The use of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) is not a new type of contract but they have become more in vogue because of the potential for sequestering carbon by paying to prevent deforestation and degradation of forest lands. We provide a framework utilizing transaction costs to...

Existing models of open-access resources are applicable to non-storable resources, such as fish. Many open-access resources, however, are used to produce storable goods. Elephants, rhinos, and tigers are three prominent examples. Anticipated future scarcity of these resources will increase...

We introduce an empirical framework for valuing markets in environmental offsets. Using newly-collected data on wetland conservation and offsets, we apply this framework to evaluate a set of decentralized markets in Florida, where land developers purchase offsets from a small number of...

The pace of biodiversity loss requires drastic shifts in conservation efforts that carry substantial costs. We investigate how the financial market prices such conservation costs exploiting the "Green Shield Action," a major regulatory initiative launched by the Chinese central government in...

Stock prices react significantly to the tone (negativity of words) managers use on earnings conference calls. This reaction reflects reasonably rational use of information. "Tone surprise" - the residual when negativity in managerial tone is regressed on the firm's recent economic performance...

We explore a subtle but important mechanism through which firms can control information flow to the markets. We find that firms that "cast" their conference calls by disproportionately calling on bullish analysts tend to underperform in the future. Firms that call on more favorable analysts...

Many organizations provide retirement planning seminars to their employees as a benefit to help them make better informed retirement decisions. This study examines the participants in 85 seminars conducted by five companies in 2008 and 2009 to determine how much learning takes place and whether...

We quantify the contribution of conferences to publication success of more than 4,000 papers presented at three leading economics conferences over the 2006-2012 period. We show a positive link between conference presentation and the publishing probability in high-quality journals. Participating...

We document the representation of female economists on the conference programs at the NBER Summer Institute from 2001-2016. Over the period from 2013-2016, women made up 20.6 percent of all authors on scheduled papers. However, there was large dispersion across programs, with the share of female...