Marion Dumas | Columbia University (original) (raw)
Please visit my homepage (www.columbia.edu/\~mmd2172)! I am completing my PhD in the Sustainable Development PhD program at Columbia University. I am now writing my dissertation on the role of courts and the law in environmental politics and the politics of energy and climate change.
Prior to doing social science research, I was an environmental scientist, with a BS.c in Earth Sciences from MIT and a MS.c in Biogeochemistry at the Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland. As I was working as an environmental consultant in France, I became increasingly interested in understanding how institutional and private actors negotiate solutions to sustainable development in capitalist societies, themes I now pursue in my research.
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Papers by Marion Dumas
We seek to understand the political determinants of energy transitions by modeling the iterated p... more We seek to understand the political determinants of energy transitions by modeling the iterated political competition between parties holding different preferences regarding clean energy production in a world characterized by stochastic energy prices and technological learning. We do this by developing a computational game theoretic model. We find path dependence in energy transitions, and show that political dynamics affect investment paths particularly when one party is more ideologically committed than the other.
We argue that the political institutions considered successful for ensuring peace and promoting g... more We argue that the political institutions considered successful for ensuring peace and promoting growth are insufficient for meeting the challenges of sustainability. We highlight three fundamental characteristics of sustainability problems: they exhibit long-term dynamics, multiple spatial and social scales and exceptional levels of complexity. Via examples, we show why prevalent political institutions are ill-adapted and argue that we need complementary institutions.
I propose a formal representation of the way in which citizen suits aggregate the preferences of ... more I propose a formal representation of the way in which citizen suits aggregate the preferences of the citizenry. I then analyze the role of citizen suits in promoting policy-making in legislatures. In my analysis, citizen suits encourage legislators to shift spending away from particularistic spending and towards public goods, and helps forge compromises that increase collective welfare.
Harvests of crops, their trade and consumption, soil erosion, fertilization and recycling of orga... more Harvests of crops, their trade and consumption, soil erosion, fertilization and recycling of organic waste
generate fluxes of phosphorus in and out of the soil that continuously change the worldwide spatial dis-
tribution of total phosphorus in arable soils. Furthermore, due to variability in the properties of the virgin
soils and the different histories of agricultural practices, on a planetary scale, the distribution of total soil
phosphorus is very heterogeneous. There are two key relationships that determine how this distribution
and its change over time affect crop yields. One is the relationship between total soil phosphorus and bio-
available soil phosphorus and the second is the relationship between bioavailable soil phosphorus and
yields. Both of these depend on environmental variables such as soil properties and climate. We propose
a model in which these relationships are described probabilistically and integrated with the dynamic
feedbacks of P cycling in the human ecosystem. The model we propose is a first step towards evaluating
the large-scale effects of different nutrient management scenarios. One application of particular interest
is to evaluate the vulnerability of different regions to an increased scarcity in P mineral fertilizers.
Another is to evaluate different regions’ deficiency in total soil phosphorus compared with the level at
which they could sustain their maximum potential yield without external mineral inputs of phosphorus
but solely by recycling organic matter to close the nutrient cycle.
"In studies of civil strife, the ecological fallacy seems to befall all large-n studies and thus... more "In studies of civil strife, the ecological fallacy seems to befall all
large-n studies and thus there has been a big push, by several researchers, in recent years to gather disaggregated, spatially explicit
data. An interesting example is the recently assembled geo-reference
Ethno-Power Relations dataset (Wimmer et al.), and used by Ced-
erman et al. (2011) to argue that political exclusion and group-level
economic inequality lead groups to organize to rebel against the political status quo. While we think there is much potential in this new
approach to measuring the determinants of conflict, we find that the
resulting data can not be analysed in conventional ways, if the estimation of causal effects is the goal. The reason is that analysis of
sub-national entities may bring about other dangers: the violation of
the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA). To be specific, one “treated” group’s enemy could hardly be its control. We get
around this problem by changing the causal effect of interest and by
carefully re-aggregating the lower level data so as to preserve its most
salient information. Restricting our analysis to groups that are ex-
cluded from power, we find some tentative evidence that such groups
are less likely to engage in conflict if they are more spatially integrated
with other groups."
We seek to understand the political determinants of energy transitions by modeling the iterated p... more We seek to understand the political determinants of energy transitions by modeling the iterated political competition between parties holding different preferences regarding clean energy production in a world characterized by stochastic energy prices and technological learning. We do this by developing a computational game theoretic model. We find path dependence in energy transitions, and show that political dynamics affect investment paths particularly when one party is more ideologically committed than the other.
We argue that the political institutions considered successful for ensuring peace and promoting g... more We argue that the political institutions considered successful for ensuring peace and promoting growth are insufficient for meeting the challenges of sustainability. We highlight three fundamental characteristics of sustainability problems: they exhibit long-term dynamics, multiple spatial and social scales and exceptional levels of complexity. Via examples, we show why prevalent political institutions are ill-adapted and argue that we need complementary institutions.
I propose a formal representation of the way in which citizen suits aggregate the preferences of ... more I propose a formal representation of the way in which citizen suits aggregate the preferences of the citizenry. I then analyze the role of citizen suits in promoting policy-making in legislatures. In my analysis, citizen suits encourage legislators to shift spending away from particularistic spending and towards public goods, and helps forge compromises that increase collective welfare.
Harvests of crops, their trade and consumption, soil erosion, fertilization and recycling of orga... more Harvests of crops, their trade and consumption, soil erosion, fertilization and recycling of organic waste
generate fluxes of phosphorus in and out of the soil that continuously change the worldwide spatial dis-
tribution of total phosphorus in arable soils. Furthermore, due to variability in the properties of the virgin
soils and the different histories of agricultural practices, on a planetary scale, the distribution of total soil
phosphorus is very heterogeneous. There are two key relationships that determine how this distribution
and its change over time affect crop yields. One is the relationship between total soil phosphorus and bio-
available soil phosphorus and the second is the relationship between bioavailable soil phosphorus and
yields. Both of these depend on environmental variables such as soil properties and climate. We propose
a model in which these relationships are described probabilistically and integrated with the dynamic
feedbacks of P cycling in the human ecosystem. The model we propose is a first step towards evaluating
the large-scale effects of different nutrient management scenarios. One application of particular interest
is to evaluate the vulnerability of different regions to an increased scarcity in P mineral fertilizers.
Another is to evaluate different regions’ deficiency in total soil phosphorus compared with the level at
which they could sustain their maximum potential yield without external mineral inputs of phosphorus
but solely by recycling organic matter to close the nutrient cycle.
"In studies of civil strife, the ecological fallacy seems to befall all large-n studies and thus... more "In studies of civil strife, the ecological fallacy seems to befall all
large-n studies and thus there has been a big push, by several researchers, in recent years to gather disaggregated, spatially explicit
data. An interesting example is the recently assembled geo-reference
Ethno-Power Relations dataset (Wimmer et al.), and used by Ced-
erman et al. (2011) to argue that political exclusion and group-level
economic inequality lead groups to organize to rebel against the political status quo. While we think there is much potential in this new
approach to measuring the determinants of conflict, we find that the
resulting data can not be analysed in conventional ways, if the estimation of causal effects is the goal. The reason is that analysis of
sub-national entities may bring about other dangers: the violation of
the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA). To be specific, one “treated” group’s enemy could hardly be its control. We get
around this problem by changing the causal effect of interest and by
carefully re-aggregating the lower level data so as to preserve its most
salient information. Restricting our analysis to groups that are ex-
cluded from power, we find some tentative evidence that such groups
are less likely to engage in conflict if they are more spatially integrated
with other groups."