Laura Bakkensen

Associate Professor, School of Government and Public Policy

Associate Professor, Agricultural & Resource Economics (courtesy)

Natural Resource & Environmental Economics
Laura Bakkensen, Associate Professor

Dr. Laura Bakkensen is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy. She utilizes applied microeconomic and econometric techniques to study the economics of natural disasters, identifying current hazard risks and evidence of adaptation to damages and fatalities across the globe. Her research informs policy on insurance regulation, post-disaster aid, severe weather warnings, and public adaptation projects. Dr. Bakkensen received her Ph.D. in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from Yale University. She was previously a visiting researcher at the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change in Venice, Italy and received a Fulbright Teaching Grant to South Korea. In 2017, she was awarded a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellowship.

Degrees

  • Ph.D. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. Yale University. 2014.
  • M.Phil. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. Yale University. 2012.
  • M.Sc. Environment and Development, with Merit. London School of Economics and Political Science. 2007.

Classes Taught

  • PA484/584: Environmental Management
  • PA553: Policy Analysis I
  • PA554: Policy Analysis II
  • PA555: Statistics for Public Policy II
  • POL684: Causal Inference

Recent Publications

Selected Publications:

Bakkensen, L., and Ma, L. 2020. Sorting Over Flood Risk and Implications for Policy Reform. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 104:102362.

Bakkensen, L., and Schuler, P. 2020. A Preference for Power: Willingness to Pay for Energy Reliability Versus Fuel Type in Vietnam. Energy Policy. 144: 111696.

Bakkensen, L., Ding, X., and Ma, L. 2019. Flood Risk and Salience: New Evidence from the Sunshine State. Southern Economic Journal. 85(4): 1132-1158.

Bakkensen, L., Fox-Lent, C., Read, L., and Linkov, I. 2017. Validating Resilience and Vulnerability Indices in the Context of Natural Disasters. Risk Analysis. 37(5): 982-1004.

Bakkensen, L. and Mendelsohn, R. 2016. Risk and Adaptation: Evidence from Global Hurricane Damages and Fatalities. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. 3(3): 555-587.

Bakkensen, L., and Larson, W. 2014. Population Matters When Modeling Hurricane Fatalities Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111(50): E5331-E5332.

Mendelsohn, R., Emanuel, K., Chonabayashi, S, and Bakkensen, L. 2012. The Impact of Climate Change on Global Tropical Cyclone Damage. Nature Climate Change. 2(2): 1-5.