AGRICULTURE-TO-INSTREAM AND URBAN WATER TRANSFERS IN THE CENTRAL VALLEY OF CALIFORNIA: AN ECONOMIC REALITY CHECK

More than two million acre-feet (MAF) of water transfers from agriculture to urban and instream are discussed and debated in California. We use a regional agricultural production and water transfer model to evaluate potential third party impacts of transferring one MAF of water from the Central Valley of California. A range of impacts is estimated under three different scenarios. Our base scenario shows that the adverse economic impacts in the area of origin include a $170 net personal income loss for each acre-foot of water transferred, and 8 job losses for each thousand acre-feet of water transferred.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Effects of Economic Interactions on Credit Risk

We study a credit risk model which captures effects of economic interactions on a firm's default probability. Economic interactions are represented as a functionally defined graph, and the existence of both cooperative, and competitive, business relations is taken into account. We provide an analytic solution of the model in a limit where the number of business relations of each company is large, but the overall fraction of the economy with which a given company interacts may be small. While the effects of economic interactions are relatively weak in typical (most probable) scenarios, they are pronounced in situations of economic stress, and thus lead to a substantial fattening of the tails of loss distributions in large loan portfolios. This manifests itself in a pronounced enhancement of the Value at Risk computed for interacting economies in comparison with their non-interacting counterparts.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure

Analysis of Agricultural Economics for the Central Valley Project Improvement Act Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement

Environmental Economics and Policy,

An Economic Model of Water Transfer Analysis for the Central Valley Project Improvement Act

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Mammoth Cave in Poetry: Davis McCombs’ Ultima Thule

Davis McCombs, former Mammoth Cave park ranger, received the Yale Younger Poets Award for Ultima Thule, his collection of poems based on his experiences in and with Mammoth Cave, not only of his actual experiences as ranger and cave explorer, but also of the history of the cave, including poems in the voice of Stephen Bishop, cave explorer, cave guide, and also a slave. The detail of McCombs’ examination produces what poet W.S. Merwin called “a grave, attentive holding of a light.” In a sense, his poetry illuminates the cave the way ancient torches and modern lighting have done. This presentation might seem an odd choice for this conference, but the poetry of the cave is truly a part of it, and listeners can add a different dimension to what they already know to be a natural wonder. The purpose of this presentation will be to introduce the poems and their themes, to share the poems to the extent that time allows, and to connect the poetry with the history, science, and geography of the cave

Captivating State: Youthful Dreams and Uncertain Futures in Kurdistan

This dissertation examines how Kurdistani young people experience contests of values in a state shaped by sectarian political cultures during a time of trial and transition for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The dissertation is based on approximately 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork (September 2015 - June 2017) spent among Kurdistani youth, broadly defined as 12 to 30 years old, in secondary schools and fitness centers. The ethnography presents interlocutors as co-theorists in conceptualizing the society and state in which they live, incorporating descriptive vignettes, transcripts of discussions, and lengthy interview quotes. Kurdistani interlocutors describe the push and pull of living suspended in a “captivating state” in two senses of the phrase: One sense refers to a state of feeling trapped for a variety of reasons, including displacement or lacking resources to emigrate. The other sense of “captivating state” refers to the Iraqi and Kurdistani states and the power they hold over the imaginations and affections of their citizens. Throughout the ethnography, Kurdistani people negotiate the ethics of staying or emigrating; debate descriptions of and prescriptions for state and civic order; and express doubts and hopes for uncertain futures. By attending to interlocutors’ assessments of the “state of things” and strategies for generating hope, the ethnography provides a view of ethical life in Kurdistan that centers young people and their moral striving at the intersections of “sectarianism,” the “state,” and “values.