Published Research
Economic
Perspectives on Civil Wars - With Stergios Skaperdas. Handbook on
the Political Economy of War, edited by Christopher J. Coyne and Rachel
L. Mathers, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2011.
Even though traditional growth theory and development economics do not
take into account the economic effects of civil wars, it would be hard
to argue that countries involved in civil wars are not harmed
economically. Moreover, low levels of per-capita income and economic
shocks can feed back into inducing civil wars. Thus, civil wars have
high costs that cannot but impair economic performance whereas bad
economic performance and lower levels of income increase the risk of
civil war. We review some of the costs of civil wars explored in the
literature on conflict. Meeting
the Demand: An Estimation of Potential Future Greenhouse Gas Emissions
from Meat Production - Ecological Economics, 2008, 67(3), 412-419.
Current production processes for meat products have been
shown to have a significant impact on the environment, accounting for
between 15% and 24% of current greenhouse gas emissions. I separate
meat into beef, chicken and pig products and
estimate the elasticities associated with each product in order to
forecast the world demand for meat. I find that meat production in the
future will still be a large
producer of greenhouse gases, accounting for up to 6.3% of current
greenhouse gas emissions in 2030.
Measuring Sustainability:
Why
the Ecological Footprint is Bad Economics and Bad Environmental Science
- Ecological Economics, 2008, 67(4), 519-525.
The ecological footprint is a measure of the resources necessary to
produce the goods that an individual or population consumes. It is also
used as a measure of sustainability, though evidence suggests that it
falls short. The assumptions behind footprint calculations have been
extensively criticized; I present here further evidence that it fails
to satisfy simple economic principles because the basic assumptions are
contradicted by both theory and historical data.