Arthur Small

Arthur Small, of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Earth Institute, received the Quality of Research Discovery award from the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA).

His award was for an article in the Journal of Political Economy, "Valuing Research Leads: Bioprospecting and the Conservation of Genetic Resources," co-authored with University of California, Berkeley professor Gordon Rausser.

Small and Rausser's research shows circumstances in which market-based financial incentives encourage the conservation of biodiversity. Studying the process of biodiversity prospecting—the search for valuable compounds from wild organisms—Small and Rausser demonstrate that the financing from access rights to biological resources could support conservation efforts under certain scenarios.

The AAEA also awarded Mailman School of Public Health Professor Joshua Graff Zivin the prize for Outstanding Journal Article: American Journal of Agricultural Economics. His research, "Insect Population Dynamics, Pesticide Use and Farmworker Health," appeared in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. It was co-authored with David Sunding of the University of California, Berkeley.

Joshua Graff Zivin

Graff Zivin and Sunding analyzed the impact of regulations designed to reduce pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm laborers. The researchers concluded these controls, which impose a time interval between pesticide application and harvest, achieved their aims under only certain conditions.