Essays in Behavioral and Environmental Economics

Financial incentives are traditionally relied upon by economists to influence behavior, however there is increasing evidence that non-market-based solutions may be preferable. This outcome particularly emerges when dealing with inattentive individuals or in situations where financial approaches face prohibitive legislation, budgetary restrictions, or political pushback. Understanding the impact of using non-market-based behavioral instruments, and how they compare to the use of market-based financial incentives, is crucial for governments to design effective public policy, as well as for private institutions to maximize profit. In this dissertation, I consider the setting of drought-prone California and its water consumers. The first two chapters contribute to the behavioral and environmental economics literature by exploring the impact of using non-market-based techniques – namely the use of information provision and moral suasion – in encouraging water conservation. The last chapter highlights the importance of finding effective approaches to water conservation by quantifying the impact of drought on economic outcomes.In the first chapter, I use a novel natural experiment and a randomized field experiment to investigate how information and financial incentives compare in influencing the behavior of inattentive customers. Specifically, I study how these two tools compare in encouraging water customers to fix in-home leaks. I find that information is a powerful, low-cost tool in swaying behavior, and can be even more effective than financial incentives. Importantly, the impact of a financial incentive depends on a customer’s typical bill-to-bill charge variance, such that high-variance customers are less likely to react to a financial incentive and respond more to a clear informational signal. Financial incentives under one standard deviation of customer bill-to-bill variation likely go unnoticed. In the observed setting of customers with in-home leaks, the average customer has a 30% relative standard deviation of the month-to-month bill and only responds to a bill increase of 50% or more. Further, the impact of financial incentives vary by customer income and are considerably less effective on customers with automatic bill payment. I also find that while sending information by mail is effective, delivery through email or text may be preferable in time sensitive situations and for encouraging the use of online resources.In the second chapter, I assess the impacts of using moral suasion via public appeals to encourage behavior change. As a case study, I analyze the effect of Governor Jerry Brown’s public pleas for water conservation in the face of California’s record-breaking drought. Using high frequency hourly consumption data at the household-level for the years 2012-2015, I conduct an event study to understand the level of short-term water conservation associated with these appeals. I find statistically and economically significant decreases in water consumption in the single-family residential sector of San Francisco in the two weeks following a well-publicized public appeals announcement. These short-term decreases range from 1.9 - 4.6% of total single-family residential water demand.In the third chapter, co-authored with David Sunding and Maximilian Auffhammer, we evaluate the effect of the drought on economic outcomes. In this study we use ex post impact assessment methods to measure the effect of drought on farm employment and harvested acreage for the fifth largest economy in the world – California. We find evidence of a statistically and economically significant relationship between surface water imports and both employment and harvested area. We also present evidence that the effects of drought are smaller in areas with better access to local water supplies, especially groundwater, and have declined over time. The latter observation is consistent with observed shifts in land allocation toward perennial crops and with increased reliance on groundwater extraction, particularly in dry years. These trends may not be sustainable in light of the State’s recent efforts to curb groundwater overdraft. Our results suggest that absent other interventions, the future effects of drought on economic outcomes in California agriculture could be even larger than those observed in the recent past

π

We report on measurements of neutral pion production in the inclusive reactions d + C → π0 + x and d + Cu → π0 + x at an incident momentum of 4.5 GeV/c per nucleon. The experiments were performed on the LHE 90-channel lead glass γ-spectrometer. The cross sections were measured over the kinematical region specified by the inequalities θπ ≤ 16° and Eπ ≥ 2 GeV (in the laboratory frame). The cumulative number and transverse momentum dependencies of the exponent n in the invariant cross section parameterization Ed3 σ / d3 p ~ Atn are investigated by comparing of the observed cross sections for π0 production on carbon and copper targets in the intervals 0.6 ≤ X ≤ 1.8 and 0.04 ≤ pT2 ≤ 0.40 (GeV/c)2. The double differential cross section for the reaction d + C → π0 + x is measured using statistics of about 4.5 · 104π0 mesons. On the basis of these data we verified the so-called cluster mechanism of π0 production. We have compared our data for the reaction d + C → π0 + x, extrapolated to θπ = 0°, with the data from another experiments on π− production: d + C → π−(0°) + x (P = 1.75 and 2.88 GeV/c per nucleon) [1]; p + d → π−(180°) + x and p + d → π+(180°) + x (P = 8.9 GeV/c per nucleon) [2]; d + p → π−(0°) + x (P = 8.9 GeV/c per nucleon) [3]. The invariant cross sections were approximated by an exponential function Ed3 σ / d3 p ~ exp(−X / X0). The slope parameter X0 at different kinetic energies of the projectiles in the range of 1.05÷8.0 GeV per nucleon is determined

