Dr. Daniel Rondeau

Dr. Daniel Rondeau
Position
Professor
Economics
Contact
Office: BEC 342
Credentials

PhD (Cornell)

Area of expertise

Environmental and resource economics, microeconomics, experimental methods

Dr. Rondeau joined the Department of Economics at UVic in 1999 where he is currently a professor.

Dr. Rondeau specializes in the study of environmental and resource management issues and mechanism design applied to environmental valuation, the study of public goods and resource markets.

Dr. Rondeau is recognized nationally and internationally in the field of environmental and resource economics. He is a co-editor of Environmental and Resource Economics, the official journal of the European Association of Environmental Economists. He is is also an associate research fellow of CIRANO and a research associate of CREATE, a research institute in the economics of the environment, agriculture, transportation and energy at Laval University in Quebec City.

His research has been published in internationally recognized economic journals, including: Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Journal of Public EconomicsAmerican Economic Journals: Microeconomics; Journal of Economic Behavior and OrganizationEconomics LettersCanadian Journal of Economics; American Journal of Agricultural EconomicsExperimental Economics; Agricultural and Resource Economics Review; and Resource and Energy Economics and in the top journals in the field of environmental and resource economics: the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management; Environmental and Resource Economics; Resource and Energy Economics; and Land Economics.

Two of Dr. Rondeau’s papers have received academic awards. His 2012 paper with Christian Vossler and Maurice Doyon on the role of incentive compatibility in environmental valuation (American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2012) received the 2022 publication of enduring quality award from the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society. His paper with Jon Conrad on the optimal management of abalone colonies afflicted by a virus was selected as the best paper published in Marine Resource Economics in 2015. 

Interests

  • Environmental & natural resource economics
  • Experimental economics

Research projects

Dr. Rondeau’s most recent research includes an early study of the impact of COVID-19 on biodiversity, and a study of the value of wetlands in Quebec.

Dr. Rondeau’s research projects apply experimental methods and mechanism design to contemporary environmental issues. In a project sponsored by the Quebec Federation of Egg Producers, Dr. Rondeau and Dr. Maurice Doyon from Laval University have devised a new auction mechanism for the trading of production quota among producers.

Dr. Rondeau created a new market allocation mechanism designed to provide efficient trading, but also to steer the uniform auction price to the lower end of the theoretically predicted range and limit the market power of sellers in these thin markets. Experimental testing of the auction demonstrated the ability of the proposed auction to meet the goals and objectives of egg producers, and has led to its implementation in the field.

Further work on this auction mechanism is underway as a different association of agricultural producers is now moving towards its implementation as well.

In another recently completed project, Dr. Rondeau and colleagues conducted field experiments to estimate the aesthetic and non-use benefits of tree plantations on private agricultural land. In this project, Dr. Rondeau was responsible for the development of a theoretical framework guiding the development of discrete choice valuation experiments with real implementations.

The project aimed in part to demonstrate how experimental methods can be used to advance research and policy development in agriculture, and provide a greater understanding of the validity of non-market valuation methods. The results of this research will be an integral part of the ecological-economic model to be built as part of the proposed research project.

Dr. Rondeau has led or collaborated on several projects where experimental methods are applied to test the validity of non-market valuation methods. This work has covered the influence of altruism and other forms of other-regarding preferences on valuation results; mechanism design for testing the validity of the contingent valuation method; and a series of research experiments in the lab and in the field, testing various approaches to enhance private contributions towards the funding of public goods.

In the most recent of these projects, Dr. Rondeau designed a novel payment mechanism for a study of the costs of conservation rules on residents of rural Uganda. The mechanism led to a significant reduction in the number of protest bids and outliers.    

Dr. Rondeau also conducted several studies on the economics of human-wildlife conflicts on agricultural land and in suburban areas. He has studied the economics of conflicts with deer, wolf, elephants, and wildebeest, investigating alternative management strategies both theoretically and numerically in order to recommend optimal action plans.

Courses

  • ECON 203, Intermediate Microeconomics I
  • ECON 351, Mathematical Economics II: An Introduction to Dynamic Methods
  • ECON 382, Natural Resource Economics I
  • ECON 400, Advanced Microeconomic Theory
  • ECON 450, Game Theory in Economics
  • ECON 530, Economics of Natural Resources
  • ECON 550, Game Theory in Economics

Selected publications

(for complete list, check Dr. Rondeau's website):