Environmental Policy Group

Research

Statement

I spend about three-fourths of my time working on environmental economics and policy, with an emphasis on biodiversity protection. I am interested in communicating to both economists and conservation practitioners and thus I try to publish in a variety of outlets and attend both economic and biology professional meetings. Most recently, I have been working on applying experimental and quasi-experimental program evaluation methods to conservation interventions.

The rest of my research focuses on experimental methods and behavioral economics.  I’ve conducted research on the economics of cultural diversity and discrimination, the relationship between competence and self-awareness and its implications for economic behavior, racial differences in investment behavior, the design of experiments that more cleanly identify other-regarding preferences (as opposed to subject confusion that mimics other-regarding preferences), and children’s non-cognitive attributes (e.g., time and risk preferences) and their role in affecting educational outcomes.

Program and Policy Evaluation


Ferraro, PJ and M Price. 2010. Using non-pecuniary strategies to influence behavior: evidence from a large-scale field experiment . Working Paper. [updated from previous 2008 and 2009 working papers, including Ferraro, PJ. Common Pool Management without Prices: A large-scale randomized experiment to test the effects of imperfect information and pro-social preferences. 5 Jan, 2009 at ASSA meeting] 

Arriagada, PJ Ferraro, S Pattanayak, R, E Sills, and S Cordero. 2010. Do payments for environmental services reduce deforestation? A farm-level evaluation from Costa Rica. Working Paper 

Ferraro, PJ, MM Hanauer and KE Sims. Forthcoming. Conditions Associated with Protected Area Success in Conservation and Poverty Reduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  

Ferraro PJ and MM Hanauer. 2010. Protecting Ecosystems and Alleviating Poverty with Parks and Reserves: ‘Win-Win’ or Tradeoffs? Environmental and Resource Economics. Forthcoming.

Andam, KS, PJ Ferraro, KRE Sims, A Healy, and MB Holland. 2010. Protected areas reduced poverty in Costa Rica and Thailand. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107(22): 9996-10001.

Pfaff, A, J Robalino, GA Sanchez-Azofeifa, KS Andam, and PJ Ferraro. 2009. Park Location Affects Forest Protection: land characteristics cause differences in park impacts across Costa Rica. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (Contributions) 9(2), Article 5. 

Ferraro, P. J. (2009). Counterfactual thinking and impact evaluation in environmental policy. In Special Issue on Environmental program and policy evaluation, M. Birnbaum & P. Mickwitz (Eds.). New Directions for Evaluation 122: 75–84.

Andam, K.S., P.J. Ferraro, A. Pfaff, G.A. Sanchez-Azofeifa, and J. Robalino. 2008. Measuring the Effectiveness of Protected Area Networks in Reducing Deforestation: a rigorous impact evaluation approach. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(42): 16089-16094.
(Supplementary Information)


Ferraro, P.J., C. McIntosh and M. Ospina. 2007. The Effectiveness of Listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act: An econometric analysis using matching methods.  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 54(3): 245-261.

Sills, E.O., S. Pattanayak, P.J. Ferraro, and K. Algers. 2006. Abordagens Análiticas na Avaliação de Impactos Reais de Programas de Conservação.  Megadiversidade 2(1-2): 39-49.

Ferraro, P.J. and S.K. Pattanayak. 2006. Money for Nothing? A call for empirical evaluation of biodiversity conservation investments. PLoS Biology 4(4):e105 (0482-0488).

Ferraro, P.J. 2005. Corruption and conservation: the need for empirical analyses. A response to Smith and Walpole. Oryx 39: 257–259.



Conservation Performance Payments


Arriagada, PJ Ferraro, S Pattanayak, R, E Sills, and S Cordero. 2010. Do payments for environmental services reduce deforestation? A farm-level evaluation from Costa Rica. Working Paper 

Leimona, B, BK Jack, and PJ Ferraro. 2009. A Revealed Preference Approach to Estimating Supply Curves for Environmental Services: experimental field auctions and soil erosion control in Indonesia. Conservation Biology 23(3): 359-367.

Arriagada, R., E.O. Sills, S.K. Pattanayak, and P.J. Ferraro. 2009.  Combining qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate participation in Costa Rica's Program of Payments for Environmental Services.  Journal of Sustainable Forestry 28: 343-367.