Essays in Behavioral and Environmental Economics

Financial incentives are traditionally relied upon by economists to influence behavior, however there is increasing evidence that non-market-based solutions may be preferable. This outcome particularly emerges when dealing with inattentive individuals or in situations where financial approaches face prohibitive legislation, budgetary restrictions, or political pushback. Understanding the impact of using non-market-based behavioral instruments, and how they compare to the use of market-based financial incentives, is crucial for governments to design effective public policy, as well as for private institutions to maximize profit. In this dissertation, I consider the setting of drought-prone California and its water consumers. The first two chapters contribute to the behavioral and environmental economics literature by exploring the impact of using non-market-based techniques – namely the use of information provision and moral suasion – in encouraging water conservation. The last chapter highlights the importance of finding effective approaches to water conservation by quantifying the impact of drought on economic outcomes.In the first chapter, I use a novel natural experiment and a randomized field experiment to investigate how information and financial incentives compare in influencing the behavior of inattentive customers. Specifically, I study how these two tools compare in encouraging water customers to fix in-home leaks. I find that information is a powerful, low-cost tool in swaying behavior, and can be even more effective than financial incentives. Importantly, the impact of a financial incentive depends on a customer’s typical bill-to-bill charge variance, such that high-variance customers are less likely to react to a financial incentive and respond more to a clear informational signal. Financial incentives under one standard deviation of customer bill-to-bill variation likely go unnoticed. In the observed setting of customers with in-home leaks, the average customer has a 30% relative standard deviation of the month-to-month bill and only responds to a bill increase of 50% or more. Further, the impact of financial incentives vary by customer income and are considerably less effective on customers with automatic bill payment. I also find that while sending information by mail is effective, delivery through email or text may be preferable in time sensitive situations and for encouraging the use of online resources.In the second chapter, I assess the impacts of using moral suasion via public appeals to encourage behavior change. As a case study, I analyze the effect of Governor Jerry Brown’s public pleas for water conservation in the face of California’s record-breaking drought. Using high frequency hourly consumption data at the household-level for the years 2012-2015, I conduct an event study to understand the level of short-term water conservation associated with these appeals. I find statistically and economically significant decreases in water consumption in the single-family residential sector of San Francisco in the two weeks following a well-publicized public appeals announcement. These short-term decreases range from 1.9 - 4.6% of total single-family residential water demand.In the third chapter, co-authored with David Sunding and Maximilian Auffhammer, we evaluate the effect of the drought on economic outcomes. In this study we use ex post impact assessment methods to measure the effect of drought on farm employment and harvested acreage for the fifth largest economy in the world – California. We find evidence of a statistically and economically significant relationship between surface water imports and both employment and harvested area. We also present evidence that the effects of drought are smaller in areas with better access to local water supplies, especially groundwater, and have declined over time. The latter observation is consistent with observed shifts in land allocation toward perennial crops and with increased reliance on groundwater extraction, particularly in dry years. These trends may not be sustainable in light of the State’s recent efforts to curb groundwater overdraft. Our results suggest that absent other interventions, the future effects of drought on economic outcomes in California agriculture could be even larger than those observed in the recent past

INTEGRATIVE APPROACHES FOR THE STUDY OF COMPLEX HUMAN DISEASE

The opportunities that lead to the detection, treatment and prevention of diseases oftentimes require a systemic understanding of what cellular changes accompany the disease. High- throughput approaches such as the microarray and RNA-sequencing have empowered researchers to study the behavior of thousands of genes within a cell. The integration of this data across pathological states and multiple experiments presents many opportunities to improve our understanding of human diseases. This thesis represents the work of two projects focused on integrating high throughput data to identify genes associated with a disease. The first project seeks to understand the changes in expression that occur during oncogenesis. By integrating gene expression data across three histological mammary tissue states (normal, adenoma, and carcinoma) we have identified three distinct patterns of gene expression that emerge during the progression of a tumor. We show that these disease-progression associated genes represent known cancer-related pathways. The second project utilizes Naïve Bayesian machine learning to predict novel immune functional relationships by distilling the data from a large compendium of high-throughput gene expression data. We built an interactive web resource for exploring the relationships within these generated networks. Furthermore, we utilized these networks to successfully predict genes associated with several immune diseases

