I am a research economist trained in agricultural and resource economics, with a focus on natural resource governance -- how people organize to manage natural resources. I take an interdisciplinary perspective on resource problems and am interested in integrating social processes into economic analysis, with the goal of understanding the role of natural resources in poverty alleviation and economic development. My experience is in designing theoretically-based empirical analysis of economic governance and natural resource management. Extensive fieldwork in Mexico's common property forestry sector motivates much of this work. With a survey database of 83 representative forest communities across three forested states in Mexico, we can analyze a range of practices that affect market participation, land use, and economic well being. This sector shares certain political, economic and social dynamics with forest access and tenure patterns in other countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa, broadening the applicability of research results.

CURRICULUM VITAE (in pdf), Short Bio .

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley.
• M.Sc., Ocean Law and Policy, London School of Economics .
• B.A., International Relations, University of Pennsylvania .

WORK IN PROGRESS

• Vertical Integration Over Time in Forty-one Mexican Forest Communities, May 2011 Comments welcome

TEACHING

• Introduction to Microeconomics [Course Syllabus].

• Property Rights and Collective Action in Natural Resources with Application to Mexico, [Course Materials].

PUBLICATIONS

• "Ownership and Control in Mexico's Community Forestry Sector," with Gordon Rausser, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 57:1, 2008. .

• "Retrospective Evaluation of Appliance Price Trends," with Larry Dale, Michael McNeil, James McMahon and K. Sydny Fujita, Energy Policy, Vol. 37, 2009.

• "Collective Choice and Community Forestry Management in Mexico: An Empirical Analysis," with Gordon Rausser, Journal of Development Studies, 43:3, 2007.

• "Vertical Integration in the Community Forestry Enterprises of Mexico," in The Community-Managed Forests of Mexico: The Struggle for Equity and Sustainability, David Bray, Leticia Merino-Perez and Deborah Barry, eds., University of Texas Press, 2005, Link .

• "Community Forestry Enterprises as Entrepreneurial Firms: Economic and Institutional perspectives from Mexico," with David Bray, World Development, 33:9, pp. 1579-1543, September 2005. .

• "The Mexican model of community forest management: The role of agrarian policy, forest policy and entrepreneurial organization," with David Bray and Juan Manuel-Torres, Forest Policy and Economics, 8, 2006, pp. 470-484. .

• "New Interdisciplinary Research on Mexico's Common Property Forests: A National Survey," with David Bray, Juan Manuel-Torres and Octavio Magana, Link. .

• "Governance and Resource Management in Mexico's Community Forestry Sector," in Law and Geography: Current Legal Issues 2002, Vol. 5, Jane Holder and Carolyn Harrison, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

• "Community Integration in Mexico's Forest Sector: Survey Data from Oaxaca," with Gordon Rausser. World Forests, Markets and Policies, M. Palo, J. Uusivuori and G. Mery, eds., Kluwer Academic Publisher: The Netherlands. 2001.

• "Fruits of Their Labors: Property, Gender and Tree Planting in Two Zimbabwe Villages," with Louise Fortmann and Nontokozo Nabane, Rural Sociology 62:3, Fall 1997.

• "Defense Expenditures, External Threats and Growth in Developing Countries," with Jonathan Lipow, Journal of Policy Modeling, 17, 1995.

• "The Bering Sea: A Maritime Delimitation Dispute between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.," Ocean Development and International Law, 18:1, 1987.

REPORTS

• "The Mexican Common Property Forestry Sector," with Gordon C. Rausser, Giannini Working Paper CUDARE 1105, Link, 2010.

• "Assessing Transaction Costs of Project-based Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading ," with Jayant Sathaye, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, January 25, 2007, Link .

• "Production Patterns and Market Networks of Community Forestry Operations in Mexico," in Community-based Forest Enterprises in Tropical Forest Countries: Status and Potential, Report to the International Tropical Timber Organization, 2007, for Forest Trends.

WORK IN PROGRESS

• "Mexican and German Communal Forestry: An Accountability Framework for Comparing Governance," with Chantal Ruppert. Presented at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, Cheltenham, England, July 14-18, 2008. Paper

• "Timber for Development? Investment in the Mexican Social Forestry Sector," with Gordon Rausser.

• "Cross-Scale Linkages in Common-Pool Resource Management: The Evolution of Forest Associations in the Mexican Forest Commons," with Gustavo Garcia-Lopez.

• "Quasi-privatization as an Institutional Response in Mexican Social Forestry," with Lindsey Fransen.

• "Ecological Economies of Scope in Common Property Forest Management"

• "Devolution and Vertical Integration: Governing Mexico's Community Forests," with Juan Manuel Torres Rojo, Octavio Magana Torres, David Barton Bray and Gerardo Segura Warnholz.

• "Environment and Labor Coalitions in Urban Growth Initiatives: Inclusive or Exclusive Development?" with Elizabeht Havice, Cary Laffer and Jeff Romm.

• "Price-Cost Markups in New Appliances: Revisiting Economics in Energy Efficiency Standards Analysis"

PRESENTATIONS

• Institutions, Collective Choice and Outcomes: The Allocation of Decisionmaking Control in Mexican Agrarian Forestry Presentation prepared for ``Native Peoples in Mexico and the U.S.: Approaches to Exclusion", San Diego, June 5, 2009. Text of presentation

• Mexican Common Property Forestry: Collective Choice Rules and Outcomes, Workshop on Political Theory, Indiana University, March 23, 2009.

• Comparative Analysis of German and Mexican Common Property Forestry, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, 2007 (view in slideshow mode for dynamic effect); version presented with Chantal Ruppert at the International Association for the Study of the Commons, Cheltenham, UK, July 14-18, 2009.

• Macroeconomic, political-legal aand institutional frameworks of small and medium forest enterprises: The case of Mexico, International Conference on Small and Medium Forest Enterprise Development for Poverty Reduction, Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza (CATIE), Turrialba, Costa Rica, May 2006; resulting collaborative policy brief .

• Concepts and Practices of Community Forestry Enterprises: Economic and Institutional Perspectives from Mexico," with David Bray, International Association for the Study of Common Property, Oaxaca, Mexico 2004.

• Profitability of Community Forestry Operations. Presented March 12, 2004, Mexico City.  Spanish version  English version

Vertical Integration in Mexican Common Property Forests, PhD thesis (Not all appendices included. Contact me for details.)

Oaxaca fieldwork photos

More Oaxaca fieldwork photos

Durango fieldwork photos

Mexican art and architecture

Links for climate change research

Links for Mexican forestry

Mixteca pictograph flash media (requires Flash plug-in)

Family and friends

Last updated March 2011