Professor
Applied Economics
Oregon State University
How can we balance the human use
of land resources with nature?
This question motivates my research program.
I am a professor of applied economics at
Oregon State University who specializes in environmental and natural resource
economics. My research concerns the intersection between land use and
ecosystem service provision. I use microeconomic theory and micro-econometric
tools to study how landowners make decisions, how land-use decisions affect
ecosystem services, how the public values ecosystem services, and how policy
can be designed to internalize externalities associated with land-use
decisions. My empirical applications have focused on topics such as
land-use change, land conservation, lakeshore development, biodiversity
management, forest management under climate
change, protected areas and open-space, coastal ecosystem service
provision, salmon conservation, organic agriculture, land development impacts
on water withdrawals, and invasive species management in lakes.
I joined the Applied Economics faculty at
Oregon State in 2013 after spending four years at University of
Wisconsin-Madison and four years at University of Puget Sound. I obtained
my PhD from Oregon State in 2005 in Agricultural and Resource Economics. I
partner with colleagues within my own discipline of environmental economics,
and with natural science colleagues who are interested in the biophysical
effects of land use on ecosystem services.
Other
sites that house my research are my Google
Scholar Page, my ResearchGate Page, and my ORCID page.
Webpages
for major projects currently in progress
Project
on the Economics
of Climate Adaptation in Forests
Project
on Coastal
Natural Infrastructure Investment for Ecosystem Services
Note: *
below signifies a paper written with a graduate student as part of their
research.
Current
working papers and forthcoming articles
Lewis, D.J., and S. Polasky. 2018. An auction mechanism for
the optimal provision of ecosystem services under climate change. Journal of Environmental Economics and
Management, 92: 20-34. (PDF
version).
*Zipp, K.Y., Lewis, D.J., Provencher, B., and J. Vander
Zanden. 2019. The spatial dynamics of the economic impacts of an aquatic
invasive species: An empirical analysis. Land
Economics, 95(1): 1-18. (PDF
version).
*Hashida,
Y., and D.J. Lewis. 2019. The intersection between climate adaptation, mitigation,
and natural resources: An empirical analysis of forest management. Journal of the Association of
Environmental and Resource Economists (Forthcoming). (PDF
version) (Supplementary
appendix)
*Mihiar, C., and D.J. Lewis. 2017.
Climate, adaptation, and the value of forestland: A national Ricardian analysis
of the United States. Working Paper. (PDF version).
Dundas, S.J., and
D.J. Lewis. 2018. Estimating
option values and spillover damages for coastal protection: Evidence from
Oregon’s Planning Goal 18. Working Paper. (PDF
version).
*Hashida,
Y., Withey, J., Kline, J., Newman, T., and D.J. Lewis. 2018. Forest landowners’
response to climate change and carbon pricing affect wildlife habitat. Working Paper.
Lewis, D.J., Dundas, S.J., Kling,
D.M., Lew, D.K., and S.D. Hacker.
2018. Public preferences for natural capital investments that help threatened
species: The case of Oregon Coast Coho salmon. Working Paper.
*Long,
D., Langpap, C., and D.J. Lewis. 2018. How do traffic reduction policies affect
infant health? An integrated sorting and health analysis.
Working Paper.
I
study how landowners make decisions by developing a basic empirical
understanding of drivers of land-use change at multiple scales, with an
emphasis on the effects of land-use policy on decision-making. Since land-use
change is a fundamental driver of changes in ecosystem services, quality
empirical analysis of drivers of land-use change is of central importance in better
understanding both the causes of, and potential solutions to, ecosystem service
degradation. The recent emergence of fine-scale spatial land-use data from
satellite imagery and local agencies has created many opportunities to improve
econometric land-use models. However, land-use models still face the challenge
of identifying the effects of policy apart from unobservable variables that
also affect land use. My empirical work focuses on i) developing
micro-econometric techniques applied to land-use modeling, ii) improving on
methods to econometrically model unobserved landowner heterogeneity, iii)
developing novel spatial panel datasets for estimation of land-use models, and
iv) understanding the interactions between policy, landscape amenities, climate,
and landowner decisions. My applications have ranged from detailed analyses of
local land-use processes within individual U.S. counties, to more aggregated
analyses at larger national scales, to international applications in European
Russia and China. Current projects emphasize modeling land-use change as an
adaptation strategy to climate change and climate policy. I have a new project
to develop a national econometric model of climate change adaptation through
forest management choices of harvest and replanting, with subsequent
integration with ecosystem service models.
