This Fall, Dr. Youngho “Young” Kim joined the University of Florida Department of Food and Resource Economics as an assistant professor, focusing on environmental and resource economics.
Kim, who completed his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland in 2024, says his initial interest in environmental economics began with a desire to understand how economic incentives can be used to address real environmental challenges in agriculture.
“As demand for both agricultural production and environmental amenities continues to grow, the need for economic policies that promote environmental stewardship while strengthening the resilience of the agricultural sector has never been greater,” Kim said. “I became fascinated by how agricultural and environmental policy can balance these competing outcomes. This naturally led me to the intersection of agricultural and environmental economics, where landowners’ decisions shape both agricultural productivity and ecosystem services to society.”
For his dissertation, which was recently recognized with both the Wallace E. Oates Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) and the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), Kim examined the design and evaluation of payment for ecosystems services (PES) programs and how these programs interact with environmental credit market, a key area which he plans to continue to explore further throughout his research program at UF.
“I study how farmers and landowners respond to incentives, how public conservation programs interact with emerging environmental credit markets, and how natural infrastructure, such as wetlands and riparian buffers, can reduce climate-related risks in agriculture, such as flooding,” Kim said. “My work combines economic theory with spatial data and administrative records to propose cost-effective land conservation policy design and evaluate the environmental and economic impacts of such policies.”
Following the completion of his Ph.D. program, Kim spent the year before joining the University of Florida as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. While there, he was able to learn more about cutting-edge work on environmental market design and conservation auctions, such as how well-designed markets can allocate conservation resources more efficiently and how auction mechanisms can be structured to procure ecosystem services from agriculture.
“Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery provides a vibrant research community deeply engaged in frontier questions about biodiversity, conservation, and nature finance,” Kim said. “I also had the privilege of regularly discussing environmental market and conservation auctions with Professor Alex Teytelboym and Professor Elizabeth Baldwin in the Department of Economics. Their insights significantly influenced how I think about conservation policy, incentive mechanisms, and market-based environmental policy.”
His experiences strengthened his commitment to producing research that informs real-world decision making and supports Florida’s long-term goals for ecosystem conservation and economic development.
“These lessons have direct relevance for Florida, where wetland mitigation banking and state-led environmental programs play a critical role in balancing development with ecosystem protection,” Kim said. “I am excited to bring this perspective into my work at UF, studying how wetland markets function in practice, how credit pricing reflects ecological value, and how policy design can improve environmental and economic outcomes across the state.”
Kim’s recent research focused in three areas: (1) the cost-effectiveness of payment for ecosystem services programs in mitigating flood damage, (2) the optimal structure of payments and penalties to enhance the performance of environmental services programs, and (3) the interaction between land conservation subsidies and environmental credit markets.
“These projects share a common goal: strengthening the design and effectiveness of environmental policy,” Kim said.
Upon joining the University of Florida, Kim said he was most excited by the alignment of the UF/IFAS land grant mission with his own interest in developing policy relevant, highly applied research within a well-established community of researchers with a long history of impact.
“I am most looking forward to building long-term research partnerships that advance our understanding of conservation effectiveness and climate resilience,” Kim said. “I am excited about mentoring graduate students, expanding my research on PES programs and environmental markets, and contributing to national discussions about nature-based solutions. Ultimately, my goal is to generate insights that help shape evidence-based environmental policies.”
To learn more about Dr. Kim and his work, visit his personal website at https://www.econyoungkim.com
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