About

Daniel Phaneuf is the Henry C. Taylor Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is focused on environmental economics with specific expertise in non-market valuation and applied econometrics. He is especially interested in understanding the value of the environment through decisions that interact with it, such as location and spending choices. Much of his current work concentrates on understanding the economic costs of water pollution in the United States. He holds a PhD in Economics from Iowa State University, obtained in 1997, and a BS in Economics from Saint John's University, earned in 1990. His academic contributions include courses in applied econometric analysis, environmental and natural resource economics, and global health economics. He is also an editor for Land Economics and has authored a course in environmental economics. His work aims to inform policy and decision-making related to environmental and resource issues, with a focus on the U.S.

Research topics

• Geography
• Sociology
• Medicine
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Biology
• Demography
• Cell biology
• Pathology
• Management
• Environmental economics
• Neuroscience
• Environmental health
• Veterinary medicine
• Economics
• Biochemistry
• Immunology

Selected publications

• Willingness to pay for residential property-based and community-based tick control methods in Lyme disease-endemic areas of the Upper Midwest, United States

  Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases · 2025-08-06 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  • Novel survey assessing willingness to pay for tick control in Upper Midwest, US • 79 % of respondents were willing to implement tick control on their property • Income, perceived prevalence, and likelihood of disease were associated with willingness to pay • Respondents were willing to pay $52/year on average for a community-based program • Landscaping and natural pesticide application were the most popular options for control Ticks and tickborne diseases are of increasing concern in the United States, and the burden is high in certain focal areas. While the acceptability of various tick control and disease prevention methods has been studied, the public’s willingness to pay for environmental interventions at the individual or community level is less well described. Using data collected as part of a larger survey, we performed an additional analysis of residents of Lyme disease-endemic counties of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin to assess their willingness to support and pay annually for various methods of property-based tick control and examined demographic characteristics that might influence willingness to pay. Seventy-nine percent of respondents were willing to perform some form of tick control on their property, with most preferring self-application. Landscaping and natural pesticide application were the most popular options, with people willing to pay an estimated $78 and $61 annually, respectively. High income, a high perceived prevalence of disease, and a high perceived likelihood of disease were all associated with a willingness to pay more. When asked about a community control option, 97 % of respondents indicated interest, with respondents being willing to pay $52/year for a community-based program regardless of household characteristics. These results suggest a moderate demand in the Upper Midwest for tick control efforts at both the individual property level and for local, publicly funded, community-based programs. These findings provide a starting point for assessing community characteristics, cost structure, environmental attributes, and efficacy needed to generate net benefits for community-based tick control programs.

  PublisherDOI

• Bidding against the wind: A choice experiment in green energy, green jobs and offshore views in North Carolina, USA

  Journal of Environmental Management · 2024-01-01 · 6 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Inhibition of NF-κB with an Analog of Withaferin-A Restores TDP-43 Homeostasis and Proteome Profiles in a Model of Sporadic ALS

  Biomedicines · 2024-05-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The current knowledge on pathogenic mechanisms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has widely been derived from studies with cell and animal models bearing ALS-linked genetic mutations. However, it remains unclear to what extent these disease models are of relevance to sporadic ALS. Few years ago, we reported that the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from sporadic ALS patients contains toxic factors for disease transmission in mice via chronic intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) infusion. Thus a 14-day i.c.v. infusion of pooled CSF samples from ALS cases in mice provoked motor impairment as well as ALS-like pathological features. This offers a unique paradigm to test therapeutics in the context of sporadic ALS disease. Here, we tested a new Withaferin-A analog (IMS-088) inhibitor of NF-κB that was found recently to mitigate disease phenotypes in mouse models of familial disease expressing TDP-43 mutant. Our results show that oral intake of IMS-088 ameliorated motor performance of mice infused with ALS-CSF and it alleviated pathological changes including TDP-43 proteinopathy, neurofilament disorganization, and neuroinflammation. Moreover, CSF infusion experiments were carried out with transgenic mice having neuronal expression of tagged ribosomal protein (hNfL-RFP mice), which allowed immunoprecipitation of neuronal ribosomes for analysis by mass spectrometry of the translational peptide signatures. The results indicate that treatment with IMS-088 prevented many proteomic alterations associated with exposure to ALS-CSF involving pathways related to cytoskeletal changes, inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, mitochondria, UPS, and autophagy dysfunction. The effective disease-modifying effects of this drug in a mouse model based on i.c.v. infusion of ALS-CSF suggest that the NF-κB signaling pathway represents a compelling therapeutic target for sporadic ALS.

