Joel Ferguson

Announcement and Call for Papers for UC Berkeley conference and JDE special issue in honor of Professor Elisabeth “Betty” Sadoulet | Agricultural & Resource Economics

In honor of the late Betty Sadoulet, a conference is being held on the UC Berkeley campus. The conference invites submissions for papers by graduate students or early-career researchers on all topics in development economics.

Submit a paper by March 15: go.cega.org/are-CFP

Growth plays an extremely powerful role in determining conflict outcomes under climate change.

Growth-promoting policies provide a large additional social benefit in the form of reduced future conflict incidence in Africa.

Why irrigation infrastructure projects are key to food security and climate resilience in sub-Saharan Africa Expanding irrigation infrastructure in Senegal led to significant and sustained increases in cultivation rates and reduced sensitivity to temperature shocks.

🆕 Why irrigation infrastructure projects are key to food security and climate resilience in sub-Saharan Africa

Abdoulaye Cisse, Alain de Janvry @natureatcal.bsky.social, @joelferguson.bsky.social, @marcogn.bsky.social, Samba Mbaye, Elisabeth Sadoulet & Mame Mor: voxdev.org/topic/agricu...

Call for Papers: 23rd Midwest International Economic Development Conference. April 24-25, 2026. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Details: mwiedc.org Submit: editorialexpress.com/conference/m... #EconSky

I really like that we combined remote sensing and primary data collection in an interesting way in this project: RS showed us an issue and where it occurs, and we surveyed those affected about the causes. I’m hoping to do more at that intersection going forward

Next, we survey owners of land that hasn’t been cultivated in recent years to better understand what drives disuse. We find that, despite all of these lands being serviced by an irrigation project, farmers point to difficulty accessing water as one of the main drivers of disuse!

An image showing NDVI values in the Senegal River Valley with irrigation projects delimited.

First, we use over 3000 Landsat images of the SRV from 1985-2019 to classify land as cultivated or not at the 30m pixel level. This lets us answer questions like “How much does project completion increase cultivation rate?” and “What share of projects cultivate less than 1/3 of their area?”

We explore how large-scale irrigation infrastructure, which has expanded in the Senegal River Valley (SRV) to service over 100k ha, has altered the amount of land cultivated and patterns around cultivation and disuse. We combine administrative data on irrigation projects with two data sources.

“Irrigation infrastructure and satellite-measured land cultivation impacts: Evidence from the Senegal river valley” is now live at the JDE!

I’m really proud of the work that my coauthors - Abdou, Alain, @marcogn.bsky.social, Samba, Betty, and Mame Mor - and I put into this.

doi.org/10.1016/j.jd...

Climate change cuts global crop yields, even when farmers adapt - Climate Impact Lab A new study finds the global food system faces growing risks from climate change, even as farmers seek to adapt.

New Nature paper (open access!) from the Climate Impact Lab, led by Andy Hultgren (UIUC).

We are back! EEE Summer School @ Berkeley!
🔗 Info + application: www.auffhammer.com/summer-school
📅 Deadline: May 14 | Program: Aug 18–22 at Berkeley

We especially encourage early stage Ph.D. students with possible interest in EEE topics! Must be enrolled in North American Econ"ish" Ph.D. program.

A picture of me in front of Science Hall at the University of Wisconsin

I’m super excited to share that this fall I’ll join the faculty of University of Wisconsin in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies!

Special thanks to @marcogn.bsky.social @tedmiguel.bsky.social and Sol Hsiang for all their support throughout my PhD/postdoc and the job search

Assistant/Associate/Full Professor: Computational Earth System Science The College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences invites applications for multiple part-time (.75 FTE), 12-month, tenure-track/tenured Assistant, Associate or Full Professor positions (depending o...

🚨Job Alert

Earth System Modelers wanted at Oregon State University

Hiring multiple tenure-track/tenured faculty in Computational Earth System Science, at Assistant, Associate and/or Full Professor ranks. Deadline 15th April jobs.oregonstate.edu/postings/165...

The last time I visited my grandparents my grandpa came in and wrote something on the calendar. Turns out he’s been measuring precipitation there since 1991! Here are his measurements against PRISM

Applications open for the The Workshop in Environmental Economics and Data Science! This is a fantastic and fun small workshop and this year featuring the great Jen Burney as keynote. Applications due Jan 15th tweeds.io

What can policymakers do to help reduce the horribly costly impacts of climate change on conflict? We draw on our recent NBER WP to highlight 3 areas: strengthening the social safety net, reducing the sensitivity of income to weather shocks, and political inclusion.

Created this starter pack of scholars who have worked on economic causes and consequences of conflict. The list is inevitably non-exhaustive, so please let me know if you would like to be added to it (or know of someone who should be on the list).
go.bsky.app/PTSxCQf

Weather deviations linked to undocumented migration and return between Mexico and the United States | PNAS As the world’s climate continues to change, human populations are exposed to increasingly severe and extreme weather conditions that can promote mi...

Important PNAS article on the impact of climate change on migration by Garip et al.
Undocumented migration MX->US increases when communities experience droughts. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The Critical Role of Markets in Climate Change Adaptation Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

www.nber.org/papers/w24645
Light on math (I don’t think there’s any), heavy on economic intuition, covers a lot of ground

I’ve been saying Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson for so long my friend assumed they were my pick for this year

📣 AERE@OSWEET returns *this Friday* 10/11 at 2pm Eastern (11am Pacific) with 3 terrific talks on agriculture!

Presenters:
✨ Joel Ferguson (Stanford, @joelferguson.bsky.social )
✨ Na Zhang (UIUC)
✨ Micah Cameron Harp (Kansas State)

Register & learn more: cornell.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

📈📉 #EconSky

What makes for a “good” question from the audience in a research talk? Or (probably easier to answer) what makes for a “bad” question?

Say T=3 and D in {0,lo,hi}. My idea is in new DiD stuff with D in {0,1} everything is estimated based on cohorts - eg Di=(0,1,1), Dj=(0,0,1) - then averaging somehow

In this setting there’s a natural analogue of trajectories, eg Di=(0,lo,lo), Dj=(0,lo,hi). Seems like a similar logic could apply

Thanks for pointing me to that paper, definitely interesting! I don’t think it captures what I was thinking though. I also thought about it more and I think you would need to restrict HTEs within cohorts to make what I said in my 2nd response true

Oops, just realized that’s just the link to the search, but I think it should be the first result there

I’m not familiar with the Xu paper, are you referring to this one?

scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e...

If so, I’ll take a look and get back to you

There are potentially ways to leverage additional comparisons in this setting to get at effects of changes in treatment intensity. Eg two units treated with low intensity at the same time can be compared when one of them gets increased intensity later

Just some quick thoughts based on new DiD logic

Here’s how I think about complicated rollouts like this:

Instead of treatment cohorts like in the new DiD lit, there are treatment trajectories. Unique paths in time x intensity space are like cohorts

Since there are finite intensities, i think this is an easier problem than cont. treatments.

I recently remembered the time when I was doing a lit review for @seankhiggins.bsky.social in my first RA job and I told him about a cool paper I’d read in “some journal called ‘Econometrica’”

The lab really got a kick out of that one

Cool/interesting to see so many recent follows on here! I’ll try to make it worthwhile and post more