Research

Publications

Impact of Droughts on Served Drinking Water Disparities in California, 2007-2020

Sandy Sum, American Journal of Public Health (September 2024)

Well setbacks limit California’s oil supply with larger health benefits and employment losses than excise and carbon taxes

Policy Brief, Nature Energy, with emLab (June 2023)

Equitable low-carbon transition pathways for California’s oil extraction

Nature Energy, with emLab (May 2023)

Working papers

Who Gains from Drinking Water Regulation? Evidence from the 2006 Arsenic Rule and Infant Health

Sandy Sum and Shan Zhang (Submitted, 2025)

The Unequal Economic Risks of Global Terrestrial Moisture Recycling

Sandy Sum, Lauren S. Andersen, Richard Damania, Simon Fahrlander, Johan Rockstrom, Tamma Carleton, and Ram Fishman (In prep, 2025)

Trading Water and Work: Labor and Production Shifts under California’s Groundwater Markets

Sandy Sum (In prep, 2025)

Parameter recovery with remotely sensed variables

Jonathan Proctor^R, Tamma Carleton^R, and Sandy Sum^R (Revisions requested at Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists)

(^R indicates equal authorship; authors’ order randomized)

Selected Works in Progress

Farm Size and Climate Vulnerability (with Olivier Deschênes and Bryan Leonard)

Parched Lands, Polluted Air: Respiratory Health Impacts of Agricultural Water Scarcity (with Katrina Jessoe)

Policy reports

Enhancing equity while eliminating emissions in California’s supply of transportation fuels

CalEPA report with emLab (2021)

The Economics of Water: Valuing the Hydrological Cycle as a Global Common Good

with the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (2024)