Teaching Responsibilities

• FOR 3434 Forest Economics Field Laboratory
• ECON 4014 Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
• FOR 5415 Dynamic Optimization and Natural Resource Economics
• FOR 3424 Forest and Resource Economics

Selected Research Activities

• “Economics of Forest Resources,” by Amacher, Ollikainen, and Koskela, will be published by The MIT Press, Cambridge, USA.  This graduate level textbook/research handbook surveys most areas in forest economics where a derivative or integral has been evaluated with purpose, with special focus on advancements made within the last 30 years.  Both deterministic and stochastic models are covered, in addition to problems with special relevance to policy instruments.  The tentative publication date is May of 2009. 

  Preface; Chapter 1: A Brief History of Forest Economics Thought; Chapter 2: Faustmann Rotations Models; Chapter 3: Amenities and Hartman Rotations Models; Chapter 4: Two Period Life Cycle Models; Chapter 5: Socially Optimal Forest Policy Design; Chapter 6: Deforestation Problems and Models; Chapter 7: Biodiversity; Chapter 8: Forest Age Class Based Modeling; Chapter 9: Uncertainty to Two Period Models; Chapter 10: Catastrophic Risk; Chapter 11: Stochastic Rotations Models; Chapter 12: Dynamic Forest Models

• The role of natural resources in mitigating political, environmental, and health shocks to extremely poor households in Southeastern Africa (2006 – 2011).  I have begun collaboration on a new grant received from the National Science Foundation to study the role of natural resources in mitigating political, environmental, and health shocks among extremely poor households in Mozambique and Uganda. The work is collaboration between Virginia Tech, Woods Hole Research Center, Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, and Dartmouth University. One special focus is the revitalization of the Gorongosa National Park and its importance in alleviating shocks to subsistence households in both embedded and nearby village economies. Shocks due to war, famine, health, and resource condition changes will be examined. Several PhD students will be involved in a multi-disciplinary setting that encompasses health professionals, geo-spatial experts, economists, historians, and ecologists.
• Feedbacks among forestry, agriculture, and fire in Amazonia (2003 – 2008).  This project, also funded by the National Science Foundation, is a multi-institutional multiyear research project that includes ecologists, economists, political scientists, and land use specialists from Virginia Tech, Woods Hole Research Center, Boston University, Yale University, IPAM (Brazil), and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. The work focuses on development of models explaining deforestation, particularly through understanding the behavior of subsistence smallholders and patterning of forest industry expansion on new and future Amazon forest frontiers. We are ultimately interested in how these respond to various policy scenarios, market shifts, and government programs. The logging and smallholder models being developed at Virginia Tech will eventually be integrated into a spatially explicit model of development and logging expansion to predict patterns of deforestation over time.
• Bio-energy and forests (2006-2009).  This is a multiyear collaboration between Virginia Tech, University of Florida, and the University of Arkansas, funded under the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Agriculture Bio-energy Initiative. The purpose is to study incentives of biotechnology adoption on non-industrial forest land. The project involves understanding the incentives for landowners to adopt various forms of management to produce bio-energy alternatives, and integrating this into a land use model to evaluate the design and targeting of policy instruments to achieve various biotechnology production goals. The importance of risk in emerging markets and risks to biotechnological improvements will also be studied. Another important facet of the research is integrating the microeconomic aspects of landowner behavior with changes in regional economic indicators to estimate welfare changes from bio-energy adoption and application of policy instruments.
• Economics of forest threats:  My work here covers multiple projects focusing on both private and public management of fuel reduction, fire prevention, and fire suppression, in both urban and rural interfaces. The purpose is to determine not only the mechanisms explaining why landowners choose to undertake or not undertake fuel reduction, but also to embed this behavior into models that facilitate the design of policies to reach various fuel reduction and fire risk reduction goals. The efficiency of various suppression technologies will also be evaluated. The relationship of landowners on a landscape to suppression technologies and policy design is an important feature of this work. Ultimately, this research will lead to an evaluation of efficient methods for fire suppression applied by government agencies, including an assessment of the economic value of several suppression approaches, technologies and strategies. Other interests are to understand the relationship between neighboring landowners in targeting policy instruments, and to discover ways of estimating the social costs associated with private fuel reduction decisions as a precursor to designing the best types of policies when needed. The models developed in this work will also be used to study problems of invasive species.

Selected Publications (Last Five Years)

• Amacher, G., E. Koskela, and M. Ollikainen. “Deforestation and property rights risks. “Environment and Development Economics” (In Press)

• Amacher, G., E. Koskela, and M. Ollikainen. “Royalty reform and illegal reporting of harvest volumes under alternative penalty schemes” Environmental and Resource Economics (In Press)

• Crowley, C., A. Malik, G. Amacher, and R. Haight.  “Adjacency externalities and forest fire prevention.” Land Economics (In Press)

• Bowman, M., G. Amacher, and F. Merry. Fire use and Prevention by traditional households in the Brazilian Amazon. Ecological Economics (In Press)

• Merry, F., G. Amacher, D. Nepstad, and E. Lima. Land values in frontier settlements of the Brazilian Amazon. World Development (In Press).

