Kelly Hellman

Kelly L. Hellman is an assistant professor in the Economics Department at UMass Lowell and an affiliate of the Wharton Risk Center within the University of Pennsylvania. As an empirical environmental economist, Dr. Hellman is interested in understanding market and behavioral responses to various environmental risks related to climate change to inform public policy. Her current work focuses on market responses to natural hazards (floods, fires and earthquakes) and the role of hazard disclosure in incentivizing individual and community efforts to prepare for and protect against damages.

Professor Hellman earned her PhD in Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is an empirical environmental economist, who studies market and behavioral responses to various environmental risks to inform public policy.

EXPERTISE

Environmental Economics and Policy, Risk, Natural Hazards, Disaster Mitigation, Climate Change

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Hellman, Kelly, Jeffrey Wagner, Daniel Lass, Karl Korfmacher, and Bríd Gleeson Hanna. 2018. “Estimating the Economic Impact of Stormwater Runoff in the Allen Creek Watershed,” Ecological Economics 145: 420- 429.

RESEARCH

• Information and Environmental Disasters: Valuing Public Risk Perception Regarding the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill with Patrick Walsh.
• Identifying the Health Effects of Information on Pollution Levels in Chile with Jamie Mullins
• Communicating Risk: Market Responses to California’s Wildfire Hazard Disclosure Law with Carolyn Kousky and Karl Korfmacher.
• Floods, Fires and Earthquakes: Market Responses to Overlapping Hazard Risks with Carolyn Kousky and Karl Korfmacher.
• A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Community Rating System with Jeffrey Czajkowski, Sam Brody and Wes Highfield.