Spencer Banzhaf
Professor Economics Economics, Urban Studies Institute- Education
PhD, Economics, Duke University
- Biography
Banzhaf’s primary field of study is environmental policy analysis, especially related to the urban environment (such as sprawl and land use) and to energy and air pollution (including effects on ecosystems as well as urban environments). One common theme in his work is the interactions among local environmental amenities, local real estate markets, and the demographic composition of cities. For example, he has studied the way these social mechanisms interact to drive the correlations between pollution and poor households, as described by the “Environmental Justice” movement.
Banzhaf also uses tools from these models to gain insights into people’s values for the natural environment and for other public goods that are not traded in markets. In related work, he suggested ways to measure and construct indexes of ecosystem services.
He is a professor in the Department of Economics.
- Publications
Selected Publications:
1. H.S. Banzhaf and R.P. Walsh, “Segregation and Tiebout Sorting: The Link between Place-Based Investments and Neighborhood Tipping,” Journal of Urban Economics, 2013.
2. H.S. Banzhaf and W.E. Oates, “On Fiscal Illusion in Local Public Finance: Re-examining Ricardian Equivalence and the Renter Effect,” National Tax Journal, 2013.
3. H.S. Banzhaf, ed., The Political Economy of Environmental Justice, Stanford University Press (2012).
4. H.S. Banzhaf and B.A. Chupp, “Fiscal Federalism and Interjurisdictional Externalities: New Results and an Application to US Air Pollution,” Journal of Public Economics, 2012.
5. H.S. Banzhaf and R.P. Walsh, “Do People Vote with their Feet? An Empirical Test of Tiebout’s Mechanism,” American Economic Review, 2008 .
6. J. Boyd and H.S. Banzhaf “What are Ecosystem Services? The Need for Standardized Environmental Accounting Units,” Ecological Economics, 2007.
7. H.S. Banzhaf, “Green Price Indices,” Journal of Environmental Economics & Management, 2005.