I have worked on several environmental policy issues.  I am currently (updated August 2012) examining or have examined in past research:

• Recreation Demand Since doing my PhD dissertation with Edward Morey on acid rain in the early 1980's, my work in this area has continually tried to tie microeconomic theory and applied econometrics together. One of the most important papers was with my then Reno colleague J. Scott Shonkwiler, see our paper in American J. of Agricultural Economics in 2000. Many papers are available on request, and see my CV for publications that you can probably download straight from websites for various electronic journals. Some fun papers are on rock climbing (papers in Land Economics (2002), American J. of Agricultural Economics , and in Risk Analysis (1997) , and you can see Therese Grijalva's website for more information on that (Therese is in the Dept. of Economics, Weber State). I have also recently thought about "risky" recreation. See this paper: "Are Climbers Fools?: Modeling Risky Recreation" Paul Jakus, Mary Riddel, and W.D. Shaw. in The New Economics of Outdoor Recreation 2005, Nick Hanley, W.D. Shaw, Robert Wright (coeditors) Finally, I haven't stopped doing recreation stuff - see "papers" for a fairly recent one with Hwa Kim and Richard Woodward in Land Economics (November 2007). This one models Gulf of New Mexico recreational fishing;
  
  
• Transportation. Recent research includes work on transportation issues. One hot issue is red light, or traffic safety, cameras that cities in the U.S. and elsewhere use in an effort to catch those who run red lights, but which also are controversial as "money machines" for cities. (See the papers with Lindsey Higgins in Transportation Research , and in Accident Analysis and Prevention , both in 2011). A&M's Mark Burris (Civil Engineering) and Sunil Patil (now at Rand Corporation) did considerable work on managed lanes in the Houston area, and I helped... (see paper published at Transport Policy and also another one was published in 2011 at the the journal Transportation Planning and Technology ); New work on managed lanes with Mark and a recent PhD in CE, Prem Chand Devarasetty, is coming out in Transportation Research Record and another was published in Transportation Research , in the October issue (2012).
  
  
• Health/Cigarette Smoking. In a recent paper (coming out in Journal of Aging and Physical Activity 2012) Richard A. Dunn, Michael Trousdale and I studied whether climate would affect walking behavior for the elderly. This is important as walking is the main form of physical activity that the elderly get, and because climate change may make weather less desirable for walking. Steve Yen led the charge on work we did on Chinese smokers and their own reports about their health (see the paper in China Economic Review , 2010. With Mary Riddel and Paul "Milty" Jakus, I have another recent one involving smokers' behaviors at Contemporary Economic Policy -- see the July 2012 issue. Andrew Leidner, Steve Yen, and I are looking into connections between perceived smoking harm and smoking participation using a large data set. The other arsenic and air pollution work mentioned below also are behavioral or economic papers about human health or health risks.;
  
  
• Water Quantity resource economics issues. Another common theme in much of my work has been water resource issues. Recent research focuses on water quality but work in the middle and late 1990's examined values that recreational users of lakes have for water quantity. A contingent valuation study, mainly by my graduate student then, Eric Huszar, looked at the value of water when it was a positive externality to downstream users. I also did some work on water metering in the City of Reno, and with Molly and Jae Espey (both now at Clemson University), conducted a meta analysis of the price elasticity of demand for water. Also, see my new textbook on Water Resource Economics (2006), and the recent paper with Richard Woodward on instream flows and uncertainty ( American J. of Agricultural Economics , August 2008);
  
  
• Ecological Restoration. Non-market valuation has taken a back seat to "Habitat Equivalency Analysis" in evaluationg environmental/resource restoration in the United States and is growing in use throughout Europe. Graduate student Marta Wlodarz and I take a good, hard look at HEA in our paper, forthcoming in the science journal Ambio .
  