Ferraro, P.J. 2009. Regional Review of Payments for Watershed Services:  Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Sustainable Forestry 28: 525-550.

Ferraro, PJ and H Gjertsen. 2009. A Global Review of Incentive Payments for Sea Turtle Conservation. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 8(1): 48-56. 

Ferraro, P.J. 2008.  Asymmetric Information and Contract Design for Payments for Environmental Services.  Ecological Economics 65(4): 810-821.

Ferraro, P.J., T. Uchida and J.M Conrad. 2005. Price Premiums for Eco-friendly Commodities: Are ‘green’ markets the best way to protect endangered ecosystems? Environmental and Resource Economics 32(3): 419-438.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.D. Simpson. 2005. Cost-Effective Conservation When Eco-entrepreneurs have Market Power. Environment and Development Economics 10(5): 651-663.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.D. Simpson. 2005 “Protecting Forests and Biodiversity: are investments in eco-friendly production activities the best way to protect endangered ecosystems and enhance rural livelihoods?” Forests, Trees and Livelihoods 15(2): 167-181.

Ferraro, P.J. 2005. Guest Editorial: An Economist’s Reflections on the 25th Annual Symposium for Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation: Empirical Program Evaluation and Direct Payments for Sea Turtle Conservation. Marine Turtle Newsletter 109: 2-6.

Nyhus, P.J., Osofsky, S. A., Ferraro, P.J, F. Madden, H. Fischer. 2005. Bearing the costs of human-wildlife conflict: The challenges of compensation schemes. In People and Wildlife: Conflict or Coexistence? (eds R. Woodroffe, S. Thirgood & A. Rabinowitz), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 107-121.

Ferraro, P.J. and A. Kiss. 2003. Will Direct Payments Help Biodiversity? Response. Science 299 (28 March): 1981-1982.

Ferraro, P.J., and A. Kiss. 2002. Direct Payments for Biodiversity Conservation. Science 298 (29 November): 1718-1719.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.D. Simpson. 2002. The Cost-effectiveness of Conservation Performance Payments. Land Economics 78(3): 339-353.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.D. Simpson. 2001. Cost-effective Conservation: a review of what works to preserve biodiversity. Resources 143:17-20. Reprinted in Resources for the Future Reader in Environmental Policy and Resource Management (2006), 2nd edition, edited by Wallace E Oates. Resources for the Future Press, Washington DC, pp.163-170.

Ferraro, P.J. 2001. "Conservation Performance Payments: efficient investments for ecoregion conservation." Sharing Across Boundaries (A Publication of the Conservation Strategies Unit of World Wildlife Fund) 3: 2.

Ferraro, P.J. 2001. Global Habitat Protection: limitations of development interventions and a role for conservation performance payments. Conservation Biology 15(4): 1-12.



Conservation Planning and Targeting

Naidoo, R., A. Balmford, P.J. Ferraro, S. Polasky, T. Ricketts and M. Rouget. 2006. Integrating Economic Costs into Conservation Planning. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21(12): 681-687.

Ferraro, P.J. 2006. Integrating Biophysical and Economic Information to Guide Land Conservation Investments.  In Economics and Contemporary Land Use Policy: Development and Conservation at the Rural-Urban Fringe, edited by Robert Johnson and Stephen Swallow.  Resources for the Future Press, Washington, D.C., pp.267-290.

Ferraro, P.J. 2004. “Targeting Conservation Investments in Heterogeneous Landscapes: A distance function approach and application to watershed management. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 86(4): 905-918.

Ferraro, P.J. 2003. Conservation Contracting in Heterogeneous Landscapes: an application to watershed protection with threshold constraints. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 32(1): 53-64.

Ferraro, P.J. 2003. Assigning Priority to Environmental Policy Interventions in a Heterogeneous World. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 22(1): 27-43.

Azzaino, Z., J. Conrad and P.J. Ferraro. 2002. Optimizing the Riparian Buffer: Harold Brook in the Skaneateles Lake Watershed, New York. Land Economics 78(4): 501-514.

Ferraro, P.J. 2002. The Local Costs of Establishing Protected Areas in Low-income Nations: Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar. Ecological Economics 43(2-3): 261-275.



