Research Topics

Research Topics

	Air Quality Resources for the Future research on air quality policy includes analysis of the costs and benefits of air quality regulations, the potential for innovative regulatory approaches, like incentive-based mechanisms, to achieve reductions fairly and efficiently, and the valuation of air quality improvements.

	Climate Change RFF researchers are investigating options for U.S. domestic climate policy at the state and federal levels, international trade and competitiveness issues, alternative international climate policy architectures, approaches for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and climate adaptation policy.

	Development and Environment Responding to the challenge of crafting effective environmental policies in settings where regulatory institutions are weak, RFF scholars assess the potential of policy approaches like public disclosure, economic incentives, and voluntary programs for reducing pollution in developing country settings; the environmental impacts of the small firms and how to mitigate them; and the causes of deforestation and possible policy responses.

	Ecosystem Management RFF research integrates economic and ecological information to evaluate management and conservation strategies for forest, fishery, water, and other natural resources. Work on ecosystem services includes the development of economically meaningful definitions of ecosystem services and research-driven recommendations to improve the performance of programs that provide payments for them.

	Electricity Electricity research at RFF focuses on the twin issues of meeting rising demand while at the same time constraining greenhouse gas emissions. RFF’s detailed electricity market model provides a laboratory to investigate incentives and likely outcomes of environmental and other policies affecting the supply of electricity, as well as efforts to improve end-use efficiency.

	Energy RFF research on energy focuses on key sectors, including electric power, transportation, and agriculture, as well as evaluating policy options to promote the development and implementation of new technologies. Key topics are energy policy options in the face of the climate challenge and geostrategic implications of U.S. dependence on oil.

	Environmental Regulation RFF scholars examine both the performance of specific regulatory programs and engage in comparative and theoretical studies of the performance of different regulatory approaches.

	Food and Agriculture Often working across discipline and in collaboration with colleagues from other institutions, RFF researchers are assessing options for strengthening public and private food safety risk management systems, water allocation between agriculture and urban use, and the interaction between energy markets and agricultural production.

	Forests Current forestry research topics include global timber markets, the potential for using forests for biofuels production, biotechnology and trees, and the role of forest policies in addressing climate change.

	Land Use RFF research on the way land is used and managed spans natural, rural, and urban settings. Issues range from tree cover loss in shade coffee areas of Mexico and El Salvador to wetlands policy in the United States to innovative policies to limit urban sprawl.

	Marine Resources RFF research on fisheries focuses on policies to address unsustainable and inefficient management practices stemming from a lack of property rights. Research questions include the evaluation of tradable quota programs, quota trading markets, the impacts of no-take areas on fisheries and marine biodiversity, and the potential for creating negotiated fishing "zones" in the world's seas.

	Policy Instruments RFF research on policy instruments includes theoretical and applied evaluation of command-and-control and incentive-based mechanisms, the comparative analyses of different regulatory strategies in a variety of settings, and the performance of alternative policy instruments like voluntary measures and public disclosure programs.

	Public Health By applying methods first developed in the environmental economics field to the analysis of health issues, RFF research is opening up new avenues for cross-disciplinary research and policy solutions. Areas of focus include the growing threat of drug resistance in disease-causing pathogens, setting disease control priorities and health policy in developing countries, and devising strategies to control and eliminate malaria.

	Research Tools RFF contributions in this area include improved approaches to valuation of environmental, health and other non-market goods, cost-estimation, risk and uncertainty analysis and communication, general equilibrium modeling, refinement of statistical methods, and large-scale analytic models.

	Risk Management Current research at RFF works to bridge the gap between theoretical advances in risk and uncertainty analysis and their real-world application by focusing on the methodology of quantifying and communicating uncertainty, and its application to policy challenges.

	Space Like other natural resources, space is polluted, congested, and scarce (e.g. certain orbits and regions of the electromagnetic spectrum), and its effective management is contentious among policymakers. Space research at RFF looks at policies to address these problems. Recent research has examined the public goods value of environmental information collected from satellites.

	Transportation The major focus RFF’s transportation research is on policies to reduce environmental and other problems caused by motor vehicles. Special emphasis is on policies to raise the private costs of driving to reflect its social costs. Other RFF research examines policies to promote alternatives to driving and higher fuel efficiency of the motor vehicle fleet.

	Waste Management and Site Cleanup Research at RFF looks at the full range of policy challenges related to hazardous and non-hazardous waste, as well as issues related to contaminated sites. Research includes work on brownfields, the federal superfund program, and nuclear weapon facilities.

	Water Research at RFF assesses the performance of policy instruments for improving water quality both in the U.S and in other countries. Recent studies have focused on the links between land use policy and water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and the performance of effluent fees in Colombia. Other areas of focus are wetlands policy, drinking water, and the valuation of freshwater.