Aaron Strong

RAND Corporation | RAND · Economics

River discharge represents a vital resource for many human activities. The improved understanding of the physical processes controlling its regime can lead to large economic and societal benefits, such as improved flood warning and mitigation, and improved water management during droughts. This is particularly true for the agricultural U.S. Midwest...

Many native trout reintroduction programmes and non-native trout suppression programmes are being sold to the public on the fact that through these programmes anglers can catch more and bigger fish. Most studies of recreational demand lump all species within a category of fish into a single species such as lumping rainbow, brook and bull trout into...

This paper has two objectives. First, we identify a problem with the ability of the discrete-continuous choice framework and conditional demand functions to fully describe consumer preferences in the presence of kinked budget constraints. Second, we propose and illustrate an alternative, preference-based method for estimating consumer responses to...

Across western North America, invasive plant species and elevated levels of nitrogen are threatening the productivity of rangelands. A bioeconomic model of stocking cattle on these rangelands is used to show that optimal stocking depends on the competition between native grasses and the invaders. However, nitrogen deposition is important in determi...

With some of the largest cyber attacks occurring in recent years-from 2010 to 2019-we are only beginning to understand the full extent of cyber risk. As businesses grapple with the risks of cyber-incidents and their imperfect ability to prevent them, attention has shifted toward risk management and insurance. While there have been efforts to unders...

Following the 2008 global financial crisis, research and policy focused on the risk that heavily interconnected systems could fuel the spread of economic crises across sectors, regions, and countries—a problem that has become known as systemic risk. Academic researchers shifted their attention to understanding systemic risk within financial network...

With some of the largest cyber-attacks occurring in recent years-from 2010 to 2019-we are only beginning to understand the full extent of cyber risk. As businesses grapple with the risks of cyber-incidents and their imperfect ability to prevent them, attention has shifted towards risk management and insurance. While there have been efforts to under...

Background Several public cord blood banks are struggling financially, and the question remains as to whether additional allocations of funds to them are justified. Objectives To estimate the social benefits of public cord blood bank inventory net of cord blood banks’ operational costs. Methods We used publicly available data from the Health Reso...

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) — from bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood — are used to treat patients with cancers such as leukemia or lymphoma, disorders of the blood and immune systems, severe aplastic anemia, sickle cell disease, and certain inherited metabolic diseases. In addition to cord blood's direct therapeutic value t...

Voluntary property acquisitions are playing an increasingly prominent role in the aftermath of US flood disasters, as policy tools for community recovery and hazard mitigation. Following historic flooding in 2008, the City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, instituted a federally supported program for the acquisition of over 1300 damaged properties. Using Ceda...

Louisiana has lost approximately 1,880 square miles of land over the past eighty years. Projections suggest that in a future without action, the next fifty years could result in the loss of 1,750 additional square miles of land area. As land loss continues, a large portion of the natural and man-made capital stocks of coastal Louisiana will be at g...

Purpose: This chapter reports estimates of consumers' preferences for plans to improve food safety. Design/methodology/approach: The plans are distinguished based on whether they address the ex ante risk of food borne illness or the ex post effects of the illness. They are also distinguished based on whether they focus on a public good--reducing...

This paper reconciles two sets of literature with regard to the impact of invasive grass species on both economic and ecological outcomes. We model cattle as optimal foragers, satiation foragers, and proportional foragers in order to understand the impact that each assumption imposes on predicted economic and ecological outcomes. Through this model...

The relationship between income and environmental quality is poorly understood at best. We expand the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature by considering not only the role of emissions but also the role of the environment's absorptive capacity in the relationship between income and environmental quality. Building off of a simple conceptual...

There are a number of instances when consumers have imperfect information regarding the quantity they consume. This paper has two objectives: (1) to formally describe how quantity uncertainty is likely to affect consumer behavior; and (2) to describe how these changes in behavior are likely to differ depending on how the quantity uncertain good is...

Water demand is interesting in that the amount that is actually consumed is unknown when consumption takes places. It is often the case that consumers of these goods face “penalty” pricing structures and pay after consumption has already taken place. The question addressed here is: how does informing consumers about their use impact behavior. We ma...

The relationship between income and environmental quality is at best poorly understood. We expand the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature by considering two aggregate measures of environmental quality and estimate the relationship using flexible parametric and non-parametric estimation approaches. Our results reveal a striking difference i...

This paper exploits the seasonal and annual changes in marginal prices for water to estimate the price elasticity of demand by residential households for water. It uses the changes in distributions of water using the census block group levels in response to changes in marginal prices of water for matched months across years. This strategy reduces t...

This project develops a simple linear programming model of the Upper Midwest regions rail transportation network to test whether a closure of the Chicago River to freight traffic would impact the capacity constraint of the rail system. The result suggest that the rail network in the Upper Midwest regions are nowhere near approaching capacity and th...

This paper reports estimates of consumers' preferences for plans to improve food safety. The plans are distinguished based on whether they address the ex ante risk of food borne illness or the ex post effects of the illness. They are also distinguished based on whether they focus on a public good -- reducing risk of illness for all consumers or all...

We explore the impact of the spatial distribution of developers on the private provision of open space. Our analysis yields three main findings. First, we demonstrate that the mixed public good nature of open space (relative to private lot consumption) can lead a single land rent-maximizing developer to over-supply open space relative to the utilit...

This paper reports the results of a stated preference study that estimates the economic value for cleaning up acid rock drainage in Colorado's Snake River watershed. In contrast to much of the existing literature, the present study emphasizes benefit estimation for three implementing projects rather than benefit estimation for general changes in wa...

Two recent stated preference studies include questions that explore participants’ beliefs regarding the cost amount stated in the valuation question in relation to the cost to them if the project were implemented. Results from these studies suggest that a significant proportion of people do not believe these stated cost amounts. This paper explores...

There is a growing recognition in both the professional and popular literatures that water scarcity is a key policy issue that is especially important in arid, urban settings with the prospects for shortfalls in water availability due to the effects of climate change. Those evaluating these types of water problems usually conclude prices must be re...

The material contained herein is supplementary to the article named in the title and published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.