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Jacob Gellman

@jacobgellman.com
300 followers 238 following 85 posts

Assistant Professor at Oregon State University. Research: Economics of climate risk and adaptation. jacobgellman.com.

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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 01/10/2026
Starting from a low baseline in the Pacific Northwest (i.e. historically a lot of hydro), but both Oregon and Washington have actually increased the carbon intensity of their electricity since 1990.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 29/09/2026
What is the cost of hurricane evacuation? We structurally estimate a travel cost model using data on hurricanes, evac. orders, and billions of obs of cell phone movement. Welfare costs average 55% as a share of mortality costs. (w/ Hennighausen, Watson, Berry.) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 24/09/2026
I'm guessing Portland's declining rents have something to do with Nike and Intel layoffs, but it's not out of line with some other key metros in the West e.g. SEA, SF, LA, DEN, PHX. Meanwhile the Northeast and Midwest are surging. www.apartmentlist.com/research/ren...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 23/09/2026
Who gets federal disaster assistance? Kris Smith and Bill Daigle at Headwaters Econ rounded up PDFs from FEMA Preliminary Damage Assessment and turned them into usable county-level data. headwaterseconomics.org/natural-haza...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 19/05/2026
Hmm, wasn't there a famous fire there in the 90s? No, that must have been the *Oakland* Hills fire just to the south. Completely different.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 18/05/2026
For some reason I was not aware of this FEMA dataset, USA Structures. It's shown in the new Qin and Voorheis (2026) NBER working paper about flood insurance. Parcel outlines, address, dwelling type, and other information for the whole country. gis-fema.hub.arcgis.com/pages/usa-st...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 10/12/2025
See also Watson, Guettabi, Reimer (2020), "Universal Cash and Crime" in ReStat.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 04/12/2025
Prospective PhD student interested in environmental, agricultural, or development economics? Consider applying to Oregon State University. Video explainer on our PhD program: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 27/10/2025
These are huge effect sizes.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 16/10/2025
M. Nolan Grey has a great breakdown of California's SB 79, the bill signed last Friday to upzone neighborhoods and add housing near transit. mnolangray.substack.com/p/everything...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 29/09/2025
Increased immigration to the United States since 1965 may have increased innovation and wages by 5 percent. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 04/09/2025
Good infographic:
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 19/08/2025
I was not aware that a major driver of Indonesian deforestation is... American RV demand www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/w...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 02/08/2025
I didn’t appreciate that a downtown MAX tunnel in Portland would speed up *the whole system* by alleviating the main choke point. Cool video about it: youtu.be/OF2-lnj8vEQ
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 31/07/2025
What prompts interest in climate change? Batzer et al. explore Google search data to answer. • Heatwaves drive interest more than wildfires or hurricanes. • Climate change interest is seasonal. • Search interest jumps temporarily after extreme weather events.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 22/07/2025
Top states by EV or plug-in electric hybrid share (as of 2023): CA: 4.5% DC: 3.8% HI: 3.0% WA: 2.8% OR: 2.4% NJ: 2.4%
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 13/06/2025
Rent freezes are a major part of Zohran Mamdani's platform for NYC mayor. A nice review of the literature on the effects of rent control is Kholodilin (2024, J. Hous. Econ.) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 18/04/2025
First Street Foundation projected unhealthy air days over the next 15 years:
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 14/04/2025
One consequence of restrictive development in urban cores: Most of the employment growth in the western US since 1990 has taken place in high wildfire hazard areas. Via Joiner, Walls, Wibbenmeyer 2025. media.rff.org/documents/Re...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 31/03/2025
People have very low willingness to privately and voluntarily reduce their carbon footprint. Via Dechezleprêtre et al. (2025), "Fighting Climate Change: International Attitudes toward Climate Policies" www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 27/03/2025
What’s the longest footnote you have ever read
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 25/03/2025
The funny thing about the logged x-axis is it shows that utility is concave in wealth
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 24/03/2025
This is so odd to me. CoreLogic was a much better name.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 24/03/2025
Political Ideology and US EV adoption, by Davis, Li, Springel. Over 2012-23, EV adoption was driven by left-leaning areas, suggesting challenges in wider adoption. Will be interesting to see how Elon Musk might drive apolitical and right-wing consumers to adopt EVs. www.nber.org/papers/w33591
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 19/03/2025
