Publications

Causal Inference and Impact Evaluation

Ferraro, PJ, C. Wichman. Accepted. A Cautionary Tale on Using Panel Data Estimators to Measure Program Impacts. Economic Letters [RFF-DP-16-42.pdf]

Ferraro, PJ, JJ Miranda. Accepted. Panel Data Designs and Estimators as Substitutes for Randomized Controlled Trials in the Evaluation of Public Programs. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. [Ferraro Miranda JAERE Final Accepted.pdf]  Appendix [Ferraro and Miranda Panel Data Rep Online Appendix 2.doc]

Wallander, S., PJ Ferraro, N Higgins. Accepted. Addressing Participant Inattention in Federal Programs: A Field Experiment with the Conservation Reserve Program. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Börner, J, K Baylis, E Corbera, D Essine-de-Blas, PJ Ferraro, J Honey-Rosés, R Lapeyre, M Persson, S Wunder. 2016. Emerging Evidence on the Effectiveness of Tropical Forest Conservation. PLoS One. [Introductory article to special issue]

Rasolofoson, R, PJ Ferraro, G Ruta, M Rasamoelina, J Jones, H Larsen. 2016. Impacts of Community Forest Management on Human Economic Well-being in Madagascar. Conservation Letters.

McConnatchie, M, C Romero, PJ Ferraro, B van Wilgen. 2016. Improving Credibility and Transparency of Conservation Impact Evaluations through the Partial Identification Approach. Conservation Biology 30: 371-381. [COLLIN: If you can download final article, post the PDF instead. I don’t have it]

McConnatchie, M, B van Wilgen, PJ Ferraro, AT Forsyth, DM Richardson, M Gaertner, RM Cowling. 2016. Using Counterfactuals to Evaluate the Cost-effectiveness of Controlling Biological Invasions. Ecological Applications 26: 475-483. [COLLIN: If you can download final article, post the PDF instead. I don’t have it]

Baylis, K, J Honey-Rosés, J Borner, E Corbera, PJ  Ferraro, A Pfaff, P Davies, D de Blas, R Lapeyre, S Pagiola, M Persson, S Wunder. 2016. Mainstreaming Impact Evaluation in Nature Conservation. Conservation Biology 9: 58-64.

Ferraro, PJ, M Hanauer, D Miteva, J Nelson, S Pattanayak, C Nolte, K Sims. 2015. Estimating the Impacts of Conservation on Ecosystem Services by Integrating Modeling and Evaluation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112: 7420-7425.

Ferraro, PJ, M Hanauer. 2015. Through what Mechanisms do Protected Areas Affect Environmental and Social Outcomes? Invited article for Special Issue for the 350th Anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 370. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0267

Ferraro, PJ, R Pressey. 2015. Measuring the Difference Made by Conservation Initiatives: Protected areas and their environmental and social impacts. Introduction to Special Issue for the 350th Anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 370: DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0270.

Pressey, R, P Visconti, PJ Ferraro. 2015. Making Parks Make a Difference: Poor alignment of planning, management, and policy with protected-area impact, and ways forward. Invited article for Special Issue for the 350th Anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 370. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0280

Arriagada, R, EO Sills, PJ Ferraro, S Pattanayak. 2015. Do Payments Pay Off? Evidence from participation in Costa Rica’s PES program. PLoS One.  DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131544

Rasolofoson, R, PJ Ferraro, C Jenkins, J Jones. 2015.  Effectiveness of Community Forest Management at Reducing Deforestation in Madagascar. Biological Conservation 184: 271-277.

McConnachie, MM, BW van Wilgen, DM Richardson, PJ Ferraro, A Forsyth. 2015. Estimating the Effect of Plantations on Pine Invasions in Protected Areas: A case study from South Africa. Journal of Applied Ecology 52: 110-118.