Refereed Journal Articles (copies of
published versions can be accessed through my
Google Scholar page)
*Bigelow, D.P., Plantinga, A.J., Lewis, D.J., and C. Langpap. 2017. How Does Urbanization Affect Water Withdrawals? Insights from an Econometric-Based Landscape Simulation. Land Economics, 93(3): 413-436. (PDF version) (Supplementary appendix). Press coverage: (Eugene Register Guard 10/8/17), (Western Farmer Stockman 10/16/17)
*Zipp, K.Y., Lewis, D.J., and B. Provencher. 2017. Does the Conservation of Land Reduce Development? An Econometric-Based Landscape Simulation with Land Market Feedbacks. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 81: 19-37. (PDF version) (Supplementary Appendix)
Jones, K.J., and D.J. Lewis. 2015. Estimating the Counterfactual Impact of Conservation Programs on Land Cover Outcomes: The Role of Matching and Panel Regression Techniques. PLOS One 10(10): e0141380. (PDF version).
*Wendland, K.J., Baumann, M., Lewis, D.J., Sieber, A., and V.C. Radeloff. 2015. Protected Area Effectiveness in European Russia: A Post-Matching Panel Data Analysis. Land Economics, 91(1): 149-168. (PDF version).
*Wendland, K., Lewis, D.J., and J. Alix-Garcia. 2014. The Effect of Decentralized Governance on Timber Extraction in European Russia. Environmental and Resource Economics, 57: 19-40. (PDF version).
Plantinga,
A.J., and D.J. Lewis. 2014. Landscape Simulations with Econometric-Based
Land-Use Models. Chapter 15 in the Oxford
Handbook of Land Economics, Oxford University Press, New York. (PDF
version).
*Robinson, B.E., Provencher, B., and D.J. Lewis. 2013. Managing Wild Resources: Institutional Choice and the Recovery of Resource Rent in Southwest China. World Development, 48: 120-132. (PDF version).
Radeloff,
V.C., Nelson, E., Plantinga, A.J., Lewis, D.J., Helmers, D., Lawler, J.J.,
Withey, J.C., Beaudry, F., Martinuzzi, S., Butsic, V., Lonsdorf,
E., White, D., and S. Polasky. 2012. Economic-Based Projections of Future
Land-Use under Alternative Economic Policy Scenarios in the Conterminous U.S. Ecological Applications, 22(3):
1036-1049.
*Wendland,
K., Lewis, D.J., Alix-Garcia, J., Ozdogan, M.,
Baumann, M., and V. Radeloff. 2011. Regional- and District-Level Drivers of
Timber Harvesting in European Russia after the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Global Environmental Change, 21:
1290-1300.
*Butsic,
V., Lewis, D.J., and *L. Ludwig. 2011. An Econometric Analysis of Land
Development with Endogenous Zoning. Land
Economics, 87(3): 412-432. (PDF
version).
Lewis,
D.J., Barham, B.L., and *B. Robinson. 2011. Are there Spatial Spillovers in the
Adoption of Clean Technology? The Case of Organic Dairy Farming. Land Economics, 87(2): 250-267. (PDF
version).
Lewis, D.J. 2010. An Economic Framework for Forecasting Land Use and Ecosystem Change. Resource and Energy Economics, 32(2): 98-116. (PDF version).
Lewis,
D.J., Provencher, B., and V. Butsic. 2009. The Dynamic Effects of Open-Space
Conservation Policies on Residential Development Density. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 57(3): 239-252. (PDF
version).
Lewis,
D.J., Barham, B.L., and K. Zimmerer. 2008. Spatial
Externalities in Agriculture: Empirical Analysis, Statistical Identification,
and Policy Implications. World
Development, 36(10): 1813-1829. (PDF
version).
Alig, R.J., D.J. Lewis, and J.J. Swenson. 2005. Is
Forest Fragmentation Driven by the Spatial Configuration of Land Quality? The
Case of Western Oregon. Forest Ecology
and Management, 217: 266-274.
Land-use
decisions can alter the composition and patterns of landscapes, and thereby
affect the services that natural ecosystems provide to people. My research
focuses on the coupling of empirical economic and ecological analysis. Much of
this work focuses on applying coupled models to better understand the effects
of alternative policy or land-use scenarios on various measures of ecosystem
services. The work is multi-disciplinary and includes many ecologists,
conservation biologists, and remote sensing experts.
Refereed
Journal Articles (copies of published versions can be accessed through my Google Scholar page)
Butsic, V., Lewis, D.J.,
Radeloff, V.C., and T. Kuemmerle.
