Hello! My name is Amanda Ang. I am a postdoctoral researcher in Urban and Regional Economics at Aalto University. My main research interests include: economics of natural disasters, climate adaptation, and the use of quantitative spatial models. I received my PhD in Economics from University of Southern California in 2024.

See the latest version of my CV here.

Work in Progress

Population Growth and Wildfire Mitigation (new draft coming soon)

Abstract: Wildfires are enormously costly events. Human causes make up 85% of wildfire ignitions in the US. This paper examines household location choice as a driver of wildfire risk. I estimate an inverted U-shaped relationship between population density and wildfires: locations with medium population density have the highest ignition rates. I incorporate this relationship into a quantitative spatial model of Los Angeles County. In the model, insurance prices respond to increases in population-driven wildfire probability and mitigate future wildfire risk. A counterfactual scenario which restricts new construction in high-risk locations induces a 6% improvement in welfare.

Amenities in Quantitative Spatial Models with Andrii Parkhomenko and Daniel Angel. (submitted)

Abstract: An indispensable feature of quantitative spatial models (QSM) are structural residuals that fit the distribution of residents across locations to the data. While they are often interpreted as amenities, do they actually represent observed amenities? We collect data on 41 amenities in the Los Angeles County, and then build a QSM to study the relationship between the structural residuals and observed amenities. We find that 45% of the variation in the residuals is explained by observed amenities. This suggests that one should be judicious when interpreting these residuals as amenities. We also find that 14 percentage points of the explained variation is accounted for by natural amenities and 31 by man-made amenities. This supports modeling amenities as endogenous.

Evaluating the social cost of flooding: Evidence from Sao Paulo, Brazil with Peter Christensen

Abstract: A growing literature seeks to evaluate the resilience of transportation infrastructure in developing country cities and to target investments in infrastructure improvements. Much of this literature focuses on improved design, materials, and costs of resilient infrastructure, but relatively little is known about the economic benefits associated with reducing the impacts of weather events in a transportation system. This study presents some of the first estimates of the economic benefits associated with travel delays due to flood events in a developing country city. Our empirical strategy makes use of repeat observations of trip durations from Google’s traffic API to separately identify the general effects of precipitation events and the specific effects of delays that result specifically from infrastructure flooding.

Presentations: pERE Seminar 2017, AERE Summer Meeting 2020, Smart Cities International Symposium 2021, European Meeting UEA 2026

Publications

Should congested cities reduce their speed limits? Evidence from São Paulo, Brazil. (link)
Journal of Public Economics (2020) Amanda Ang, Peter Christensen and Renato Vieira.

Asian Immigrants, School Quality, and the U.S. Housing Market (link)
Journal of Urban Economics (2026) Amanda Ang, Eunjee Kwon and Siqi Zheng.