Romero, C, F Putz, A Angelsen, J Börner, M Hanauer, M McConnachie, S Pattanayak, E Sills, S Wunder, PJ Ferraro. Comment on Gibbs et al. (Science, January 2015). 26 May, 2015

Ferraro, PJ, M Hanauer. 2014. Quantifying Causal Mechanisms to Determine How Protected Areas Affect Poverty through Changes in Ecosystem Services and Infrastructure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111:4332–4337.

- Accompanying Perspective piece by A. Agrawal, “Matching and mechanisms in protected area and poverty alleviation research”

Bolsen, T, PJ Ferraro, JJ Miranda. 2014. Are Voters More Likely to Contribute to Other Public Goods? Evidence from a Large-Scale Randomized Policy Experiment. The American Journal of Political Science 58(1): 17-30. [Bolsen et al ajps12052.pdf]

Ferraro, PJ, J Miranda. 2014. The Performance of Non-experimental Designs in the Evaluation of Environmental Policy: a design-replication study using a large-scale randomized experiment as a benchmark. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 107: 344-365.

Ferraro, PJ, MM Hanauer. 2014. Advances in Measuring the Environmental and Social Impacts of Environmental Programs. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 39: 495-517.

Bernedo, M, PJ Ferraro, M Price. 2014. The Persistent Impacts of Norm-based Messaging and their Implications for Water Conservation.  Journal of Consumer Policy (Special Issue “Behavioural Economics, Environmental Policy and the Consumer,” eds. L Reisch & C Sunstein) 37(3): 437-452.

Fisher, B, A Balmford, PJ Ferraro, L Glew, M Mascia, R Naidoo, T Ricketts. 2014. Moving Rio Forward and Avoiding Ten More Years with Little Evidence for Effective Conservation Policy. Conservation Biology 28(3): 880-882.

Ferraro, PJ, M Price. 2013. Using Non-pecuniary Strategies to Influence Behavior: evidence from a large-scale field experiment. The Review of Economics and Statistics 95(1): 64-73.

Ferraro, PJ, JJ Miranda. 2013. Heterogeneous treatment effects and mechanisms in information-based environmental policies: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment. Resource and Energy Economics 35: 356-379.

Ferraro, PJ, M Hanauer, D Miteva, G. Canavire-Bacareza, S Pattanayak, and K Sims. 2013. More Strictly Protected Areas are not Necessarily More Protective. Environmental Research Letters 8: 02511.

Andam, KS, PJ Ferraro, M Hanauer. 2013. The Effects of Protected Area Systems on Ecosystem Restoration: a quasi-experimental design to estimate the impact of Costa Rica’s protected area system on forest regrowth. Conservation Letters 6(5):  317-323.

Ferraro, PJ, K Lawlor, K Mullan, SK Pattanayak. 2012. Forest Figures: A review of ecosystem services valuation and policy evaluation in developing countries. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 6(1): 20-44.

Arriagada, R, PJ Ferraro, S Pattanayak, R, E Sills, S Cordero. 2012. Do Payments for Environmental Services Reduce Deforestation? A farm-level evaluation from Costa Rica. Land Economics 88: 382-399.

Miteva, D, SK Pattanayak, PJ Ferraro. 2012. Evaluation of Biodiversity Policy Instruments: What works and what doesn’t? Oxford Review of Economic Policy 28(6): 69-92.

Ferraro, PJ. 2012. Experimental project designs in the Global Environment Facility: designing projects to create evidence and catalyze investments to secure global environmental benefits. Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Washington, DC.

Ferraro, PJ, M Hanauer, KE Sims. 2011. Conditions Associated with Protected Area Success in Conservation and Poverty Reduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(34): 13913-13918.

Ferraro, PJ, JJ Miranda, M Price. 2011. Persistence of Treatment Effects with Norm-based Policy Instruments: evidence from a randomized environmental policy experiment. American Economic Review: papers and proceedings 101(3): 318–22.

Ferraro, PJ and M Hanauer. 2011. Protecting Ecosystems and Alleviating Poverty with Parks and Reserves: ‘win-win’ or tradeoffs? Environmental and Resource Economics 48:269–28.