Earth's orbit is an open access resource. Satellites debris creates congestion and, unchecked, could render regions of orbit unusable ("Kessler syndrome"). @akhilrao.bsky.social and Rondina (2025) characterize the conditions under which this could occur. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 17/03/2025
Cool results by @reidtaylor.bsky.social, Erich Muehlegger. "The Effects of Competition in the Retail Gasoline Industry" • Entry of gas stations lowers nearby prices. • Effects are persistent. • Effects decline w/ distance. • No effect following nearby exits. www.nber.org/papers/w33569
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 13/02/2025
Thinning and prescribed burns mitigate the severity of future wildfires. But we have lacked great cost estimates, which are important for prioritization of operations. New paper from D. Wear, M. Wibbenmeyer, and Y. Zhu quantifies these costs throughout California. media.rff.org/documents/WP...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 03/02/2025
First Street Foundation estimates that "unrestricted risk-based insurance pricing would drive a 29.4% increase in average premiums by 2055 -- comprising an 18.4% correction for current underpricing and an 11% increase from growing climate risks." assets.riskfactor.com/media/The%20...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 10/01/2025
What are the economic effects of wildfire smoke? Matt Wibbenmeyer and I recently reviewed the impacts on health, mortality, labor markets, and measures of general well-being. Just published in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (REEP): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 08/01/2025
Preventive management, prescribed burns, vegetation treatment, buffers around communities, building codes, and not building in high risk areas to begin with...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 08/01/2025
Palisades fire: - 30,000 residents evacuated - 13,000 structures under threat - 28,300 households without power - Power preemptively shut off for 15,000 more utility customers in SoCal apnews.com/article/wild...
Water is dropped on the advancing Palisades Fire by helicopter in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 13/12/2024
The business school at UAA is hiring and they are open to economists, especially data science types. It's one floor up from the Econ Department, which is a strong group of research-oriented faculty. Plus Alaska is a great place to live. careers.alaska.edu/jobs/assista...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 25/11/2024
Estimating that *twenty-one* percent of people are trans is crazy for an *average* poll response.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 18/11/2024
"The Value of Statistical Life for Seniors" by Ketcham, Kuminoff, and Saha (posted today) derives new VSLs that are specific to age, health, income, education. Immediately relevant for any paper estimating mortality from e.g. Medicare data. nber.org/papers/w33165
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 10/11/2024
Project 2025 describes NOAA as a primary component "of the climate change alarm industry" and said it "should be broken up and downsized." It calls for "commercializing forecast operations." www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 28/10/2024
Plans are gaining speed! ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/211...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 29/09/2024
1. The US is producing more oil than any country in history. 2. These y-axes are at very different scales.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 26/09/2024
Pretty cool dataset! registry.opendata.aws/dataforgood-...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 26/09/2024
More evidence on the social ills caused by legalized sports betting. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 26/09/2024
It's been an interesting month for AI-related papers in economics. The latest I've seen: Using AI to search for instrumental variables. arxiv.org/abs/2409.14202
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 20/09/2024
CO2 price outperforms EJ policies on air quality in disadvantaged communities: "Disadvantaged communities receive much of their power plant pollution from distant plants, and a uniform price on emissions has a big cost advantage." www.rff.org/publications...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 19/09/2024
Retweet beartooththeatre.filmbot.com/special_even...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 19/09/2024
Makes sense! swopec.hhs.se/lunewp/abs/l...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 17/09/2024
We spend a lot of time talking about how restrictive zoning in central cities reduces housing supply and so it’s interesting to see this paper also document the role of large minimum lot sizes in reducing supply in suburban/exurban development. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 13/09/2024
In Oregon, it seems like the "young" and populous counties losing population are driving a change in the composition of the state's age. Figures via John Horvick (DHM) and @lehnerjw.bsky.social.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 12/09/2024
Tangentially related, but I'm reminded of all the people I know in academia whose parents have PhDs.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 12/09/2024
Nice one from @justinwolfers.bsky.social.
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 12/09/2024
Upzoning increases housing affordability: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 09/11/2023
"Where" Californians are moving and "Which" Californians are moving www.latimes.com/california/s... www.ppic.org/blog/racial-...
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Jacob Gellman @jacobgellman.com · 20/09/2023
“How are we going to fit all our figures into this natural science article?” Don’t worry I have a workaround
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