Voluntary and Regulatory Approaches to Pollution Prevention

Uchida, T. and P.J. Ferraro. 2007. Voluntary Development of Environmental Management Systems: Motivations and Regulatory Implications. Journal of Regulatory Economics 32: 37-65.

Ferraro, P.J. and T. Uchida. 2007. Stock Market Reactions to Information Disclosure: new evidence from Japan’s Pollutant Release and Transfer Register. Environmental Economics and Policy Studies 8: 159-171.



Experimental and Behavioral Economics


Castillo, M, PJ Ferraro, J Jordan, and R Petrie. 2010. The today and tomorrow of kids: discount rates among adolescents. (revised from 2009 working paper of same title) Working Paper.  

Ferraro, PJ and CA Vossler. 2010. The Source and Significance of Confusion in Public Goods Experiments. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (Contributions). 10(1), Article 53

Ferraro, PJ. 2010. Know Thyself: competence and self-awareness. Atlantic Economic Journal 38(2): 183-196.  

Adji, A, J Alm, and PJ Ferraro. 2009. Experimental Tests of Ricardian Equivalence with Nondistortionary versus Distortionary Taxes. Economics Bulletin 29(4): 2556-2572. 

Cotten, S., P.J. Ferraro and C.A. Vossler.  2008. Can Public Goods Experiments Inform Policy? Intepreting results in the presence of confused subjects. In Environmental Economics, Experimental Methods, edited by T. Cherry, S. Kroll and J. Shogren. Routledge, pp.194-211.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.G. Cummings. 2007. Experimental approaches to understanding inter-cultural conflict over resources. In Using Experimental Methods in Environmental and Resource Economics, edited by J. List. Edward Elgar, pp. 137-160.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.G Cummings. 2006. Cultural Diversity, Discrimination and Economic Outcomes: an experimental analysis. Economic Inquiry 45(2): 217-232.

P.J. Ferraro and L. O. Taylor. 2005. Do Economists Recognize an Opportunity Cost When They See One? A Dismal Performance from the Dismal Science. Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy 4(1), Article 7.

Ferraro, P.J., D. Rondeau, and G.L. Poe. 2003. Detecting Other-regarding Behavior with Virtual Players. The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 51(1): 99-109.



Miscellaneous Publications and Research Reports

Sutherland, WJ, WM Adams, RB Aronson, R Aveling, TM Blackburn, S. Broad, G. Ceballos, IM Côté, RM Cowling, GAB da Fonseca, E Dinerstein, PJ Ferraro, E Fleishman, C Gascon, M Hunter Jr, J Hutton, P Kareiva, P, A Kuria, DW Macdonald, MacKinnon, K, Madgwick, FJ, Mascia, MB, McNeely, J, Milner-Gulland, EJ, Moon, S, Morley, CG, Nelson, S, Osborn, D, Pai, M, Parsons, ECM, Peck, LS, Possingham, H, Prior, SV, Pullin, AS, Rands, MRW, Ranganathan, J, Redford, KH, Rodriguez, JP, Seymour, F, Sobel, F, Sodhi, NS, Stott, A, Vance-Borland, K & Watkinson, AR. 2009. One Hundred Questions of Importance to the Conservation of Global Biological Diversity. Conservation Biology 23(3): 557-567.

Fisher, B, K Turner, A Balmford, R Brouwer, R Costanza, R de Groot, S Farber, P Ferraro, R Green, D Hadley, J Harlow, P Jefferiss, C Kirby, P Morling, S Mowatt, R Naidoo, J Paavola, B Strassburg, D Yu, M Zijlstra.  2008. Ecosystem Services and Economic Theory: Integration for policy-relevant research. Ecological Applications 18(8): 2050–2067.

Ferraro, PJ. 2008. Protected Areas and Human Well-being. In Economics and Conservation in the Tropics: A Strategic Dialogue.

Asquith, N., S. Wunder et al. 2008. Payments for Watershed Services: The Bellagio Conversations. Fundación Natura Bolivia: Santa Cruz de la Sierra


Arriagada, R., E.O. Sills, S.K. Pattanayak, and P.J. Ferraro. 2008.  Evaluating Initiatives with Direct Conservation Payments: econometric analysis of the Costa Rican Program of payments for environmental services.  Sylvanet 21: 24-31.


