Successful candidates will report to Eyal Frank, Assistant Professor at University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. The Research Professional will work on several projects that use causal inference methods to answer questions regarding the social costs of biodiversity losses, conservation policy evaluations, and the links between ecology and human well-being. These projects include studying the economic impacts of the Endangered Species Act, how the regulations set by the Endangered Species Act potentially distort the land use decisions of private landowners, and quantifying the damages and health impacts of locusts outbreaks.
The projects will involve using causal inference methods, as well as using recent advances in machine learning methods in augmenting causal inference analysis. In addition, the projects will use satellite-derived remote sensing data, weather reanalysis data, and large databases on land use regulations, property transactions, and health surveys. As a result, working across the two projects will prepare the research professional for pursuing a variety of research interests at the intersection of environment, ecology, conservation, and development economics.
Eyal Frank is an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy. As an environmental economist, he works at the intersection of ecology and economics. His work addresses three broad questions: (i) how do natural inputs, namely animals, contribute to different production functions of interest, (ii) how do market dynamics reduce natural habitats and lead to declining wildlife population levels, and (iii) what are the costs, indirect ones in particular, of conservation policies? In his work, Frank draws natural experiments from ecology and policy, and uses econometric techniques to estimate different pieces of the puzzle regarding the social cost of biodiversity losses. Prior to the University of Chicago, Frank was a postdoctoral research associate at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from Columbia University, and his M.A. in Economics and B.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.