A new type centrifugal equipment for vacuum treatment of molten metal

Филатов В. В. Центробежный вакууматор новой конструкции / В. В. Филатов, Б. М. Горенштейн // Вестник Приазовского государственного технического университета : сб. научных трудов / ПГТУ. – Мариуполь, 1999. – Вып. 8. – С. 106–109.Разработано оригинальное устройство для центробежного вакуумирования стали

Tissue-Specific Functional Networks for Prioritizing Phenotype and Disease Genes

<div><p>Integrated analyses of functional genomics data have enormous potential for identifying phenotype-associated genes. Tissue-specificity is an important aspect of many genetic diseases, reflecting the potentially different roles of proteins and pathways in diverse cell lineages. Accounting for tissue specificity in global integration of functional genomics data is challenging, as “functionality” and “functional relationships” are often not resolved for specific tissue types. We address this challenge by generating tissue-specific functional networks, which can effectively represent the diversity of protein function for more accurate identification of phenotype-associated genes in the laboratory mouse. Specifically, we created 107 tissue-specific functional relationship networks through integration of genomic data utilizing knowledge of tissue-specific gene expression patterns. Cross-network comparison revealed significantly changed genes enriched for functions related to specific tissue development. We then utilized these tissue-specific networks to predict genes associated with different phenotypes. Our results demonstrate that prediction performance is significantly improved through using the tissue-specific networks as compared to the global functional network. We used a testis-specific functional relationship network to predict genes associated with male fertility and spermatogenesis phenotypes, and experimentally confirmed one top prediction, <em>Mbyl1</em>. We then focused on a less-common genetic disease, ataxia, and identified candidates uniquely predicted by the cerebellum network, which are supported by both literature and experimental evidence. Our systems-level, tissue-specific scheme advances over traditional global integration and analyses and establishes a prototype to address the tissue-specific effects of genetic perturbations, diseases and drugs.</p> </div

Example enriched Gene Ontology terms in the tissue MA:0000016 nervous system.

<p>Example enriched Gene Ontology terms in the tissue MA:0000016 nervous system.</p

Prediction and verification of infertility-related genes through male reproductive system-specific networks.

<p><b>A.</b> Local functional relationship network of the gene <i>Mybl1</i> in the male reproductive system. The top 18 genes connected to the query set with connection weights higher than 0.634 are displayed. These top functionally related proteins include well characterized male infertility genes such as <i>Dmc1</i>, <i>Ddx4</i>, and <i>Cyct</i>. <b>B.</b> Histological cross-sections of oval seminiferous tubules show that wild type (<i>Mybl1^+/+</i>) testis tubules contain many developing germ cells, while mutant (<i>Mybl1^{repro9/repro9}</i>) testis tubules contain many fewer germ cells and more empty space, indicative of infertility.</p

Modeling molecular development of breast cancer in canine mammary tumors

Understanding the changes in diverse molecular pathways underlying the development of breast tumors is critical for improving diagnosis, treatment, and drug development. Here, we used RNA-profiling of canine mammary tumors (CMTs) coupled with a robust analysis framework to model molecular changes in human breast cancer. Our study leveraged a key advantage of the canine model, the frequent presence of multiple naturally occurring tumors at diagnosis, thus providing samples spanning normal tissue and benign and malignant tumors from each patient. We showed human breast cancer signals, at both expression and mutation level, are evident in CMTs. Profiling multiple tumors per patient enabled by the CMT model allowed us to resolve statistically robust transcription patterns and biological pathways specific to malignant tumors versus those arising in benign tumors or shared with normal tissues. We showed that multiple histological samples per patient is necessary to effectively capture these progression-related signatures, and that carcinoma-specific signatures are predictive of survival for human breast cancer patients. To catalyze and support similar analyses and use of the CMT model by other biomedical researchers, we provide FREYA, a robust data processing pipeline and statistical analyses framework