Funding Opportunities/Solicitations - Among NCEE's responsibilities are promoting and advancing the field of environmental economics, including its full range of sub-disciplines. As funds are available in NCEE's budget for support of these goals through grant or cooperative agreement to qualified parties outside EPA and when the supported activities are primarily for the benefit of the public, NCEE will award such funds through an open and competitive process, soliciting proposals from any qualified applicants. Although it was previously possible for NCEE to consider unsolicited proposals, we are no longer able to do so. All solicitations will be open for a period of at least 60 days. A link to complete information on how to apply will appear on this page whenever an NCEE solicitation is open. You may also sign up for our email distribution list to receive announcements of solicitations when they are publicly available (please see disclaimer regarding email notification).
Previous Assistance Awards - As funds were available in NCEE's budget for support of NCEE's goals through grant or cooperative agreement to qualified parties outside EPA and when the supported activities were primarily for the benefit of the public, NCEE awarded grants and cooperative agreements. See our list of previous awards back to October, 2002 (the beginning of the 2003 fiscal year).
Related Sites - In addition, EPA's Office of Research and Development also has annual grant competitions, and we have provided a page with the ones of most interest to environmental economists. We also maintain an archive of previous economics-related research, which was funded by these ORD (and/or NSF) grants.
Previous Assistance Awards
The following grants and cooperative agreements have been issued since October 2002:
Title: Current and Emerging Issues Workshops
The recipient will host two workshops:
(1) Advantages and Disadvantages of Web-based Surveys: Many federal agencies demand monetary values for health and environmental improvements for use in benefit-cost analyses. Web-based surveys are becoming increasingly popular approaches for mounting contingent valuation surveys and choice experiments (e.g., conjoint analysis) to deliver such values. However, little is known about their advantages and disadvantages compared to other modes of survey administration. RFF will hold a workshop on web-based surveys and their comparison to other modes of survey administration, in the context of health and ecological benefit estimation. The purpose of the workshop would be to begin developing a common understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of this new survey method as well as protocols to minimize its drawbacks.
(2) A Workshop on Ecosystem Benefit Indicators: This workshop would address the topic of ecosystem benefit indicators. Benefit indicators are like ecological indicators, except that they measure the social benefits of ecological services. Ecosystem benefit indicators are a quantitative, but not monetary, approach to the assessment of habitats and land uses. Like ecological indicators, they summarize and quantify complex information. Like monetary assessment, they employ the principles of economic analysis. The workshop will address two main issues. First, what is the appropriate role of benefit indicators in ecosystem assessment? RFF will look at different assessment contexts (inter-agency consultations, outreach, rulemaking, budget justifications, and litigation) and consider the role of indicators in each. Second, RFF will explore methodological issues associated with the construction of benefit indicators, their validation, and aggregation into summary measures.
Grant #: 832299-01-0
Funded Amount: $77,950
Period of Performance: 02/01/2005 – 07/31/2006
Awardee: Resources for the Future, Inc.
Principal Investigator: Alan Krupnick
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-0: Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Alan Carlin (566-2250)
Title: Current and Emerging Issues Workshops
The goal of the proposed activities is to strengthen the field of environmental and resource economics through a variety of workshops and small conferences. A major part of the proposed set of workshops seeks to help PhD students develop and refine their dissertation topics within the field of environmental economics. Given that there are few such students on most campuses, there is great value to bringing them together to exchange perspectives and understanding of the field. Additionally, the topical workshops proposed here should seek to strengthen the field, not only by bringing accomplished scholars together, but also through the active participation of graduate students. Over the five year term of the award, the UC-Santa Barbara will host a series of four dissertation workshops (one every 18-20 months – 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009), continuing the highly successful “Occasional California Workshop in Environmental and Resource Economics and Policy.”