  PublisherDOI

• Information Scripts and the Incentive Compatibility of Discrete Choice Experiments

  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists · 2024-05-23 · 9 citations

  articleSenior author

  This study examines whether information scripts can align respondent beliefs with theory assumptions required for truthful demand revelation in stated preference surveys. We embed tests of these scripts within a discrete choice experiment of large-scale surface water quality improvements in the midwestern United States. An independence script, which encourages respondents to treat the multiple valuation scenarios presented to them in isolation, improves construct validity and increases the likelihood that stated beliefs are congruent with multiple, theory-relevant assumptions. There are positive spatial scope effects in willingness to pay for those receiving the script and negative scope effects, which we ascribe to strategic voting, for those that do not. Two payment scripts, hypothesized to enhance adherence to the payment mechanism, have an insignificant effect on stated beliefs. A payment script which implies that a household’s income and the cost of the policy are linked, however, appears to contribute to the finding of negative scope effects.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction to the Special Issue: Property Value Analysis Using ZTRAX. Applications under the Approaching Sunset

  Land Economics · 2024-01-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We are happy to introduce this joint special issue of Land Economics ( LE ) and the Journal of Housing Economics ( JHE ), focused on property value applications using Zillow’s ZTRAX data. ZTRAX is a real estate–focused database with over 400 million public records spanning nearly all U.S.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The value of property rights and environmental policy in Brazil: Evidence from a new database on land prices

  Global Environmental Change · 2024-07-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Lack of property rights is associated with lower investment, development, and welfare. In the Brazilian Amazon, insecure property rights have historically led to civil conflicts and deforestation, which would be expected to provide incentives for landowners to seek formal title. In this paper, we construct a novel database of land prices in Brazil to measure the market value of formal title to land and compliance with environmental regulation. Using online advertisements of land sale offers scraped from a widely used seller’s platform, we first estimate a hedonic model that regresses the last offer price on property attributes such as farm-level agricultural production, land characteristics, structure amenities, and capital equipment included in the offer, as well as spatial and temporal fixed effects. We use this hedonic model to examine how property rights and environmental compliance capitalize into land prices across the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. Our main results imply low net benefits from property rights and low net benefits from compliance with the central Brazilian regulation that aims to maintain forest cover, the Forest Code. Finally, we estimate a duration model that follows the sequence of weekly offers for a specific property until it sells. Our findings show that parcels compliant with the Forest Code sell 46 % faster in the Amazon, while entitled properties in the Cerrado sell 9 % faster, unless they are compliant with the Forest Code, which requires a substantial portion of the property to be under native vegetation cover.

  PublisherDOI

• Cities and water quality

  Regional Science and Urban Economics · 2024-03-13 · 3 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Axonal Transport Defect in Gigaxonin Deficiency Rescued by Tubastatin A

  Neurotherapeutics · 2023-06-02 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Giant axonal neuropathy (GAN) is a disease caused by a deficiency of gigaxonin, a mediator of the degradation of intermediate filament (IF) proteins. A lack of gigaxonin alters the turnover of IF proteins, provoking accumulation and disorganization of neurofilaments (NFs) in neurons, a hallmark of the disease. However, the effects of IF disorganization on neuronal function remain unknown. Here, we report that cultured embryonic dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons derived from Gan−/− mice exhibit accumulations of IF proteins and defects in fast axonal transport of organelles. Kymographs generated by time-lapse microscopy revealed substantial reduction of anterograde movements of mitochondria and lysosomes in axons of Gan−/− DRG neurons. Treatment of Gan−/− DRG neurons with Tubastatin A (TubA) increased the levels of acetylated tubulin and it restored the normal axonal transport of these organelles. Furthermore, we tested the effects of TubA in a new mouse model of GAN consisting of Gan−/− mice with overexpression of peripherin (Prph) transgene. Treatment of 12-month-old Gan−/−;TgPer mice with TubA led to a slight amelioration of motor function, especially a significant improvement of gait performance as measured by footprint analyses. Moreover, TubA treatment reduced the abnormal accumulations of Prph and NF proteins in spinal neurons and it boosted the levels of Prph transported into peripheral nerve axons. These results suggest that drug inhibitors of histone deacetylase aiming to enhance axonal transport should be considered as a potential treatment for GAN disease.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Water quality data

  Open MIND · 2023-01-01

  datasetOpen access

  The ZTRAX data is a national database of property sales collected by Zillow. The data is available to researchers who submit a research proposal to Zillow.

  Publisher

• Introduction to the Special Issue Property Value Analysis using ZTRAX: Applications under the Approaching Sunset

  Journal of Housing Economics · 2023-11-08 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  This is the Introduction for the joint special issue of Land Economics (LE) and the Journal of Housing Economics (JHE) focused on property value applications using Zillow's ZTRAX data. ZTRAX is a real estate–focused database with over 400 million public records spanning nearly all U.S. counties across more than 30 years. The spatially explicit data on deed transfers, sale prices, and property characteristics has provided the basis for analyses on themes such as disaster risks, including wildfires, flooding, and chemical accidents; natural resources, including water quality, farmland, and coal; and land uses, such as open space, national parks, and critical habitat designation, among others.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Catherine L. Kling

  41 shared

• Till Requate

  33 shared

• Jean‐Pierre Julien

  Université Laval

  26 shared

• Robert M. Tanguay

  26 shared

• David A. Keiser

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  20 shared

• Jasna Križ

  Université Laval

  19 shared

• Joseph A. Herriges

  Bureau of Land Management

  18 shared

• Michelle Hadchouel

  Institut National de Recherche en Santé Publique

  16 shared