Lunchtime Talks

Join us for talks at ISER from three finalists for ISER’s health economics post doctoral researcher position. Bita Fayaz, Ph.D. candidate from Lehigh University, will present, “How was Medical Care Utilization Affected by the Medicaid Primary Care Fee Bump,” on Monday, January 28, at 12 p.m.  Bita is an applied microeconomist with a specialization in health economics. Her research examines how individuals respond to incentives in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and how insurance and policy interventions influence the use of medical care. 

When: Tuesday, November 13, 12-1
Where: ISER Conference Room, Third Floor, 1901 Bragaw Street, Suite 301

Uncertainty is an unavoidable and challenging part of assessing impacts of future development activities. It is also vital to providing transparency in the decision-making process. Dr. Sanne Vammen Larsen, a visiting Fulbright scholar at ISER, will introduce the topic and draw on research results from Denmark and Greenland to shed light on the role of uncertainty in impact assessment, its implementation in practice and the implications for various stakeholders.

Dr. Larsen, a member of the Fulbright Arctic Initiative, is an Associate Professor at the Danish Centre for Environmental Assessment at Aalborg University in Denmark. Her research is focused on environmental assessment and planning mainly in Denmark and Greenland. She is spending six weeks with ISER conducting research for an Alaska case study on how uncertainty is dealt with, including the integration of local, indigenous knowledge. Part of her her Fulbright Arctic Initiative cohort is looking at the integration of local knowledge in decision-making surrounding sustainable economies.

Note: This talk will not be live streamed or recorded.

Staff from the State of Alaska Section of Chronic Disease Prevention will present the results of a simulation model of a $0.03-per-ounce- state excise tax on sugary drinks in Alaska. The simulation was conducted by the Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study (CHOICES) research team from the Harvard School of Public Health using Alaska BRFSS data and sugary drink prices.

When: Wednesday, September 26, 12 to 1
Where: ISER Conference Room, Third Floor, 1901 Bragaw Street, Suite 301

Note: This talk will not be live streamed or recorded.

Around the world, there is growing interest in decentralized sources of energy production and distribution. Costs of solar, wind, and energy-efficiency technologies have also been dropping, making them attractive alternatives to fossil fuels. But those changes disrupt the business model of utilities and present unique challenges and opportunities.

Martin Boucher, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan, will talk about his research on socio-technical energy transitions and discuss his preliminary thoughts about his work-in-progress, comparing transitions in three Northern cities: Saskatoon in Canada, Lulea in Sweden, and Anchorage.

When: Tuesday, May 22, 12 to 1

The Partnerships for Success Project is a five-year project intended to prevent and reduce non-medical use of prescription opioids, as well as use of heroin, among Alaskans ages 12 to 25. The state’s Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) is carrying out the project, working with community coalitions that develop local prevention strategies.

DHSS contracted with ISER’s Center for Behavioral Health Research and Services to evaluate the project. Bridget Hanson, the evaluation director, and Jodi Barnett, the lead project evaluator, talk about their work so far, to establish a baseline for measuring the project’s success over time.

Philip Grossman, this semester’s Rasmuson Chair of Economics at UAA, will talk about his recent work in experimental economics—looking at gender differences in the effectiveness of leaders, and in how followers assess the effectiveness of leaders. His experiment involved having people decide how much of a bonus to award men and women who gave them the identical investment advice. The results suggest that among equally effective leaders, women are assessed less positively and rewarded less generously than men. Join us at ISER to learn more about Dr. Grossman's research.

When: Thursday, November 9, 12 to 1

Surveys often ask people to assign a value to some specific thing, by estimating how much they’d be willing to pay for it. But there can be a difference between what people say they would pay, and what they would pay, if they actually had to buy something. Economists call this “hypothetical bias,” and they try various ways to overcome it. One way is telling respondents their answers are consequential—that is, their answers can potentially influence actions of agencies or organizations.

Qiujie “Angie” Zheng, an associate professor of economics at UAA, incorporated this notion of consequentiality in a choice experiment in 2015. She worked with colleagues in other U.S. and Chinese universities to survey more than 1,000 shoppers at supermarkets in three Chinese cities, to assess their willingness to pay for Alaska salmon. Currently, little Alaska salmon is available in China.

Join us at ISER to hear what Dr. Zheng learned about Chinese consumers' perceptions about Alaska salmon, and how they value specific characteristics of that salmon.

When: Friday, September 22, 12 to 1
Where: ISER Conference Room, Third Floor, 1901 Bragaw Street, Suite 301

Note: This talk will not be streamed or recorded.

Alaska households on average use more energy—and spend more for it—than households nationwide. But making houses more energy-efficient can reduce both how much energy Alaskans use and how much they spend for it. Also, making houses more energy-efficient may increase their sales price, if the energy savings are capitalized into the value of the houses.

Dominique Pride, a postdoctoral fellow at UAF's Alaska Center for Energy and Power, will talk about the results of two studies investigating the relationship between energy efficiency and single-family home prices in the Anchorage real estate market.

We apologize that Dominique Pride's lunchtime talk did not live-stream as we had planned. A similar presentation she did, discussing her research on valuing energy-efficiency in the Anchorage residential market, is available in its place.

Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula is just a few miles across the Bering Strait from northwest Alaska, and indigenous peoples traditionally traveled back and forth across the strait. But the border between Alaska and Chukotka was essentially closed for decades, during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Then, in the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union and took steps to improve relations with the West.

Some Alaskans took that change as an opportunity to re-open ties with the Russian Far East. In his new book, Melting the Ice Curtain, David Ramseur describes these Alaskans as “citizen diplomats,” and tells the story of how cooperation at the individual level between Alaskans and Russians did for a time build better relations between Alaska and the Russian Far East. David Ramseur is currently a visiting scholar in public policy at ISER, but at the time of thawing Alaska-Russia relations, he was the press secretary for Steve Cowper, then governor of Alaska. He traveled to Provideniya, in the Chukotka region, on the 1988 Alaska Airlines "Friendship Flight," which carried a group of Alaskans on a cultural exchange. Join us to hear him talk about this important time in Alaska-Russia relations.

The Municipality of Anchorage asked UAF's Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) to develop a climate action plan and an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions for Anchorage. Those documents will be included in a broad resilience initiative the city is currently working on. ACEP—in partnership with ISER and The Nature Conservancy—hired Jacob Shercliffe as a summer intern, to draft the two documents.

Jacob Shercliffe is an economics student at UAA. The staffs of ACEP, ISER, and The Nature Conservancy advised him as he drafted the action plan and the emissions inventory. Now he is ready to deliver the draft documents to the city, which will release them for public comment in October. In his lunchtime talk, Jacob will describe how he created the two documents and the progress he made. He'll also talk about how Anchorage residents can get involved in determining how the city deals with climate change.

When: Friday, August 18, 12 to 1 p.m.
Where: ISER Conference Room, Third Floor, 1901 Bragaw Street, Suite 301

Note: This talk will not be live streamed or recorded.