Andam, KS, PJ Ferraro, KE Sims, A Healy, and MB Holland. 2010. Protected Areas Reduced Poverty in Costa Rica and Thailand. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(22): 9996-10001. (Andam, Ferraro & Sims share senior authorship)

Pattanayak, SK, S Wunder and PJ Ferraro. 2010. Show Me the Money: do payments supply ecosystem services in developing countries? Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 4(2): 254-274.

Pfaff, A, J Robalino, GA Sanchez-Azofeifa, KS Andam, and PJ Ferraro. 2009. Park Location Affects Forest Protection:  land characteristics cause differences in park impacts across Costa Rica. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 9(2), Article 5.

Arriagada, R, EO Sills, SK Pattanayak, and PJ Ferraro. 2009. Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods to Evaluate Participation in Costa Rica's Program of Payments for Environmental Services.  Journal of Sustainable Forestry 28(3): 343-367.

Ferraro, PJ. 2009. Counterfactual Thinking and Impact Evaluation in Environmental Policy. In Special Issue on Environmental Program and Policy Evaluation, M. Birnbaum & P. Mickwitz (Eds.). New Directions for Evaluation 122: 75–84.

Andam, KS, PJ Ferraro, A Pfaff, GA Sanchez-Azofeifa, and J Robalino. 2008. Measuring the Effectiveness of Protected Area Networks in Reducing Deforestation.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(42): 16089-16094. (Andam & Ferraro share senior authorship)

Ferraro, PJ, C McIntosh and M Ospina. 2007. The Effectiveness of Listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act: An econometric analysis using matching methods.  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 54(3): 245-261.

Ferraro, PJ and SK Pattanayak. 2006. Money for Nothing? A call for empirical evaluation of biodiversity conservation investments.  PLoS Biology 4(4): 482-488.

Special Issue: Editor

Measuring the difference made by protected areas: methods, applications and implications for policy and practice (with R. Pressey) Special Issue for the 350th Anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 2015

Conservation Performance Payments

Jindal, J Kerr, PJ Ferraro, B Swallow. 2013. Social Dimensions of Procurement Auctions for Environmental Service Contracts: Evaluating tradeoffs between cost-effectiveness and participation by the poor in rural Tanzania. Land Use Policy 31: 71-80.

Ferraro, PJ. 2011. The Future of Payments for Environmental Services. Invited article, Conservation Biology (25th Anniversary Issue) 25: 1134-1138.

Jack, BK, B Leimona, and PJ Ferraro. 2009. A Revealed Preference Approach to Estimating Supply Curves for Environmental Services: experimental field auctions and soil erosion control in Indonesia. Conservation Biology 23(3): 359-367.

Ferraro, PJ and H Gjertsen. 2009. A Global Review of Incentive Payments for Sea Turtle Conservation. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 8(1): 48-56.

Ferraro, PJ. 2009. Regional Review of Payments for Watershed Services:  Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Sustainable Forestry 28(3): 525-550.

Ferraro, PJ. 2008.  Asymmetric Information and Contract Design for Payments for Environmental Services.  Ecological Economics 65(4): 810-821.

Sills, EO, S Pattanayak, PJ Ferraro, and K Algers. 2006. Abordagens Análiticas na Avaliação de Impactos Reais de Programas de Conservação.  Megadiversidade 2(1-2): 39-49.

Ferraro, PJ. 2006. Response to Comment by Peter C.H. Pritchard. Marine Turtle Newsletter 111: 4-5.

Ferraro, PJ. 2005. Guest Editorial: An Economist’s Reflections on the 25th Annual Symposium for Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation: Empirical Program Evaluation and Direct Payments for Sea Turtle Conservation. Marine Turtle Newsletter 109: 2-6.

Ferraro, PJ, T Uchida and JM Conrad. 2005. Price Premiums for Eco-friendly Commodities: Are ‘green’ markets the best way to protect endangered ecosystems? Environmental and Resource Economics 32(3): 419-438.