2017. Quasi-Experimental Methods Enable Stronger Inferences from Observational
Data in Ecology. Basic and Applied
Ecology, 19: 1-10.
Martinuzzi, S., Radeloff, V.C., Joppa, L.N., Hamilton, C.M., Helmers, D.P., Plantinga, A.J., and D.J. Lewis. 2015. Scenarios of Future Land Use Change around United States Protected Areas. Biological Conservation, 184: 446-455.
Lawler,
J., Lewis, D., Nelson, E., Plantinga, A., Polasky, S., Withey, J., Helmers, D.,
Martinuzzi, S., and V. Radeloff. 2014. Projected Land-Use Change Impacts on
U.S. Ecosystem Services. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, 111(20): 7492-7497. (PDF
version).
Beaudry, F., Radeloff, V.C., Pigeon, A.M., Plantinga, A.J., Lewis, D.J., Helmers, D., and V. Butsic. 2013. The Loss of Forest Birds Habitat under Different Land Use Policies as Projected by a Coupled Ecological-Econometric Model. Biological Conservation, 165: 1-9.
Martinuzzi, S., Radeloff, V.C., Higgins, J.V., Helmers, D.P., Plantinga, A.J. and D.J. Lewis. 2013. Key Areas for Conserving United States Biodiversity Likely Threatened by Future Land Use Change. Ecosphere, 4(5): 1-13.
Hamilton,C.M., Martinuzzi,S., Heglund,P.J., Lewis, D.J., Plantinga, A.J., Thogmartin,W.E., Radeloff, V.C., and A.M. Pidgeon. 2013. Current and Future Land Use around a Nationwide Protected Area Network. PLOS One, 8(1): 1-12. (PDF version).
Butsic, V., Lewis, D.J., and V.C. Radeloff. 2010. Lakeshore Zoning has Heterogeneous Ecological Effects: An Application of a Coupled Economic-Ecological Model. Ecological Applications, 20(3):867-879. (PDF version).
Ecosystems provide services that benefit people, though many services like wildlife habitat and the filtering of water pollutants have no observable prices. My research focuses on analyzing the demand for conservation and ecosystem services in order to yield insights into how the public values ecosystem services. My general approach has used contemporary non-market valuation techniques and regional economic models. My research contributions have focused on i) using hedonic property value models to understand how aspects of the natural environment capitalize into land values, ii) constructing stated preference analyses of the public's demand for improvements in ecosystem services, and iii) estimating the effects of conservation amenities on local community economies. Applications have focused on conservation lands and ecosystem services from lake and coastal systems.
Refereed Journal Articles (copies of published
versions can be accessed through my Google Scholar page)
Chen, Y., Lewis, D.J., and B. Weber. 2016. Conservation Land Amenities and Regional Economies: A Post-Matching Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Northwest Forest Plan. Journal of Regional Science, 56(3):373-394. (PDF version).
Lewis, D.J., B. Provencher., and B. Beardmore. 2015. Using an Intervention Framework to Value Salient Ecosystem Services in a Stated Preference Experiment. Ecological Economics, 114: 141-151. (PDF version).
Provencher, B., Lewis, D.J., and K. Anderson. 2012. Disentangling Preferences and Expectations in Stated Preference Analysis with Respondent Uncertainty: The Case of Invasive Species Prevention. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 64(2): 169-182. (PDF version).
*Horsch, E.J., and D.J. Lewis. 2009. The Effects of Aquatic Invasive Species on Property Values: Evidence from a Quasi Experiment. Land Economics, 85(3): 391-409. (PDF version).
Lewis,
D.J., G.L. Hunt, and A.J. Plantinga. 2003. Does Public Lands Policy Affect
Local Wage Growth? Growth and Change,
34(1): 64-86. (PDF
version).
Lewis, D.J., G.L. Hunt, and A.J. Plantinga. 2002. Public Conservation Land and Employment Growth in the Northern Forest Region. Land Economics, 78(2): 245-259. (PDF version).
Land-use decisions generate benefits and costs to many
people who are not involved with those decisions. These pervasive externalities
imply that ecosystem services are not efficiently provided by private
landscapes. Land-use policy can internalize externalities by provide incentives
for landowners to account for the ecosystem service production that is affected
by their land-use decisions. A particular interest of mine is understanding
policy design in the presence of asymmetric information, spatially dependent
ecosystem service production functions, and climate change induced shifts in
wildlife. I have devoted significant attention to theoretical mechanism design
issues, and to the integration of empirical economic models with
spatially-explicit landscape and wildlife simulation models. The empirical applications
are notable for explicit incorporation of uncertain policy effects. This
research is multi-disciplinary and includes collaborators in landscape and
wildlife ecology.
