
Energy Efficiency Externalities
Economic Implications of Wildfire Smoke
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