Ferraro, PJ and RD Simpson. 2005. Protecting Forests and Biodiversity: are investments in eco-friendly production activities the best way to protect endangered ecosystems and enhance rural livelihoods?  Forests, Trees and Livelihoods 15(2): 2-10.

Ferraro, PJ and RD Simpson. 2005. Cost-Effective Conservation When Eco-entrepreneurs have Market Power.  Environment and Development Economics 10(5): 651-663.

Ferraro, PJ and A Kiss. 2003.  Will Direct Payments Help Biodiversity? Response.  Science 299 (28 March): 1981-1982.

Ferraro, PJ, and A Kiss. 2002.  Direct Payments for Biodiversity Conservation.  Science 298: 1718-1719.

Ferraro, PJ and RD Simpson. 2002.  The Cost-effectiveness of Conservation Performance Payments.  Land Economics 78(3): 339-353.

Ferraro, PJ. 2001.  Global Habitat Protection:  Limitations of development interventions and a role for conservation performance payments.  Conservation Biology 15(4): 990-1000. [Reprinted in special issue for International Year of Biodiversity: Conservation Social Science, April 2010, Conservation Biology]

Experimental Behavioral Science

Yoeli, E. et al. Accepted. Behavioral Science Tools for Energy and Environmental Policy. Behavioral Science and Policy.

CBEAR Behavioral Insights Briefs no1.-4 [co-authored with other CBEAR staff]

Castillo, M, PJ Ferraro, J Jordan, R Petrie. 2011. The Today and Tomorrow of Kids: time preferences and educational outcomes of children. Journal of Public Economics 95: 1377-1385. [Reprinted in Field Experiments, J. List & A. Samak (eds). The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics. Edward Elgar]

Ferraro, PJ and C Vossler. 2010. The Source and Significance of Confusion in Public Goods Experiments. B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 10(1), Article 53.

Ferraro, PJ. 2010. Know Thyself:  competence and self-awareness. Atlantic Economic Journal 38(2): 183-196.

Adji, A, J Alm, and PJ Ferraro. 2009. Experimental Tests of Ricardian Equivalence with Nondistortionary versus Distortionary Taxes. Economics Bulletin 29(4): 2556-2572.

Ferraro, PJ and RG Cummings. 2007. Cultural Diversity, Discrimination and Economic Outcomes:  an experimental analysis.  Economic Inquiry 45(2): 217-232.

Ferraro, PJ, D Rondeau, and GL Poe. 2003.  Detecting Other-regarding Behavior with Virtual Players.  The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 51(1): 99-109.

Conservation and Environmental Science

Tallis, H et al. 2014. Towards a Diverse Conservation Ethic. Nature 515: 27-28.

Sutherland, WJ, WM Adams, RB Aronson, R Aveling, TM Blackburn, S. Broad, G. Ceballos, IM Côté, RM Cowling, GAB da Fonseca, E Dinerstein, PJ Ferraro, E Fleishman, C Gascon, M Hunter Jr, J Hutton, P Kareiva, P, A Kuria, DW Macdonald, MacKinnon, K, Madgwick, FJ, Mascia, MB, McNeely, J, Milner-Gulland, EJ, Moon, S, Morley, CG, Nelson, S, Osborn, D, Pai, M, Parsons, ECM, Peck, LS, Possingham, H, Prior, SV, Pullin, AS, Rands, MRW, Ranganathan, J, Redford, KH, Rodriguez, JP, Seymour, F, Sobel, F, Sodhi, NS, Stott, A, Vance-Borland, K & Watkinson, AR. 2009. One Hundred Questions of Importance to the Conservation of Global Biological Diversity. Conservation Biology 23(3): 557-567.

Fisher, B, K Turner, A Balmford, R Brouwer, R Costanza, R de Groot, S Farber, P Ferraro, R Green, D Hadley, J Harlow, P Jefferiss, C Kirby, P Morling, S Mowatt, R Naidoo, J Paavola, B Strassburg, D Yu, M Zijlstra.  2008. Ecosystem Services and Economic Theory: Integration for policy-relevant research. Ecological Applications 18(8): 2050–2067.