  
• Time. I've long been interested in how people allocate their time and how that time should be valued in empirical work. See my early paper in Land Economics (1992), the later ones with Pete Feather in Land Economics (1999), J. of Environmental Economics and Management (1999) and Economic Inquiry (2000);
  
  
• Air Pollution (Ozone). With Mark Eiswerth and Steven Yen, we have two published papers on how asthma patients respond to ground level ozone pollution. This was old data, but we found some interesting things doing new modeling. See Review of Economics of the Household (2004);
  
  
• Nuclear waste storage and transportation. With Mary Riddel, we have modeled a sample of individuals' perceived mortality risks for the storage and transportation of nuclear wastes. The program examined relates to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository Program. See papers in the Journal of Regional Science and Land Economics (2003), and in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (2006), Vol. 32 (March issue); 131-150
  
  
• Arsenic in Drinking Water. With Dr. Mark Walker and several others including Paul Jakus and Mary Riddel, we explored how people respond to the presence of arsenic in drinking water. New papers on arsenic risks were part of the U.S. EPA national study (2005-2008) and several are available on the papers page now (see the paper in Water Resources Research , 2009 and the more recent one in Risk Analysis , October, 2010. We thought the last one might be the CEP (2012) paper, but it looks like work is underway on one more!
  
  
• Hurricanes/Natural Hazards. Using a small exploratory grant from the National Science Foundation, we collected data on Hurricane Katrina and Rita evacuees. "We" more or less includes Bill Neilson, Mary Riddel, and Richard Woodward, along with Justin Baker, and Sam Brody. We conducted a choice experiment to see how they might choose among possible places to live, with hurricane risks as a factor. We also wanted to see if by contacting these people a year later, their perceptions of risk had changed over time. You can take a look at these papers. For example, see the paper on risks in the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Risk Research (January 2009), and two on location choice in the journals, Natural Hazards Review , 2009 and in the International Journal of Emergencies and Mass Disasters , 2010. These last two use the stated choice experiment approach.
  
  
• Experimental Economics. With Dr. Rudy Nayga and graduate student Andres Silva, we conducted an experiment on students to see if they would bid in auctions for a food product that would reduce risks far into the future. See our paper in the peer-reviewed on-line journal, Economics Bulletin , Vol. 4 , No. 17. Another, more recent, experimental paper is in the journal, Ecological Economics , 2011, with Bob Berrens and Therese Grijalva on focuses on choices related to preservation of species under uncertain benefits. Yet another is with my Italian colleague Simone Cerroni and involves risk elicitation and climate change information. It will be coming out in the October 2012 issue of Forest Policy and Economics , and with Simone's colleague, Sandra Notaro, we have a paper on pesticide risks published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization , 2012 (September issue).
  
  
• Uncertainty, Perceived mortality risks and risk elicitation Much recent work explores how individuals make decisions under risk and also under uncertainty. See the theoretical paper by Paan Jindapon and me, in Economics Letters , Sept. 2008. I am very interested in how we can elicit subjective estimates of probability that people have. I am contributing risk/uncertainty pieces to two "environmental and natural resource" encyclopedias: one edited by Jayson Shogren, and the other edited by Tim Haab and John Whitehead. Also, here is a fun little essay Rich Woodward and I have written, published in the November 2007 AERE newsletter "Three Ships that Pass in the Night: Risk, Ambiguity, and the WTP/WTA Disparity"

Papers from these efforts can be requested, some downloaded at SSRN, and or you can get some of them at the journal's website at: http://agecon2.tamu.edu/people/faculty/shaw/papers.htm

I have also worked extensively on several other resource and economics issues. Check out the Natural Resource and Environmental Economics Worksgroup's webpage: http://agecon.tamu.edu/research/REEfield.shtml

Teaching Interests I teach in the departmental graduate program.  The core of this involvement is with the course AgEc 695.  I will try to put some teaching materials up on the website also: http://agecon2.tamu.edu/people/faculty/shaw/classes.htm. .