Grant #: 832300-01-0
Funded Amount: $64,106
Period of Performance: 01/01/2005 – 12/31/2009
Awardee: University of California – Santa Barbara
Principal Investigator: Charles Kolstad
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-01, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Alan Carlin (566-2250)
Title: Environmental Education Workshop: The Connection from Empirical Analysis to Welfare Evaluation
The last decade or two has seen an increasing interest in environmental research among academic economists. This interest has led to advances on a wide range of areas. For example, empirical researchers are taking advantage of the availability of new data sets and cheaper computing resources to estimate the economic effects of environmental policy. The design of such studies allow the researcher primarily to find "positive" economic effects on employment and productivity, on plant location and output, health outcomes, housing prices, and on emissions themselves. Simultaneously, theoretical researchers have made great strides in "normative" studies of environmental policy in analytical models that show conceptual effects of regulations on all the same economic variables. Further, these models also show effects on overall economic welfare. In many cases, these studies are the basis of larger computable general equilibrium models that employ stylized facts and elasticity parameters to show the numerical magnitudes of these conceptual effects on welfare. Rarely, however, are empirical and theoretical studies connected in a consistent way that uses available data to estimate exactly the parameters and other economic effects needed as inputs to analytical models that can be used to simulate effects of environmental policy not only on observable economic variables but also simultaneously on welfare. Even more rarely are such estimates used to calculate effects on the economic welfare of individual groups in our society, in order to show the distributional effects of environmental policy.
Such a connection is the purpose of our proposal for two-day workshops during the Summer Institute of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The recipient expects this workshop to push forward economic research on these important linkages in several ways. First, it will bring together the key empirical researchers with those doing analytical and other theoretical research for discussions about the connection from empirical work to the theory, and for discussion of individual papers. Second, those discussions will encourage empirical researchers to think about the implications of their research for welfare evaluation, and it will encourage analytical modelers to think about how to base models more concretely on empirical findings. Third, the announcement of future joint NBER-EPA workshops on these linkages will encourage researchers early in their work to think about and incorporate such linkages. Finally, it will bring different types of researchers together in a way that will allow them to discuss other joint work that would actually employ these methods simultaneously in a more comprehensive model.
Grant #: 832295-01-0
Funded Amount: $72,187
Period of Performance: 02/15/2005-02/14/2010
Awardee: National Bureau of Economic Research
Principal Investigator: Don Fullerton
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-01, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Carl Pasurka (566-2275)
Title: Trading for Land-Based Environmental Services
In the U.S. and abroad, there is substantial interest in viewing trading schemes to provide incentives to agricultural and forestry sectors for the provision of environmental services. This interest has been stimulated by programs to control air emissions where trading has been quite successful. However, when market-based approaches are applied to controlling land-based emissions from non-point sources, which are difficult and costly to monitor, a suite of new issues arise. The proposed workshop will confront these challenges in two related areas: water quality and greenhouse gas emission (GHGE) offsets including carbon sequestration. The central economic intuition for environmental trading is that if the cost of reducing emissions differs widely across sources, trading offers potential for significant efficiency gains. Water quality and GHGE offsets are two prominent areas in which emissions trading is being proposed and implemented as part of the solution. For both of these environmental challenges, there is a belief that agriculture and forestry will be an important part of the solution and should be included in the trading market. For water quality, the agricultural sector is a largely unregulated source of water pollution and is thus viewed to be an essential player in improving the nation’s water quality. In the control of greenhouse gas emissions, the agricultural/forestry sectors are viewed as significant emitters of nitrous oxide and ethane as well as potentially cost-effective sequesterers of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Hence, analysts and policy makers are keenly interested in and partially engaged in using markets to create incentives to improve water quality and reduce GHGE. The recipient proposes a workshop designed to confront a number of common challenges for trading programs for land-based environmental services, with emphasis on greenhouse gas emission and water quality. The proposed workshop will bring together practitioners, policy makers, and analysts who have studied these challenges in an effort to find creative responses to these challenges and identify opportunities for improvements in these programs.
Grant #: 832343-01-0
Funded Amount: $25,779
Period of Performance: 02/01/2005 – 02/02/2007
Awardee: Texas Agricultural Experiment Station
Principal Investigator: Richard Woodward
Award Type : Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-0, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Barry Korb (566-2307)
Title: Workshop in Environmental Economics and Policy
The Harvard University Environmental and Resource Economics Pre-Doctoral Student Workshop will bring graduate students in the early stages of their dissertation research together with junior and senior faculty members to comment on their work and provide guidance for their respective research agendas. The Workshop will target graduate students who have completed a significant portion of their course requirements and have begun work on their dissertations, but are not yet on the job market and represent a spectrum of graduate programs across the nation. The workshop will also include invited junior faculty members from across the country to serve as discussants and to participate in the workshop.