Uchida, T and PJ Ferraro. 2007. Voluntary Development of Environmental Management Systems: Motivations and regulatory implications.  Journal of Regulatory Economics 32: 37-65.

Ferraro, PJ and T Uchida. 2007. Stock Market Reactions to Information Disclosure: new evidence from Japan’s Pollutant Release and Transfer Register. Environmental Economics and Policy Studies 8: 159-171.

Naidoo, R, A Balmford, PJ Ferraro, S Polasky, T Ricketts and M Rouget.  2007. Response to Hockley et al.: The merit of economic and biological measures in conservation planning. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22(6): 287-288.

Naidoo, R, A Balmford, PJ Ferraro, S Polasky, T Ricketts and M Rouget.  2006. Integrating Economic Costs into Conservation Planning.  Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21(2): 681-687.

Ferraro, PJ. 2005. Corruption and Conservation:  the need for empirical analyses. Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation 39: 257-259. [Invited by the editor]

Ferraro, PJ. 2004. Targeting Conservation Investments in Heterogeneous Landscapes:  A distance function approach and application to watershed management. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 86(4): 905-918.

Ferraro, PJ. 2003.  Conservation Contracting in Heterogeneous Landscapes:  An application to watershed protection with threshold constraints.  Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 32(1): 53-64.

Ferraro, PJ. 2003.  Assigning Priority to Environmental Policy Interventions in a Heterogeneous World.  Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 22(1): 27-43.

Azzaino, Z, J Conrad and PJ Ferraro. 2002.  Optimizing the Riparian Buffer:  Harold Brook in the Skaneateles Lake Watershed, New York.  Land Economics 78(4): 501-514.

Ferraro, PJ. 2002.  The Local Costs of Establishing Protected Areas in Low-income Nations:  Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar.  Ecological Economics 43(2-3): 261-275.

Op-Eds

Ferraro, PJ. The Free Market Case for Climate Science. Op-Ed, Bloomberg View, December 2016.

Ferraro, PJ. When Conservation Efforts End Up Using More Water. Op-Ed, Bloomberg View, 2 August 2016.

Ferraro, PJ. More Nudging, Less Shoving on the Road to Sustainability. SNAP.is/Magazine. 2014

Ferraro, PJ. Nature & Prosperity: the evidence we still need & the right questions to ask. SNAP.is/Magazine. October 2013

Banzhaf, HS and PJ Ferraro. Taxing the other smoke: pollution.  Op-ed. Atlanta Journal Constitution. March 2010

Ferraro, PJ. 2010. País que preserva o verde enriquece.  Revista Galileu. Popular article in July edition.

Working Papers and Research in Progress

Alpizar, F, PJ Ferraro. Evidence about the value of evidence: a randomized controlled trial of in climate change adaptation information dissemination. In progress.

Alpizar, F, M Bernedo, PJ Ferraro. The micro-behavioral economics of technology adoption for water conservation and climate change adaptation: engineers vs behavioral scientists. In progress.

Alpizar, F, M. Bernedo, PJ Ferraro. The role of risk and time preferences in climate change adaptation. In progress.

Bernedo, M., F Alpizar, PJ Ferraro. Risk and time preferences in individuals and married couples in Central America.

Earnhart, D, PJ Ferraro. Testing competing behavioral hypotheses of pollution control among private firms: a randomized field experiment in the chemical sector. In progress.

Earnhart, D, PJ Ferraro. Testing civic organization pressure on the behavior of polluting firms: a randomized field experiment. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, L Friesen, J Shimshack. Alternative enforcement strategies for pollution control laws in the United States: a randomized policy experiment. In progress (on hold).

