About

I am an applied microeconomist working on issues at the intersection of environmental and public economics. My research focuses on how people interact with the natural and built environment, and what that behavior reveals about the value of environmental amenities. My research spans water and energy management, climate change impacts and policy, valuation of environmental resources, urban transportation, public goods provision, and outdoor recreation.

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Econometrics
• Public economics
• Computer science

Selected publications

• Replication package for "Winters of discontent"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-03-26

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Replication package for: Wichman, Casey J., "Winters of discontent," Journal of Public Economics, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2026.105637

  PublisherDOI

• Replication package for "Winters of discontent"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-03-26

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Replication package for: Wichman, Casey J., "Winters of discontent," Journal of Public Economics, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2026.105637

  PublisherDOI

• Winters of discontent

  Journal of Public Economics · 2026-03-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Do short-run weather shocks affect migration? I estimate how snow influences county-level migration in the Great Lakes region since 1970. I isolate responses to snow by comparing its effect on net migration across regions exposed to lake-effect snow (LES)—heavy snow generated downwind of the Great Lakes. Higher-than-average snowfall in lake-effect regions leads to net population loss the following year. This effect is driven by reductions in in-migrants, dissipates after 1–2 years, and is strongest for young and middle-aged populations. Snow has virtually no effect on migration in non-lake-effect regions, suggesting that baseline exposure interacts with anomalous weather events. • Above-normal snowfall reduces net migration in lake-effect snow counties in the Great Lakes region but not in other counties. • The migration response to snow in lake-effect counties is driven by reductions in in-migration. • Snow effects are largest for young and middle-aged adults and dissipate within one to two years.

  PublisherDOI

• The Economics of Equity and Affordability in Residential Water Pricing

  Water Economics and Policy · 2025-06-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this review, I explore the economic dimensions of equity and affordability in urban residential water pricing. I summarize the growing literature on water affordability and discuss its relationship to more common studies of distributional issues in water demand. I also explore how utilities use various rate structures, such as increasing block rates, to address affordability concerns, emphasizing empirical evidence on the ineffectiveness of these rate structures in achieving equity goals. Moreover, I discuss the design of customer assistance programs in alleviating burdens on low-income households and summarize the scant evidence of the effectiveness of these programs. Ultimately, I highlight the need for more empirical evaluations of equity-focused programs and a greater focus on the distributional consequences of water management strategies to ensure equitable access to this essential resource.

  PublisherDOI

• Enhancing Equity and Sustainability in Utility Assistance Programs

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-11-06

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Enhancing Equity and Sustainability in Utility Assistance Programs

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-11-06

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Cost misperception and voting for public goods

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2024-09-02 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Public good provision is often determined through referendums by voters, who weigh benefits against costs. However, perceptions of benefits and costs may be incorrect, which could in turn lead to voter error and misallocation of public goods. Using real‐world referendums, we evaluate voter perceptions of the private costs of providing public goods by conducting three exit polls of New England voters and an online survey of California voters. By comparing cost perceptions to actual tax incidence, we find pervasive evidence that voters misperceive costs. Fewer than 20% of voters in our samples reported perceived costs within 25% of estimated actual costs. These findings are unsurprising given the ubiquity of opaque language explaining the financial consequences of public good referendums. In addition, our analysis suggests that actual costs have no statistical bearing on voter choice, but at least in the New England sample, voter approval is affected by perceived costs. Thus, a substantial proportion of voters are making decisions based in part on inaccurate costs, which in some cases lead to people voting against their preferences and potential misallocation of public funds. Further, researchers who match voter approval with estimated actual cost are unlikely to obtain accurate cost responsiveness or valuation estimates.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Smart Thermostats, Automation, and Time-Varying Prices

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2024-12-31 · 15 citations

  article

  Can automation complement economic incentives? We explore this question by randomly encouraging households to activate a feature on their existing smart thermostat that automates responsiveness to time-of-use electricity pricing. The feature reduces air conditioning use during the highest-priced afternoon period, raising indoor temperatures above a household's preferred temperature, primarily for customers who are typically home during the day. Customers infrequently override the feature when they experience discomfort, suggesting that they are willing to trade off monetary savings for small increases in discomfort. Automation thus enables low-cost changes in household energy use, with potentially large electricity supply-cost reductions at scale. (JEL D12, D91, L94, L98, Q48)

  PublisherDOI

• Social media influences National Park visitation

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-04-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Visitation to National Parks in the United States increased by more than 25% since 2010, rising from roughly 70 to 90 million annual visitors. Anecdotes suggest that this increase was driven by the advent of social media in the early-to-mid 2010s, generating a new form of exposure for parks, and has led to concerns about overcrowding and degradation of environmental quality. However, there is little empirical evidence on the role of social media in influencing recreation decisions. Here, I construct a dataset on social media exposure (SME) for each National Park and relate that exposure to changes in visitation over the last two decades. High SME parks see visitation increase by 16 to 22% relative to parks with less exposure, which comes with a concomitant increase in revenue. Low SME parks have no, or negative, changes in visitation. These estimates account for unobserved park heterogeneity and are based on an instrumental variables strategy that predicts exposure with a park's online popularity prior to the social media era. Additional analysis suggests that recent social media posts that include media attachments increase visitation, while posts with negative sentiment reduce visitation. These results provide insight for the National Park Service-which faces more than $22 billion in deferred maintenance costs and is considering policy options to manage demand-as well as for management of recreation on other public lands.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Notching for free: Do cyclists reveal the opportunity cost of time?

  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · 2023-04-21 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Laura O. Taylor

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  11 shared

• Roger H. von Haefen

  North Carolina State University

  11 shared

• Jacob LaRiviere

  Microsoft (United States)

  10 shared

• Brandon Cunningham

  9 shared

• Jonathan Eyer

  University of Southern California

  6 shared

• Diego S. Cardoso

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  5 shared

• Nathan W. Chan

  4 shared

• Timothy Hamilton

  Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center

  2 shared

Labs

• Urban LabsPI

  Our staff works closely with civic and community leaders to research and provide evidence for promising social interventions.

Awards & honors

• outstanding doctoral dissertation awards from the Associatio…