Grant #: 832324-01-0
Funded Amount: $10,850
Period of Performance: 09/15/2005 – 09/14/2006
Awardee: President and Fellows of Harvard College
Principal Investigator: Robert Stavins
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-01, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Clay Ogg (566-2315)
Title: Camp Resources Workshop on Environmental Economics Research
Camp Resources is run by North Carolina State University’s Center for Environmental and Resource Economics Policy (CEnREP). The workshop has met continuously for eleven years and has been recognized as the prototype for small-scale meetings aimed at providing opportunities for young researchers to present on work in progress. The objective of the current project is to continue the Camp Resources approach to providing early feedback and mentoring for graduate students and young professionals. The proposal also expands the format to include a more substantial training dimension. In particular, we will re-structure Camp Resources as a combination dissertation and training workshop, thereby responding to two of the needs identified in the call for proposals. The primary objective of this proposal is to continue and strengthen the Camp Resources tradition. Throughout its history, the workshop has variously served as a vehicle for exploring alternative methods for learning new research methods, developing research agendas, and establishing closer connections between policy needs and research activities. The proposal to add a new dimension to the workshop scheduled for 2005 continues that practice of experimentation.
Grant #: 832363-01-0
Funded Amount: $79,422
Period of Performance: 04/18/2005 – 04/17/2007
Awardee: North Carolina State University
Principal Investigator: V. Kerry Smith
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-01, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Clay Ogg (566-2315)
Title: Innovations in Academic Communication at the Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop
The Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops have been held in Ames, Iowa for the last five years. The workshop was initiated to bring together the numerous academic economists located in the Midwest that work primarily or in part on subjects related to environmental and resource economics. Prior to the establishment of the workshop, there was little formal communication among these scholars, except at large national conferences. The Heartland conference has provided a unique venue to environmental economists located in the Midwest to share research results and work in progress in an informal, yet rigorous academic environment. The workshop has been well-received and attendance has been strong. This proposal seeks funding to continue the success of the Heartland conference in fostering research in the environmental arena, while augmenting its format so as to enhance both the depth of discussion on topics of current policy concern and the quality of communications among conference participants.
Grant #: 832335-01-0
Funded Amount: $52,630
Period of Performance: 06/01/2005 – 05/31/2007
Awardee: Iowa State University
Principal Investigator: Catherine L. Kling
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-0, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Keith Sargent (566-2276)
Title: Climate Policy Without Cost
The Environmental Finance Center proposes to conduct a one and one half-day Environmental Economics Workshop, “Climate Policy Without Cost? Can Technology Solve the Climate Problem?” The workshop would present a synthesis of recent theoretical and empirical research on the microeconomics of technological change and draw out its implications for modeling the response of the US and world economies to alternative climate change policies. Participants will leave the workshop with: (1) a significantly enhanced understanding of the economics of technological change; (2) the information and background needed to evaluate the technological assumptions built into particular models; and (3) a broad perspective on the role of technology that would be useful when considering both priorities for future research and the implications of technological change for climate policy. The goal of the workshop is to bridge the gaps between: (1) research on innovation at the microeconomic level, (2) econometric measurements of technical change at the industry or economy-wide level, and (3) climate change policy.
Grant #: 832426-01-0
Funded Amount: $35,453 – funding shared with NCEE and USEPA, Office of Air and Radiation
Period of Performance: 05/01/2005 – 05/10/2006
Awardee: Syracuse University
Principal Investigator: Peter Wilcoxen
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-01, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Eric Smith – Office of Air and Radiation (202-343-9200)
Title: Managed Ecosystems and the Economics of Invasive Species
The proposed workshop will solicit papers to generate discussion among economists, other social scientists, ecologists, and biologists to further theoretical and empirical knowledge of the problems associated with invasive species prevention and mitigation policies and to identify key areas for further research. Three broad areas of research will be highlighted: (1) interactions between agricultural trade and invasive species policies; (2) incorporating ecology and biology into economic models for policy evaluation; and (3) examining the efficiency of policies and regulations for managing invasive species. The workshop will be open to papers examining such issues as the impacts of invasive species on managed and natural ecosystem services, commercially cultivated commodities, and valuable or endangered indigenous species; relative efficiency of alternative management, surveillance, and eradication policies; how trade agreements, increased trade, and travel have impacted the probability of invasive species introduction; the economic efficiency of exclusion programs in light of the increased risks of introduction; the characteristics of a cost-effective exclusion program; evaluations of tariffs and non-tariff barriers to international trade with respect to invasive species; evaluation of existing programs for preventing, managing, or eradicating invasive species; the efficiency of compensation programs for producer losses given eradication or mitigation policies; social welfare effects of invasive species; apportionment of responsibility for invasive species management among federal, state, and local governments; impacts of land-use changes, cropping patterns, other management decisions, etc. on the risk of and damage caused by invasions; cost-effectiveness of surveillance and early warning systems; and others of interest.
