Welcome to my recent PhD research tab. Here I share my working papers which are currently submitted to publications and are being presented at conferences.

Is economic connectedness likely to raise environmental footprint?

Economic connectedness has been recently found to lower income inequality by rising intergenerational mobility, yet its environmental impacts are less well known. More well-known is the fact that the non-carbon footprint is easier to reach via regulations because its production is domestic. These two problems of income inequality and environmental pollution have echoed in public opinion polls as one of the major current problems in developed countries. We thereby look at the United States on the state level during the last two decades (2010 – 2020) with a Hausman-Taylor estimator for panel data. The choice of the estimator stems from its appropriateness for panel datasets with constant variables. We find that in the United States, economic connectedness between friends, whereby friendships were formed within the same group, may be blamed for the rising environmental (noncarbon) footprint. Noncarbon footprint is, therefore, explained by the bonding social capital, which may restrict innovation. The policy implications are discussed and call for distinguishing social capital types and promoting bridging social capital where bonding social capital is relatively strong.

Biodiversity and Social Capital through the Lens of Incomplete Contracts

Terrestrial biodiversity conservation is very limited in the face of limited knowledge of upcoming biodiversity losses. We introduce the use of incomplete continuous contracting theory applied to less or more biodiverse land trading in developed countries where ownership levels between trading parties strongly differ, and thus, social capital is diminished. We find that biodiversity can be preserved (1) when there is one price reflecting the equal cost and value of the land and (2) when price differentials are large and the value is no less than the cost of the land. Biodiversity is harmed when the initial value of biodiversity is higher than the cost of acquiring it, and with repeated contracting, aggrievement and shading occur. These preliminary results show that different outcomes can be achieved with different information about the value of biodiversity, strongly supporting the valuation of biodiversity monetarily.

No Social Capital without Biodiversity

One of the determinants of a more equal distribution of income in society is social capital, measured by economic connectedness. This can be augmented by improving biodiversity as a necessary condition for the outcome. We find this by employing necessary condition analysis. On the other hand, qualitative comparative analysis results in a lack of sufficiency of biodiversity for the outcome or non-outcome of economic connectedness.