In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in funding to help developing countries adapt to climate change. As those funds increase, scholars and policymakers have been raising more questions about how such adaptations should be funded—and in particular about how adaptations to climate change should be linked with existing development policies. Maureen Biermann, a PhD candidate at Pennsylvania State University, is examining how a leading international institution at the United Nations is dealing with that issue as it finances climate-change adaptations. She spoke at ISER November 13, 2013.
News at ISER
Welcome to the ISER News and Announcements page, your hub for timely updates, industry insights, and the latest organizational highlights. Here, you can stay informed about upcoming events, important deadlines, and exciting achievements, all aimed at keeping the ISER community connected and engaged.
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ISER has now launched the Alaska Energy Data Gateway, a new online database with energy data—most of it at the community level—from across Alaska: https://akenergygateway.alaska.edu/ The site provides data from many sources, through a single access point. The data can be downloaded in a variety of file formats.
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Same-sex couples in 16 countries and 13 American states (as well as Washington, D.C.) can now legally marry, and other places are also considering making same-sex marriage legal. M.V. Lee Badgett, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has done considerable research in the U.S. and Europe on marriage equality among same-sex couples. She draws on that research to try to help bridge the gap between opponents and proponents of same sex marriage. Please join us at ISER to hear her talk about her work.
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Anyone who believes a child in Alaska is being neglected or abused can call the state Office of Children's Services, which records the allegation and determines whether to investigate it. A new paper by Diwakar Vadapalli and Virgene Hanna of ISER looks at trends from 2006 through 2012 in allegations of child abuse and neglect and in the share OCS decided to investigate. The authors found a sharp increase in the number of allegations, especially of neglect. The number of investigations also increased, but not by nearly as much—and the increase was entirely in investigations of neglect, while the number of investigations of abuse was virtually the same in 2012 as in 2006.
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Download the paper (PDF, 1.0MB)
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Gunnar Knapp has been appointed director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), after acting as interim director since January. He is a long-time professor of economics at ISER, widely respected for his studies of Alaska’s commercial fisheries and other aspects of the state’s economy.
ISER is part of UAA’s College of Business and Public Policy, and Rashmi Prasad, dean of the college, praised the appointment: “Dr. Knapp is uniquely qualified to lead ISER at this point in its history. In addition to his outstanding academic credentials, he has proven himself to be a leader among the CBPP faculty and in his role as interim director of ISER.”
Gunnar Knapp says he is honored to be named director, and sees his job as “an opportunity to work with wonderful colleagues on complex and fascinating social and economic issues—and to make a real difference in helping Alaskans understand and address those issues.”
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In recent times ISER has broadened its research capacity in economics and public policy by adding three new faculty members.
Diwakar Vadapalli is an assistant professor of public policy at ISER. His PhD in social welfare is from Case Western University. Before coming to ISER he worked as a community planner and local government specialist in rural Alaska.
Mouhcine Guettabi is an assistant professor of economics at ISER, with a PhD in economics from Oklahoma State University. His fields of specialization are regional and urban economics, applied microeconomics, and health economics.
Matt Reimer holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis. He is an assistant professor of economics at ISER, with interests in environmental and resource economics, focusing on fisheries policy.
Read more about the work these new faculty members are doing.
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On June 14, UAA hosted a roundtable discussion about the new national strategy for the Arctic region, which the Obama administration recently announced. That discussion brought representatives from the Obama administration and federal agencies to Anchorage to talk with with local and state officials, business people, and private citizens. To help federal officials better understand Alaska's economy, Gunnar Knapp, ISER's interim director, made a presentation, A Brief Introduction to Alaska's Economy.
Download the presentation (PDF, 7.4MB) with the accompanying audio recording (MP3, 11.83MB).
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Join us for a conversation with Todd Moss, editor of The Governor’s Solution and vice president of the Center for Global Development. The Governor’s Solution features the firsthand account of Governor Jay Hammond describing the birth of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, which has been paid to each state resident every year since 1982.
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Come to ISER and hear Chris Southcott of Lakehead University in Ontario discuss the initial findings of the Resources and Sustainable Development in the Arctic project. That project is bringing together researchers and community representatives from northern Canada and other circumpolar areas to identify potential ways of improving the well-being of northern communities affected by Arctic resource development. Past resource development in the Arctic has often created social and economic challenges for northern communities but provided little benefit for them. Dr.
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Alaska relies much more on air and water transportation than the Lower 48 states do, so it's especially vulnerable to the kinds of fuel price spikes that happened in mid-2008 and again between 2009 and 2010. A new report analyzes how higher fuel prices affect the costs of transportation in the state and work their way through the economy. It is the first study of this kind for Alaska. The authors are ISER economists Ginny Fay, Tobias Schwörer, Mouhcine Guettabi, and Jeffrey Armagost.