Eric uses geospatial analytics to understand how economic incentives affect the use and management of natural resources. He develops contemporary and historic spatial datasets using economic, demographic and land-use measures to statistically test the impact of institutions (like property rights and regulations) on economic and environmental outcomes. Interests include the regulation of water quality, management of ground and surface water, the relationship between land ownership and oil and gas production, and historical agricultural land use.

Roles

• Fellows

Publications

• Institutional and Organizational Analysis: Concepts and Applications. By Eric Alston, Lee Alston, Bernardo Mueller, and Tomas Nonnenmacher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. 406. $78.91, hardcover. (2020)
• Irrigation Investment on an American Indian Reservation (2020)
• The economics of indigenous water claim settlements in the American West (2020)
• The cost of addressing saline lake level decline and the potential forwater conservation markets (2019)
• An illiquid market in the desert: estimating the cost of water trade restrictions in northern Chile (2018)
• How transaction costs obstruct collective action: The case of California's groundwater (2018)
• The Role of Irrigation in the Development of Agriculture in the United States (2018)
• Economic Insight from Utah’s Water Efficiency Supply Curve (2017)
• Book Review: “Chasing Water — A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability” (2016)
• What Lies Beneath? Aquifer Heterogeneity and the Economics of Groundwater Management (2016)

View all publications