Luke Sanford

Luke Sanford

Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Governance

Posts by Collection

portfolio

publications

Cookstoves illustrate the need for a comprehensive carbon market

Published in Environmental Research Letters, 2015

We conduct a meta-analysis of previous cookstove emissions studies to improve greenhouse gas emission estimates of different stove classes and use this to show that incentive structures provided by current carbon markets promote stoves that have a larger greenhouse gas footprint.

Recommended citation: Sanford, L. & Burney, J. (2015). "Cookstoves illustrate the need for a comprehensive carbon market" Environmental Research Letters,. 10(8). http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/084026/meta

Democratization, Elections, and Public Goods: The Evidence from Deforestation

Published in The American Journal of Political Science, 2021

I find that politicians exchange access to protected forests in exchange for political support, leading to higher rates of deforestation in the months surrounding competitive elections.

Recommended citation: Sanford, L. (2021), Democratization, Elections, and Public Goods: The Evidence from Deforestation. American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12662 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12662

California’s COVID-19 economic shutdown reveals the fingerprint of systemic environmental racism

Published in Nature Sustainability, 2022

We show that the initial sheltering-in-place period produced disproportionate air pollution reduction benefits for Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, and low-income communities.

Recommended citation: Bluhm, R., Polonik, P., Hemes, K.S. et al. Disparate air pollution reductions during California’s COVID-19 economic shutdown. Nat Sustain 5, 509–517 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00856-1

talks

Mass Digitization of Chinese Court Decisions

Published:

We explore the potential uses for a massive new dataset of Chinese court cases, focusing on our efforts to estimate the length of time between the start of the case (inferred) to the decision. We use this to measure what types of cases take more or less time to be decided.

Geospatial Synthetic Controls for agricultural impact evaluation

Published:

We use satellite images to measure the impact of a land-titling project on agricultural land use in Benin. Because control units are not delineated we generate synthetic controls for each treated plot based on pre-treatment match in the dependent variable (NDVI).

Detecting Land-Use Change and On-Farm Investments at the Plot Scale

Published:

We use satellite images to measure the impact of a land-titling project on agricultural land use in Benin. Because control units are not delineated we generate synthetic controls for each treated plot based on pre-treatment match in the dependent variable (NDVI).

Political Deforestation Cycles

Published:

When do politicians’ re-election strategies cause serious environmental damage? This poster argues that for a politician interested in retaining office protecting forested areas is efficient in most years, but giving targeted access to pivotal voters is efficient in election years. I test the theory that competitive elections are associated with higher rates of deforestation using remote sensed satellite data of forest cover and data on national elections.

Democratization, Elections, and Public Goods: The Evidence from Deforestation

Published:

This paper offers a political explanation for increases in deforestation: competitive elections. The protection of forested areas provides long-term, public goods while their destruction provides short-term, private goods for local voters. Politicians facing a competitive election offer voters access to forested areas for commercial use of timber and small-scale farming in exchange for electoral support. I test this theory of political deforestation using satellite-verified global forest cover data and the results of over 500 national-level elections between 1975 and 2005. The findings suggest that the transition to democracy is associated with higher rates of deforestation, that election years may have slightly higher rates of deforestation than non-election years, and that close elections have 25\% higher deforestation rates than elections in which one side won by a wide margin. This suggests that democratization is associated with underprovision of environmental public goods and that contested elections are partially responsible for this underprovision.

teaching

Quantitative Methods Sequence

Graduate course, Teaching Assistant, UC San Diego, School of Global Policy and Strategy, 2016

I was the teaching assistant for the first-year quantitative methods sequence at the School of Global Policy and Strategy in the 2016-2017 school year. Courses included:

  • QM 0-Primer on probability and statistics
  • QM 1-Introduction to probability, statistics, and data analysis
  • QM 2-Regression analysis
  • QM 3-Causal inference in cross-sectional, time series, and panel data

Math Camp

Graduate course, Instructor of record, UC San Diego, School of Global Policy and Strategy, 2020

I am the instructor of record for GPS’s math camp course for incoming masters students. The course covers topics in elementary mathematics through multivariable differential calculus. I have taught the course each year since 2015. Most recent syllabus is here. In 2020 there were 151 students enrolled.

POLI 270: Mathematical and Statistical Foundations

Graduate course, Instructor of record, UC San Diego, Political Science, 2020

I teach the statistics and probability portion of the mathematical and statistical foundations course for incoming students in the weeks before the start of the academic year. The course covers foundational concepts from statistics and probability, including applications of continuous and discrete probability distributions. I have taught this course since 2019. Most recent syllabus is here. In 2020 there were 23 students enrolled.