• Amacher, G., A. Malik, and R. Haight. 2006. “Reducing the social costs of forest fires.” Land Economics 82(3):367-383.
• Kohlin, G., and G. Amacher. 2006. “Welfare implications of social forestry projects: the case of Orissa India.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87(4): 855-869.
• Amacher, G., E. Koskela, and M. Ollikainen. 2005. “Quality competition and social welfare in markets with partial coverage: new results.” Bulletin of Economic Research 57(4):391-405.
• Amacher, G., A. Malik, and R. Haight. 2005. “Don’t get burned: the importance of fire prevention in forest management.” Land Economics 81(2):284-302.
• Amacher, G., A. Malik, and R. Haight. 2005. “Forest landowner decisions and the value of information under fire risk.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 35: 2603-2615
• Sullivan, J., J. Aggett, G. Amacher and J. Burger. 2005. “Financial Viability of Reforesting Reclaimed Surface Mined Lands: Carbon Payments and the Burden of Site Conversion Costs.” Resources Policy 30(4): 247-258
• Amacher, G., E. Koskela, and M. Ollikainen. 2004. “Forest rotations and stand interdependency: ownership structure and timing of decisions.” Natural Resource Modeling 17(1):1-45.
• Ersado, L., G. Amacher, and J. Alwang. 2004. “Productivity and land enhancing technologies in Northern Ethiopia: health, public investments, and sequential adoption.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 86(2):332-345.
• Amacher, G., L. Ersado, D. Grebner, and W. Hyde. 2004. “Natural resources, microdams, and health in Tigray, Ethiopia.” Journal of Development Studies 40:122-145.
• Amacher, G., L. Ersado, W. Hyde, and A. Osorio. 2004. “Tree planting in Tigray, Ethiopia: human health and water microdams.” Journal of Agroforestry Systems 60(3):211-225.
• Xu, J., R. Tao, and G. Amacher. 2004. “Empirical analysis of China’s state Forests.” Journal of Forest Policy and Economics 6:379-390.
• Amacher, G., Koskela, and M. Ollikainen. 2004. “Environmental quality competition and eco-labeling.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 47:284-306.
• Amacher, G., W. Hyde, and K. Kanel. 2003. “Household fuelwood demand and supply in Nepal's terai and mid-hills: Choice between cash outlays and labor opportunity,” reprinted in Parks, P., and I. Hardie (eds.), The Economics of Land Use, London: Ashgate Press.
• Amacher, G., C. Conway, and J. Sullivan. 2003. “Econometric analysis of forest landowners: is there anything left to do?” Journal of Forest Economics 9:137-164.
• Merry, F. D., G. S. Amacher, E. Lima, D. C. Nepstad. 2003. “A risky forest policy in the Amazon?” Science 299:1843.
• Merry, F., G. Amacher, B. Pokorny, E. Lima, E. Scholz, and D. Nepstad. 2003. “Some doubts about forest concessions in the Brazilian Amazon.” Tropical Forestry Update.
• Xu, J., W. Hyde, and G. Amacher. 2002. “China’s paper industry: growth and environmental policy during economic reform.” Journal of Economic Development 28(1):49-79.
• Amacher, G., E. Koskela, M. Ollikainen, and C. Conway. 2002. “Bequest intentions and forest landowners: theory and policy implications.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 84:1103-1114
• Amacher, G., and A. Malik. 2002. “Pollution taxes with endogenous technology choice.” Southern Economic Journal 68(4):891-917.
• Amacher, G., E. Koskela, M. Ollikainen. 2002. “Optimal forest taxation in an overlapping generations model with timber bequests.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 44(2):346-369.
• Amacher, G. 2002. “Forest taxation and many governments.” Forest Science 48(1):146-157.

Professional Achievements

• Senior Editor, Natural Resource Modeling, (2004- )
• Editor, Forest Science, (2001-2004)
• Associate Editor, Journal of Forest Economics, (1999- )
• Editorial Council, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, (1998- )
• Associate Editor, Forest Science, (1999-2001)
• Associate Researcher, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM)
• Honorary Adjunct Professor, Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Past Visiting Scholar, University of Gothenberg Department of Environmental Economics (Sweden)
• Past Visiting Scholar, University of Helsinki Department of Economics
• Past Visiting Associate Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Economics
• Adjunct Professor, Virginia Tech Department of Economics
• Past Faculty Associate, Lincoln Land Policy Institute
• Member, Society of American Foresters
• Member, American Economics Association
• 2003 Panhellenic Teaching Excellence Certificate
• 2003 College of Natural Resources Excellence in Teaching Award