Taylor to Present 'International Trade, Noise Pollution and Killer Whales'

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M. Scott Taylor

The International and Global Studies program, in collaboration with the Department of Economics in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, is proud to host the third lecture in their Speakers' Series on Global Development and Sustainability. Professor M. Scott Taylor of the University of Calgary will give a talk based on his research with Fruzsina Mayer titled "International Trade, Noise Pollution and Killer Whales."

The talk will be held from 3:30-5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 16, in the Willard J. Walker Hall 427. Taylor will present a paper that employs novel data on the cause of the decline of the Southern Resident Killer whale (SRKW) population. Orcinus Orca are the world's largest predator, and simultaneously a significant tourist asset and cultural icon for much of the Pacific Northwest.

In the past two decades, the SRKW population has declined by more than 25%, putting them at risk of extinction. The cause of this decline is hotly debated. In his talk, Taylor will explain an innovative noise pollution model and quasi-experimental methods borrowed from environmental economics to solve this puzzle. In his research, Taylor finds consistent evidence that vessel noise pollution from international shipping has lowered fertility and raised the mortality of the SRKW significantly. Had noise pollution remained at its pre-1998 levels, the SRKW population would now be 30% larger. In this talk, Taylor will also demonstrate how noise pollution is a growing threat to marine mammals worldwide.

Taylor is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Calgary and a past president of the Canadian Economics Association. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and a CESifo Network Fellow in Energy and Climate Economics at the Ifo Institute in Germany. From 2004 to 2018, he held the Canada Research Chair in International, Energy and Environmental Economics, and in 2014, was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the highest honor that can be attained by scholars, artists and scientists in Canada. In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Basel, Switzerland, for his pioneering work on trade, the environment and renewable resources. Currently, he is the acting director of the Kuhne Center for Sustainable Trade and Logistics at the University of Zürich.

Don't miss this exciting co-sponsored talk with the Department of Economics! If you cannot attend the event in person, please register for the talk on Zoom here:

Join Zoom Meeting https://uark.zoom.us/j/82110021472?pwd=bUV1WHpsM09mTmJUZ2dwM1JaYmFqZz09
Meeting ID: 821 1002 1472
Passcode: ZoomIn1@

This year, the Global Development and Sustainability Series will continue to bring in leading experts on issues concerning global sustainability. Through these talks, students and faculty will be exposed to a variety of methodological approaches to issues surrounding development and sustainability. The final talk for the 2023-2024 academic school year will be hosted on March 7 at 4:30 p.m. INST will welcome Jayson M. Porter, who is currently the Voss Postdoctoral Research Associate in Environment and Society at Brown University and a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland, for a talk titled: "Strong Enough to Remove Dirt Skin: Coconut Soap and Other Early Histories of Biofuels in the US and Mexico." Stay tuned for more information about this exciting talk.

For questions about this event, please contact INST acting director Kelly Hammond, kah018@uark.edu.