Refereed Journal Articles (copies of
published versions can be accessed through my
Google Scholar page)
Lewis, D.J., and J. Wu. 2015. Land-Use Patterns and
Spatially Dependent Ecosystem Services: Some Microeconomic Foundations. International Review of Environmental and
Resource Economics, 8(2): 191-223. (PDF
Version).
Polasky,
S., Lewis, D.J., Plantinga, A.J., and E. Nelson. 2014. Implementing the Optimal
Provision of Ecosystem Services. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(17): 6248-6253. (PDF
version).
Lewis,
D.J., and E. Nelson. 2014. The Economics of Wildlife Conservation. Chapter 7 in
the Oxford Handbook of Land Economics,
Oxford University Press, New York. (PDF
version).
*Butsic,
V., Lewis, D.J., and V. Radeloff. 2013. Reserve Selection with Land Market
Feedbacks. Journal of Environmental
Management, 114: 276-284.
Lewis,
D.J., Plantinga, A.J., Nelson, E., and S. Polasky. 2011. The Efficiency of
Voluntary Incentive Policies for Preventing Biodiversity Loss. Resource and Energy Economics, 33(1):
192-211. (PDF
version).
Lewis,
D.J., Plantinga, A.J., and J. Wu. 2009. Targeting Incentives to Reduce Habitat
Fragmentation. American Journal of
Agricultural Economics, 91(4): 1080-1096. (PDF
version).
Nelson,
E., Polasky, S., Lewis, D.J., Plantinga, A.J., Lonsdorf,
E., White, D., Bael, D., and J. Lawler. 2008.
Efficiency of Incentives to Jointly Increase Carbon Sequestration and Species
Conservation on a Landscape. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(28): 9471-9476. (PDF
Version)
Lewis,
D.J., and A.J. Plantinga. 2007. Policies for Habitat Fragmentation: Combining
Econometrics with GIS-Based Landscape Simulations. Land Economics, 83(2): 109-127. (PDF
version).
I have worked with many graduate
students since taking on my first advisee in 2005. My primary goal in advising
students is to help them define and pursue publishable research questions that
contribute to the growing knowledge base in environmental and natural resource
economics. Most of my students gain experience with applying microeconomic
theory, micro-econometric tools, environmental economics principles, and
computational skills to the analysis of primary and secondary datasets.
Oregon State University
Cassie Finer (PhD expected in 2018)
Kelsey Johnson (PhD expected in 2022)
Grant Zimmerman (MS expected in 2018)
Dede
Long (PhD 2018)
Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, California
State University, Long Beach
Chris Mihiar (PhD 2018)
Placement: Post-Doctoral Associate, Oregon State
University and U.S. Forest Service
Yukiko
Hashida (PhD 2017)
Placement: Post-Doctoral Researcher, Yale School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies
Dan
Bigelow (PhD 2015; dissertation abstract)
Placement: Research Economist at USDA Economic Research Service
Nicole
Kovski (MS 2015; thesis
abstract)
Placement: PhD student at U.
Washington Evans School
Tiffany Smith (MS 2014; MS project
abstract)
Placement: Analyst at Sightlines
Facilities Assets Advisors
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Van
Butsic (PhD 2011; now Asst. Specialist at University of California,
Berkeley)
Placement: Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral
Fellowship, Germany
Now: Assistant Specialist, Dept. of Environmental Science,
Policy, and Management, University of California Berkeley
Kelly Jones
(formerly Kelly Wendland) (PhD 2011)
Placement: Assistant Professor, College of Natural
Resources, University of Idaho
Now: Associate Professor, Dept. of Human Dimensions of
Natural Resources, Colorado State University
Brian
Robinson (PhD 2011)
Placement: Post-doctoral Researcher, The
Natural Capital Project
Now: Assistant Professor, Dept. of Geography, McGill
University
Kate Zipp
(PhD 2014)
Placement: Assistant Professor, Dept. of Agricultural
Economics, Penn State University
Eric
Horsch (MS 2008)
Placement: Stratus Consulting, Boulder, CO
Now: Senior Associate at Industrial Economics, Cambridge,
MA
Lindsay
Ludwig (MS 2008)
Placement: Industrial Economics, Cambridge, MA
Steven
Chambers (MS 2010; awarded best MS thesis by AAEA)
Placement: Constellation Energy Services, Inc.