Amanda Ang

I am on the 2023-2024 job market. Please see my CV for more information about me.

My research focuses on how local conditions affect household responses to natural disasters, drawing on ideas from urban and environmental economics. In particular, I am interested in the “unintended consequences” of choosing to live or work in a given location. In my job market paper, an additional household moving into a location increases the risk of a wildfire occurring since majority of wildfire ignitions are caused by human activities. This externality is not taken into account when a household chooses where to locate and so we can study the effectiveness of policy solutions that seek to reconcile the social cost of natural disasters with the private benefit of living in a given location.

Since 2017, I have been actively involved in various organizations dedicated to providing mentoring and personal development for young women. In my free time, I enjoy poetry, philosophy and crossfit.

Publications

Should Congested Cities Reduce their Speed Limits? Evidence from São Paulo, Brazil. Journal of Public Economics, 2020. with Peter Christensen and Renato Vieira

Working papers

Paradise Lost: Population Growth and Wildfire Mitigation (Job Market Paper)

Abstract: Wildfires are enormously costly events. Human causes make up 85 % of wildfire ignitions in the US. This paper examines household location choice as a driver of wildfire risk. I estimate an inverted U-shaped relationship between population density and wildfires: locations with medium population density have the highest ignition rates. Incorporating this relationship into a quantitative spatial model of Los Angeles County allows me to examine the effects of climate migration and potential policy solutions on wildfire risk. Failing to account for the effect of density underestimates the cost of wildfires by up to 8 %. Limiting construction in areas prone to wildfires does not improve fire outcomes. However, a tax on residents in risky areas combined with lifting building restrictions in low-risk areas can mitigate the rise in wildfire-related costs associated with population growth.

The Impacts of Asian Immigrants on School Performance and Local Housing Markets in the U.S. with Eunjee Kwon and Siqi Zheng

Abstract: This study examines the influence of Asian immigrants on housing price appreciation, distinguishing between the effects of education and non-education factors, based on US county-level data (2009 – 2018). To address potential endogeneity concerns, instrumental variables are employed to account for Asian immigrants’ location choices and school performance outcomes. The results indicate that housing price appreciation associated with Asian immigrants is primarily observed in counties with the highest Asian population shares. Furthermore, the presence of Asian students contributes to improved academic performance among students of other races, with approximately one-third of the housing price appreciation linked to enhanced school outcomes.

Selected work in progress

Evaluating the Social Cost of Flooding in Developing Country Cities: Evidence from São Paulo with Antonio Bento and Peter Christensen

Abstract: A growing literature seeks to evaluate the resilience of transportation infrastructure in developing country cities and to target investments in infrastructure improvements. Much of this literature focuses on improved design, materials, and costs of resilient infrastructure, but relatively little is known about the economic benefits associated with reducing the impacts of weather events in a transportation system. This study presents some of the first estimates of the economic benefits associated with travel delays due to flood events in a developing country city. Our empirical strategy makes use of repeat observations of trip durations from Google’s traffic API to separately identify the general effects of precipitation events and the specific effects of delays that result specifically from infrastructure flooding. Our results suggest that the total economic effect of flood-induced travel delays in the city of Sao Paulo is 125 million USD per year, which is 0.06% of the GDP of Sao Paulo.

Education

University of Southern California | Los Angeles, CA
Ph.D. in Economics | August 2018 – Present

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Urbana, IL
M.S. in Applied Economics | August 2015 – August 2017
B.S. in Applied Economics | August 2011 – May 2015