Michael Cary

Instructor | Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech | macary@vt.edu

Education

  • Ph.D. Natural Resource Economics - West Virginia University (2023)
  • M.A. Economics - Virginia State University (2014)
  • B.A. History - Virginia Commonwealth University (2011)

    • Research Interests

  • Environmental Economics
  • Renewable Energy
  • Invasive Species
  • Network Theory & Graph Theory
  • Applied Machine Learning

    • Welcome

    Welcome to my professional website! I am an Instructor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech. For the past four year I have worked the VT Data Science for the Public Good REEU where I teach the fundamentals of data science to undergrads in an experiential learning format where the students complete actual projects for public-serving stakeholders. My research is primarily in the field of Environmental Economics where I focus on the local economic and environmental effects of renewable energy technologies and invasive species. For example, one of my ongoing research projects uses a difference-in-differences model with staggered treatment timing to estimate the causal effect of utility-scale solar facilities on suicide rates. Solar facilities reduce suicide rates by ~1 suicide per 100,000 people per year, and we link this reduction to solar facilities but not wind turbines. However, this reduction in suicide rates is only statistically visible in counties with above average infrastructure, suggesting that institutional quality plays a key role in keeping the benefits derived from solar facilities in the local economy. Contrary to the hysteria of "wind turbine syndrome", wind turbines have no effect on suicide rates.