Ferraro, P.J. 2007. Performance Payments for Sea Turtle Nest Protection in Low-income Nations:  a case study from Tanzania. January, National Marine Fisheries Service, La Jolla, CA.

Albers, H.J. and P.J. Ferraro. 2006.  Economics of Biodiversity Conservation in Developing Countries. In Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability: new policy options, edited by M. Toman and R. Lopez.  Oxford University Press, NY.

Ferraro, P.J. 2005. Contributing author to Chapter 6 of the Responses Working Group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). The MEA is a four-year, $21 million undertaking intended to produce a comprehensive view of the state and management of the planet's ecological resources.

Hartshorn, G., P.J. Ferraro, and B. Spergel. 2005. Evaluation of the World Bank – GEF Ecomarkets Project in Costa Rica.  November, North Carolina State University.

Ferraro, P.J. 2005. Are We Getting What We Paid For? The Need for Randomized Environmental Policy Experiments in Georgia. Georgia Water Policy & Planning Center Working Paper #2005-022. [from 2001-2006, I also wrote another seven papers for the Georgia Water Policy & Planning Center (see www.h2opolicycenter.org)]

Ferraro, P.J. 2004.  Direct Payments to Protect Endangered Ecosystems and Experimental Methods to Estimate Payment Costs.  Prepared for the Twenty-First Biannual Workshop of the Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA), Hanoi, May.

Ferraro, P.J. 2004. Assigning Priority to Ecosystem Restoration Investments in Georgia's Chickasawhatchee Swamp.  Georgia Water Policy & Planning Center Working Paper #2004-017.

Ferraro, P.J., and A. Kiss. 2003.  Direct Payments for Biodiversity Conservation.  Reprinted in the Himalayan Journal of Sciences, 1(2) (August) [originally published in Science]

Ferraro, P.J. 2001. Reconciling the Long-term Conservation Needs of Large Mammals and Local Communities: conservation performance payments. In Terrestrial Ecoregions of the Indo-Pacific: a conservation assessment, eds., E. Wikramanayake, E. Dinerstein, and C.J. Loucks. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Lee, D.R., P.J. Ferraro, and C.B. Barrett. 2000. "Introduction: Changing Perspectives on Agricultural Intensification, Economic Development and the Environment." In Tradeoffs or Synergies? Agricultural Intensification, Economic Development and the Environment in Developing Countries, eds., D.R. Lee and C.B. Barrett. Wallingford, UK: CAB International, pp. 1-16.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.A. Kramer. 1997. "Compensation and Economic Incentives: reducing pressures on protected areas." In Last Stand: protected areas and the defense of tropical biodiversity, eds., R. Kramer, C. van Schaik, and J. Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 187-211.

Parks, P.J. and P.J. Ferraro. 1994. Invited review of "Introduction to Ecological Economics: with Gaylord Nelson, Herman Daly, and John Cobb, Jr." Society and Natural Resources 7: 196-198.

 Ferraro, P.J., with R. Tshombe, R. Mwinyihali, and J.A. Hart. 1997. Projets Int¨¦gr¨¦s de Conservation et de D¨¦veloppement: un cadre pour promouvoir la conservation et la gestion des ressources naturelles. Wildlife Conservation Society Working Paper No. 6. Bronx, N.Y.: Wildlife Conservation Society.

Matteson, P.C., P.J. Ferraro and W.I. Knausenberger. 1995. Pesticide Use and Pest Management in Madagascar: sub-sector and programmatic environmental assessment. Washington, DC: EPAT/Winrock International Environmental Alliance.

Ferraro, P.J. and R.A. Kramer. 1995. A Framework for Affecting Household Behavior to Promote Biodiversity Conservation. Washington, DC: EPAT/Winrock International Environmental Alliance.

Ferraro, P.J. and R. O'Neill. 1993. "Women, Water, Fuel, and Forests." FOREM 16(2): 18-21.

Ferraro, P.J. 1992. Mixed Property Rights Regimes: effects on secondary forest ecosystem management. Report prepared for the USAID-funded Ranomafana National Park Project, Antananarivo, Madagascar.