Research

WORKING PAPERS 

• Slow Traffic, Fast Food: The Effects of Time Lost on Food Choice, with Panka Bencsik and Lester Lusher

• Learning By Doing When Times Are Tough: Evidence from the Great Recession, with Angela Zha

• Does Automation Reduce Stigma? The Effect of Self-checkout Register Adoption on Purchasing Decisions, with Becky Cardinali, Lester Lusher, and Sofia B. Villas-Boas

• Plastic Waste Trade & Coastal Litter: Evidence from Citizen Science Data, with Hebe Williams and Shan Zhang

PUBLICATIONS 

• If You Build It, Will They Compost? The Effects of Municipal Composting Services on Household Waste Disposal and Landfill Emissions, Environmental and Resource Economics, with Lihini De Silva (preprint) 

• Reduce, Reuse, Redeem: Deposit-Refund Recycling Programs in the Presence of Alternatives, Ecological Economics,  with Peter Berck, Molly Sears, Carly Trachtman, and Sofia B. Villas-Boas (preprint) 

• Unemployment Insurance as a Worker Indiscipline Device? Evidence from Scanner Data, American  Economic Journal: Applied Economics, with Lester Lusher and Geoffrey Schnorr (preprint)

• It's in the bag? The effect of plastic carryout bag bans on where and what people purchase to eat, American Journal of Agricultural Economics (preprint)

• Harnessing Behavioral Science to Design Disposable Bag Regulations, Behavioral Science and Policy, with Tatiana Homonoff, Lee-Sien Kao, and Doug Palmer (preprint)

• A Mixed Bag: The Hidden Time Costs of Regulating Consumer Behavior, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (preprint)

• Bag Leakage: The Effect of Disposable Carryout Bag Regulations on Unregulated Bags, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (preprint) (Winner of the JEEM Best Paper Prize 2020)

• Bans vs. Fees: Disposable Carryout Bag Policies and Bag Usage, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, with Sofia B. Villas-Boas

• Recycling Policies, Behavior and Convenience: Survey Evidence from the CalRecycle Program, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, with Peter Berck, Gabriel Englander, Samantha Gold, Shelley He, Janet Horsager, Scott Kaplan, Molly Sears, Andrew Stevens, Carly Trachtman, and Sofia B. Villas-Boas

• Soda Wars: Effect of Soda Tax Election on University Soda Purchases, Economic Inquiry, with Scott Kaplan, Sofia B. Villas-Boas, and Kevin Jung (preprint)

• Effects of Peer Comparisons on Low-promotability Tasks: Evidence from a University Field Experiment, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, with Sofia B. Villas-Boas and Elizabeth Deakin

• Diffusion of Drip Irrigation: The Case of California, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, with David Zilberman

• Food Store Choices of Poor Households: A Discrete Choice Analysis of the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS), American Journal of Agricultural Economics, with Sofia B. Villas-Boas

WORKS IN PROGRESS 

• Plastic Bans vs Taxes: Which Place a Larger Burden on Low-Income Households?, with Xiao Dong and Isla Globus-Harris

• Butts Off the Beach: The Effect of Tobacco Control Policies on Cigarette Butt Litter, with Risa Hashizume and Jacqueline Doremus

• Impact of Shoreline Plastic Removal on Seabird Populations, with Shan Zhang and Eric Zou

BOOK CHAPTERS & REPORTS

• Recycling Behavior and Convenience. Chapter in book Sustainable Resource Development in the 21st Century, editors David Zilberman, Jeff Perloff and Cyndi Spindell Berck, with Berck, P., M. Blundell, G. Englander, S. Gold, S. He, J. Horsager, S. Kaplan, M. Sears, A. Stevens, C. Trachtman, R. Taylor, S. B. Villas-Boas, & C. Spindell Berck.

• The Impact of Ecolabels and Green Taxes on Market Outcomes. Chapter in book Blue Planet Law: The Ecology of our Economic and Technological World, editors Maria da Glória Garcia and António Cortês, with Gabriel Englander, Andrew Stevens, and Sofia B. Villas-Boas.

• The Plastic Economy: A review of the positive and negative impacts of plastic and its alternatives,  Environmental Defense Fund Economics Discussion Paper Series, 21(5),  with Lihini De Silva and Jacqueline Doremus

• Convenient Beverage Recycling in California. A Report to the California State Legislature, with Peter Berck, Gabriel Englander, Samantha Gold, Shelley He, Janet Horsager, Scott Kaplan, Molly Sears, Andrew Stevens, Carly Trachtman, and Sofia B. Villas-Boas 

• Willingness to Pay for Low Water Footprint Foods During Drought, Chapter in NBER book Understanding Productivity Growth in Agriculture," editor Wolfram Schlenker, with Hannah Krovetz and Sofia B. Villas-Boas.

MEDIA PUBLICATIONS

• Plastic Bag Bans Can Backfire if Consumers Just Use Other Plastics Instead, The Conversation.

• Lessons from Berkeley’s Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Election and Tax, ARE Update, with Scott Kaplan, Sofia B. Villas-Boas, and Kevin Jung

• How Politics and Economics Affect Irrigation and Conservation, Choices, with David Zilberman, Myung Eun Shim, and Ben Gordon.

• Contribution of University of California Cooperative Extension to Drip Irrigation, ARE Update, with Doug Parker and David Zilberman

MEDIA COVERAGE

• Research Finds Plastic Bag Bans Result in Unintended Consequences, NPR's Here and Now.

• Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage, NPR's PlanetMoney Newsletter.

• Plastic Bag Bans, Data Skeptic Podcast.

• See the complicated landscape of plastic bans in the U.S., National Geographic.

• Why banning plastic bags doesn't work as intended, Chicago Booth Review.