About

Michael Cary is a research assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. He is an environmental economist with a focus on air pollution, its consequences, and related policy. His work involves applying applied econometrics and economic analytics within environmental and natural resource economics, as well as rural and regional economic development. Cary collaborates with the Virginia Cooperative Extension to improve community well-being across Virginia and is a faculty affiliate at the Kohl Centre. His research primarily explores the economic consequences of air pollution and the effectiveness of policies designed to address environmental issues. He integrates ideas and methods from urban and regional economics and employs network theoretic methods in his research. Cary's projects include studying road network structures and air pollution, the impact of climate policies on forest cover, and the effects of air pollution on physical productivity. His background includes a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Economics from West Virginia University, an M.A. in Economics from Virginia State University, and a B.A. in History from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has previous experience working with Virginia Cooperative Extension and the U.S. Forest Service, developing tools to support research on agroforestry decision-making and policy evaluation.

Research topics

• Econometrics
• Economics
• Market economy
• Natural resource economics
• Ecology
• Biology
• Demography
• Macroeconomics
• Economic policy
• Development economics

Selected publications

• Gone with the wind: Renewable energy projects and population change

  Energy Economics · 2026-03-26

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Optimal parcel-level photovoltaic and agrivoltaic site selection under physical and socioeconomic constraints

  Renewable Energy · 2025-11-28 · 1 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Estimating the heterogeneous effects of a utility-scale solar facility on house prices

  Land Use Policy · 2025-10-17 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Does Less Physical Play Lead to More Injuries? The Impact of the Hand-Check Rule in the National Basketball Association

  International Journal of Sport Finance · 2025-08-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Prior to the 2004-2005 National Basketball Association (NBA) season, the hand-check rule was implemented which prohibited defenders from keeping in physical contact with offensive players. By decreasing the physicality of perimeter play, this rule change cultivated a more offensive style of play as more guards began attacking the basket rather than taking contested jump shots. However, an unintended consequence of this policy is that by attacking the basket, guards could be injured at greater rates than before. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that guards experienced a 4%–6% increased probability of being injured during a given NBA season due to this rule change.

  PublisherDOI

• Economic Competition and the Structure of the Competition Graph of Random Networks

  Networks and Spatial Economics · 2025-10-09

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract As the competition graphs of trade networks begin to garner attention from economists, a better understanding of their expected structure is important for studying real-world trade networks and their competition graphs. This paper has two purposes. First, it serves to encourage the adoption of competition graphs as a tool for studying competition in economic networks. Second, it studies the structure and dynamics of competition graphs derived from random directed networks of the form $$\mathcal {D}(n,p)$$ . The results presented here characterize the probabilities that certain foundational structures exist in the competition graph of a random graph, and describe the density and connectivity of the competition graph of a random graph. Structural dynamics of these competition graphs are also studied. In particular, the results show that competition graphs are typically more dense than the networks they are derived from. Finally, these results are used to generate a discussion motivating the use of competition graphs in the economics literature.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A note proving the nullity of block graphs is unbounded

  Discrete Mathematics · 2024-10-17

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Post-Kyoto emissions in the United States

  Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews · 2024-11-14 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How COVID-19 Affected Participation in Ultramarathons: Gender, Risk Aversion, and Travel

  Journal of Sports Economics · 2024-09-27 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this article, we study runners’ decisions to compete in an ultramarathon during the COVID-19 era. To do this, we use a novel data set containing information on ultramarathon races and their participants and a logit model to determine if a runner who competed in an event in the year before the pandemic began chose to compete in that same (or sufficiently similar) event during the first year of the pandemic. By doing this we are able to estimate the impact of local and race destination COVID-19 cases on the decision to compete. We find that local COVID-19 cases, but not destination COVID-19 cases, affect the decision to compete. We also find that events were more likely to be cancelled when COVID-19 cases rose in the state in which the race is located. It also appears that women were disproportionately affected by the pandemic regarding changes in travel behavior.

  PublisherDOI

• Herding and investor sentiment after the cryptocurrency crash: evidence from Twitter and natural language processing

  Financial Innovation · 2024-09-02 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Although the 2022 cryptocurrency market crash prompted despair among investors, the rallying cry, “wagmi” (We’re all gonna make it.) emerged among cryptocurrency enthusiasts in the aftermath. Did cryptocurrency enthusiasts respond to this crash differently compared to traditional investors? Using natural language processing techniques applied to Twitter data, this study employed a difference-in-differences method to determine whether the cryptocurrency market crash had a differential effect on investor sentiment toward cryptocurrency enthusiasts relative to more traditional investors. The results indicate that the crash affected investor sentiment among cryptocurrency enthusiastic investors differently from traditional investors. In particular, cryptocurrency enthusiasts’ tweets became more neutral and, surprisingly, less negative. This result appears to be primarily driven by a deliberate, collectivist effort to promote positivity within the cryptocurrency community (“wagmi”). Considering the more nuanced emotional content of tweets, it appears that cryptocurrency enthusiasts expressed less joy and surprise in the aftermath of the cryptocurrency crash than traditional investors. Moreover, cryptocurrency enthusiasts tweeted more frequently after the cryptocurrency crash, with a relative increase in tweet frequency of approximately one tweet per day. An analysis of the specific textual content of tweets provides evidence of herding behavior among cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Economic, environmental, and technical gains from the Kyoto Protocol: Evidence from cement manufacturing

  Resources Policy · 2024-03-14 · 18 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Zahoor Ahmed

  6 shared

• Heather Stephens

  West Virginia University

  5 shared

• Gregory E. Frey

  5 shared

• S. Prabhu

  Rajalakshmi Engineering College

  3 shared

• Jonathan Cary

  2 shared

• Haider Mahmood

  Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University

  2 shared

• Muhammad Shahbaz

  Beijing Institute of Technology

  2 shared

• Festus Vıctor Bekun

  Gelişim Üniversitesi

  2 shared

Labs

• Department of Agricultural and Applied EconomicsPI

Education

• PhD Natural Resource Economics, Division of Resource Economics and Management

  West Virginia University

Awards & honors

• 2022 Westarctica Conservation Scholarship for Best Ph.D. Dis…