Research Papers and Interests
My main research focus examines the application and extension of higher-order risk effects. These effects extend beyond risk aversion and often relate to changes in the skewness and kurtosis of a distribution. I have conducted both theoretical and empirical research in this area that spans a large number of sub-disciplines. Below you can find the abstracts of recent essays dealing with these higher-order risk effects. I am happy to share non-distributable copies upon request.
Risk lovers and the rent over-investment puzzle (with Paan Jindapon), published in Public Choice
In this paper, we prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium in a rent-seeking contest given a class of heterogeneous risk-loving players. We explore the roles second- and third-order risk attitudes play in equilibrium and find that both risk lovingness and imprudence are jointly sufficient to increase rent-seeking investment above the risk-neutral outcome. Moreover, we show that rent can be fully dissipated in a standard Tullock contest when there is a large number of risk-loving players. When rent is small, each player’s optimal investment depends on his measures of risk aversion and downside risk aversion.
Beyond average health: higher moments of the health production function
This paper investigates the impact classic variables like lifestyle choices and medical care have on the mean, variance and skewness of health status. We achieve this by positing health as output from a stochastic production process, a seemingly practical advantage over much of the deterministic literature. We leverage this unique approach to estimate how a set of explanatory variables impact the conditional moments of a health distribution. We find evidence of “flat of the curve” medicine but demonstrate second and third order benefits to additional medical care. Notably, we find medical care utilization significantly lowers the variance and negatively skews the distribution of mortality rates.
Irrigation as self-protection: an analysis of crop yields
While the benefits and utilization of crop irrigation have long been examined in agricultural economics, little attention is paid to the potential confounding relationship that may exist with other risk-management tools. Specifically, we pursue how standard crop insurance relates to irrigation. We identify irrigation as a form of self-protection, reducing the probability of crop loss due to adverse stochastic conditions. Given this, we investigate if irrigation acts as a complement to crop insurance. We test this relationship within a model of crop yields, identifying that jointly irrigated and insured lands both receive higher average yield and lead to variance and skewness effects on the overall yield distribution.