Publications
“The Canary in the Coal Decline: Appalachian Household Finance and the Transition from Fossil Fuels” (with Joshua Blonz and Erin Troland) Journal of Financial Economics, 2026, Vol. 175, 104167, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2025.104167.
Media: Energy Institute Blog, BLS Monthly Labor Review
“The Local Economic Impact of Natural Disasters” (with Daniel J. Wilson) in Journal of Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2025, Vol. 23, No. 6, 1667-1704. https://doi.org/10.1086/735533.
Media: Wall Street Journal
“Pricing Poseidon: Extreme Weather Uncertainty and Firm Return Dynamics“, (with Mathias Kruttli and Sumudu W. Watugala), in Journal of Finance, 2025, Vol. 80, No. 2, 783-832. https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.13416.
“Sellin’ in the Rain: Weather, Climate, and Retail Sales“, in Management Science, 2023, Vol. 69, No. 12, 7151-7882.
Final accepted working paper, online appendix
“Divest, Disregard or Double Down? Philanthropic Endowment Investments in Objectionable Firms“, in American Economic Review: Insights, 2019, Vol. 1, No. 2, 241-256.
Press Mentions: Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist
“Discounting Behavior and Environmental Decisions” (with Richard T. Carson), in Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, 2009, Vol. 2, No. 2, 112-130.
Working Papers
“Flooding the Market? A Method for Examining Housing Market Outcomes After Discrete Shocks“ (with Brian Seok)
ABSTRACT: Shocks can not only affect home market values but also lock in homeowners and shift the composition of homes that transact. We present a new method for examining these outcomes and home price responses to discrete local shocks. Our approach is motivated by a puzzling divergence in empirical findings on price effects of natural disasters and by a simple theoretical framework we present to illustrate how lock-in and composition shifts can affect home price effect estimates. Our method leverages listings started shortly before an exogenous shock, before the shock influences either the decision to list or the list price, which captures unobservables that the homeowner considers. Apply our method to highly granular on Atlantic hurricanes spanning 2002-2018, we find that they cause lock-in, composition shifts, and negative price effects for flooded, nearby, and regional homes with and without elevated foundations. Using the same setting and granular data, we show that traditional approaches like repeat sales and hedonic pricing methods can yield positive price effect estimates, which could be explained by sales composition shifts.
Brigitte Roth Tran, Ph.D. 