Lea-Rachel D. Kosnik

The potential for small scale hydropower development in the US

In an earlier paper (Kosnik, 2008), the potential for small scale hydropower to contribute to US renewable energy supplies, as well as reduce current carbon emissions, was investigated. It was discovered that thousands of viable sites capable of producing significant amounts of hydroelectric power were available throughout the United States. The primary objective of this paper is to determine the cost-effectiveness of developing these small scale hydropower sites. Just because a site has the necessary topographical features to allow small scale hydropower development, does not mean that it should be pursued from a cost-benefit perspective, even if it is a renewable energy resource with minimal effects on the environment. This analysis finds that while the average cost of developing small scale hydropower is relatively high, there still remain hundreds of sites on the low end of the cost scale that are cost-effective to develop right now.

Balancing Environmental Protection and Energy Production in the Federal Hydropower Licensing Process

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) must balance environmental protection of riverine resources with the nations growing demand for power production every time it issues a hydroelectric license. This paper models the bureaucratic agencys decision-making process in issuing these licenses. Data on nearly 500 hydro-power licenses issued from 1983 to 2005 are utilized. It is discovered that legislative and institutional constraints are, by far, the largest influences on FERCs regulatory decisions, implying that if the current allocation of surface water in the United States is considered inefficient, the most effective way to alter this allocation is by passing new legislation, or by implementing institutional reform at FERC.

What Have Economists Been Doing for the Last 50 Years? A Text Analysis of Published Academic Research from 1960-2010

This paper presents the results of a text based exploratory study of over 20,000 academic articles published in seven top research journals from 1960-2010. The goal is to investigate the general research foci of economists over the last fifty years, how (if at all) they have changed over time, and what trends (if any) can be discerned from a broad body of the top academic research in the field. Of the 19 JEL-code based fields studied in the literature, most have retained a constant level of attention over the time period of this study, however, a notable exception is that of macroeconomics which has undergone a significantly diminishing level of research attention in the last couple of decades, across all the journals under study; at the same time, the “microfoundations” of macroeconomic papers appears to be increasing. Other results on co-authorship trends and depth of research articles are also presented.

Refusing to budge: a confirmatory bias in decision making?

Confirmatory bias, defined as the tendency to misinterpret new pieces of evidence as confirming previously held hypotheses, can lead to implacable, even incorrect decision making. It is one of the biases, along with anchoring, framing, and other judgment heuristic errors, that may lead to non-optimal behavior. This paper tests for the existence of confirmatory bias behavior in a uniquely economic setting (tax policy) and in a context relatively lacking in ambiguity. It also tests whether the confirmatory bias phenomenon can be prevalent enough to affect aggregate outcomes, a characteristic important in economic models in particular. The results indicate not only that confirmatory bias exists, but that the confirmatory bias effect may be stronger for evidence relating to losses than for comparable evidence relating to gains.

Determinants of Contract Completeness: An Environmental Regulatory Application

There is a tradeoff that must be addressed any time a contract is written; whether or not to make a contract flexible but incomplete or rigid but comprehensive. This paper investigates the completeness of hydroelectric license contracts over a nearly three decade time span and finds that as environmental concerns increase, so does contract flexibility, ultimately confirming the predictions of transaction cost theory. The paper offers an interesting historical look at the development of the U.S. hydroelectric dam license as it ages over time and responds to growing environmental concerns. It also, in a novel empirical application, combines traditional regression analysis with insights from textual analysis and computational linguistics.

A SURVEY OF JEL CODES: WHAT DO THEY MEAN AND ARE THEY USED CONSISTENTLY?: A SURVEY OF JEL CODES

The use and prevalence of JEL code categorization is wide in the field of economics, but what do JEL code classifications actually tell us? And are they used with consistency by academics in the field? Utilizing a data set of articles published in the American Economic Review from 1990 to 2008, we investigate whether there is heterogeneity in JEL codes assignments between authors and editors. We find that there is. A secondary goal of this paper is to survey overall thematic trends in JEL code usage over the past four and a half decades. One result is that JEL category M: Business Economics, in particular, appears to be thematically and spatially distinct from much of the rest of the published literature in the top general interest journals in the field.

In Tandem or out of Sync? Academic Economics Research and Public Policy Measures

This paper investigates whether academic research attention to certain public policy related measures (including unemployment, inflation, bankruptcies, and GDP) is correlated with empirical measurements of the measures themselves. In other words, when unemployment rises, does academic research attention to the matter increase? Or do economists pursue research interests relatively uninfluenced by policy shocks on the ground, at least in the short run? Text-analysis based results imply that economic attention to key public policy terms does correlate with empirical movements of the terms in most instances, however, the stronger and more consistent correlation is between use of public policy terms in the academic literature and discussion of them by the broader public.

River-Basin Water Management in the U.S.: A Regulatory Anticommons

Many demands are currently made on the United States’ limited water resources, including use for irrigation, recreation, hydropower, municipal use, and instream maintenance. This large set of demands poses a problem because supply is essentially stagnant. Looking forward, this situation of water resource scarcity is only projected to worsen as climate change effects and continued population growth are added to the mix. Given this acute state of affairs, I conduct an assessment of river-basin water regulation in the United States in the hopes of shedding light on whether the current approach is adequate to changing circumstances, or if reform is needed. Using small scale hydropower permitting as the context, this paper argues that reform is essential because river-basin water regulation in the United States today is subject to a decentralized and inefficient management style termed a “regulatory anticommons.” Solutions to the anticommons problem are suggested, including structural, organizational, and legislative-based regulatory reform.