Ferraro, PJ, Micheli, F. Protecting nature for its own sake or for humans? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial on coupled natural-human systems. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, J Manzella, S Frost. Supplemental Instruction in difficult college courses: a randomized controlled trial. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, K Messer. Anchoring and coherent arbitrariness among producers: a field experiment of defaults in a conservation contracting auction. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, M Hanauer, L Joppa, A Pfaff, R Pressey. Merging the fields of impact evaluation and conservation planning: a roadmap. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, F Rundhammer, R Tchernis. Conditions under which combining matching and regression designs outperform each design individually: a guide for applied empiricists. In progress.

Brandon, A., Ferraro, PJ, J. List, R. Metcalfe. M Price, F Rundhammer, M Price. Persistent effects of social nudges: evidence from capital investment in energy conservation. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, J Sanchirico, M Smith. State of the evidence for environmental and social impacts of marine protected areas. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, R Simorangkir. The impact of reducing poverty on deforestation and fires in Indonesia.

Ferraro, PJ, R Simorangkir, J Busch, J Engelmann. The impact of Brazil’s Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAM) on reducing deforestation: lessons for REDD from a synthetic control evaluation design. In progress.

Ferraro, PJ, JD Tracy. Behavioral nudges when people are aware that they are being nudged. In progress.

Law, EA, P Ferraro, P Arcese, BA Bryan, K Davis, A Gordon, MH Holden, G Iacona, R Marcos Martinez, C McAlpine, J Rhodes, JS Sze, KA Wilson. Better projections of conservation policy impacts. Projecting conservation policy performance. Working paper.

Messer, K, PJ Ferraro, W Allen. Conservation cost-sharing contract auctions. In progress.

Pressey, RL, PJ Ferraro, M Bottrill, V Kapos, G Mace, A Pfaff, P Visconti, M Obersteiner. The mismeasure of conservation.  Working paper.

Miscellaneous Publications and Research Reports

Zimsky, M, J Cavelier, PJ Ferraro, A Joshi, P Krishnan, J Mee, N Sekhran. 2012. Results of the GEF Biodiversity Portfolio Monitoring and Learning Review Mission, India: Enhancing outcomes and impact through improved understanding of protected area management effectiveness.  Global Environment Facility-Secretariat, Washington, DC.

Zimsky, M, PJ Ferraro, F Mupemo, J Robinson, and N Sekhran. 2010. Results of the GEF Biodiversity Portfolio Monitoring and Learning Review Mission, Zambia: Enhancing outcomes and impact through improved understanding of protected area management effectiveness.  Global Environment Facility-Secretariat, Washington, DC.

Wunder, S, S Wertz-Kanounnikoff, PJ Ferraro. 2010. Payments for Environmental Services and the Global Environment Facility: A STAP advisory document. Prepared on behalf of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Washington, DC.

Asquith, N, S Wunder et al. 2008. Payments for watershed services: the Bellagio Conversations. Fundación Natura Bolivia: Santa Cruz de la Sierra

Ferraro, PJ. 2007. Performance payments for sea turtle nest protection in low-income nations:  a case study from Tanzania. January, National Marine Fisheries Service, La Jolla, CA.

Ferraro, PJ and LO Taylor. 2005. Do Economists Recognize an Opportunity Cost When They See One? A dismal performance from the dismal science. B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (Contributions) 4(1), Article 7. [one of ten most downloaded articles at BE Press in 2005]

Hartshorn, G, PJ Ferraro, and B Spergel. 2005. Evaluation of the World Bank – GEF Ecomarkets Project in Costa Rica.  November, North Carolina State University.

Ferraro, PJ. 2001. Conservation performance payments: efficient investments for ecoregion conservation?  Sharing Across Boundaries (A Publication of the Conservation Strategies Unit of World Wildlife Fund) 3: 3.

Ferraro, PJ, with R Tshombe, R Mwinyihali, and JA Hart. 1997. Projets intégrés de conservation et de développement: un cadre pour promouvoir la conservation et la gestion des ressources naturelles.  Wildlife Conservation Society Working Paper No. 6.  Bronx, N.Y.:  Wildlife Conservation Society, 1997.