Grant #: 832308-01-0
Funded Amount: $24,990
Period of Performance: 03/01/2005 – 02/28/2006
Awardee: University of Maryland, College Park
Principal Investigator: Loretta Lynch
Award Type: Competitive Grant (solicitation: EPA-OPEI-NCEE-04-01, Environmental and Resource Economics Workshops)
NCEE Contact: Sabrina Ise-Lovell (566-2272)
Valuation of Ecological Resources: Integration of Ecological Risk Assessment and Socio-Economics:
The purpose of this grant is to support a workshop bringing together practitioners of ecological risk assessment, ecological/environmental economics, on the topic of "Valuation of Ecological Resources: Integration of Ecological Risk Assessment and Socio-Economics to Support Environmental Decisions." The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry periodically sponsors workshops known as Pellston Workshops, whose results are captured in book form. An earlier Pellston workshop on Ecological Risk Management noted that unless and until ecologists, ecological risk assessors, and the public recognize the need for a more quantitative assessment of value (economics) and what it can bring to the debate on what to protect and how to protect it, there will continue to be little or no consensus on scientific methodology to help decision-makers make ecological risk-based decisions (see Belzer, Chapter 6 in Stahl et al., 2001). This workshop will directly address the gap articulated by the earlier workshop. |
| Grant #: | 83097501-0 |
| Funded Amount: | $25,000 |
| Period of Performance: | 07/01/2003 - 04/30/2004 |
| Awardee: | Society for Toxicology and Chemistry
Pensacola, FL
Gregory Schiefer |
| Award Type: | Non-competitive Grant |
| NCEE Contact: | Brian Heninger (EPA ORD is administering) |
Workshops on Environmental Policy Issues:
This purpose of this grant is to support the AERE workshop program, a mechanism for discussing current, policy-relevant environmental and natural resource economics research issues. The program is geared to holding workshops on a focussed issue, relevant to regional policy concerns and research interests with presentations on state-of-the-art research. The workshops also bring together researchers with policy makers, for better dialogue. Participation by young professionals is also strongly encouraged. |
| Grant #: | PI - 8330601 - 0 |
| Funded Amount: | $30,000 |
| Period of Performance: | 06/01/2003 - 05/31/2006 |
| Awardee: | Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE)
Washington, D.C.
Ian W. H. Parry |
| Award Type: | Non-competitive Grant |
| NCEE Contact: | Keith Sargent |
Environmental Valuation Reference Inventory (EVRI):
The purpose of this cooperative agreement is to maintain and expand the Environmental Value Reference Inventory (EVRI), a searchable storehouse of empirical studies on the economic value of environmental benefits and human health effects. EVRI was cooperatively developed by Environment Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a tool to help policy analysts use the benefits transfer approach, a cost-effective alternative to doing new valuation research. Our participation in EVRI's development through this agreement grants access to all interested environmental economics researchers and policy analysts in the U.S. for the duration of the award. |
| Grant #: | X-83111301 |
| Funded Amount: | $40,000 |
| Period of Performance: | 08/01/03 - 08/01/04 |
| Award Type: | Non-competitive Cooperative Agreement |
| Awardee: | Environment Canada (Canadian Government)
Ottawa, Ontario
Greg MacComb |
| NCEE Contact: | Rich Iovanna |
2004 NAREA Workshop on Trade and the Environment
The purpose of this grant is to fund a workshop sponsored by the 2004 Northeast Agricultural and Resource Economics Association on "International Trade and the Environment." The objective of the workshop is to stimulate research and discussion to improve our understanding of the complex interrelationships between international trade, natural resource use, and the environment, particularly as they relate to agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. U.S. Executive Order 13141 and the U.S. Trade Act of 2002 require environmental assessments of trade agreements during the negotiation process. Workshop proceedings will be published in a special issue of Agricultural and Resource Economics Review (ARER) if accepted after the journal’s normal review process. |
| Grant #: | X7-83142201-0 |
| Funded Amount: | $20,000 |
| Period of Performance: | 08/01/03-07/29/04 |
| Award Type: | Non-competitive Grant |
| Awardee: | Northeast Agricultural and Resource Economics Association
James Shortle, The Pennsylania State University
University Park, PA |
| NCEE Contact: | Clay Ogg |
