Ken Bao

Biography

Ken is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests are in environmental and resource economics, broadly. In particular, his current work focuses on the regulation of non-point source pollution using group-based policies.

His job market paper aims to compare the cost-effectiveness of command-control policies with market incentive policies in a non-point source pollution setting using observational data to inform important model parameters. Other papers include (1) how to design a group-based policy that can ameliorate free-riding with minimal informational requirements on the part of the regulator in a non-point source pollution setting and (2) can standard payment for ecosystem service programs improve on cost-effectiveness by including a risk-based compensation scheme?