Professor Brett Day

About me:

Brett is an environmental economist working in the field of ecosystem services, the particular focus of his research being the development of methods and knowledge for the support of environmental decision-making. He received a PhD in Economics from University College London in 2004, took up a faculty position in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in 2005, and in 2015 joined the Department of Politics in Exeter University. Brett has published widely in the academic literature including outlets such as Science, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He also maintains close links with government and business, applying the methods of environmental economics to problems of environmental management in both public and private sectors.

Some major themes in Brett’s research include:

(1) Non-Market Valuation: Stated Preferences - Applying methods of field and laboratory experiments to facilitate the detailed exploration of the process of preference expression in stated preference valuation exercises.

(2) Non-Market Valuation: Revealed Preferences – Applying advanced spatial processing and econometric analysis to recover estimates of environmental value from data recording property prices or recreation demand. Brett’s work in this area was instrumental in changing UK government policy with regards to costing transport noise and also underpinned the introduction of emissions-differentiated road tax in the 2008 budget.

(3) Integrated Environment-Economy Modelling – Designed and developing spatially-disaggregated integrated models of environment-economy interactions, for example, the TIM model developed for the National Ecosystem Assessment – Follow On project.

(4) Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) Mechanism Design – Applying principal-agent theory as well as experimental and simulation methods in designing efficient mechanisms for the implementation of PES. Brett has designed two real-world PES implementations paid for by water companies wishing to reduce agricultural diffuse pollution and is advising the UK government on mechanisms for the efficient allocation of agri-environment funds.