My ARIA project, under the supervision of Professor Sebastien Breau of the Geography Department, explored the spatial distributions of household effects from federal carbon pricing programs in Canada.
The project’s main aim was to assess how inequalities in incidence differed over different geographies. I simulated different carbon tax and rebate scenarios using survey data of household expenditures from Statistics Canada. This allowed me to explore household heterogeneity both in demographics and over 200 spending categories, as well as decompose incidence from different fuel types. For a finer grained view of spatial patterns, two multivariate models of taxation and rebates, respectfully, were fit onto tract-average long-form census data at the census subdivision level.
The results showed that carbon pricing was indeed heavily spatially heterogeneous and diverse in its impact. Although most households saw net receipts from the program, geographical variation, or the economic, demographic, and consumptive factors that present themselves through different regions, played a large role in how these receipts were allocated along the income spectrum. This is not an unexpected result given the broadness of the federal program and the diverseness of Canada, but speaks to the black box of environmental policymaking.
I was interested in pursuing an ARIA because it allowed me to combine my passions for both my majors, Economics and Geography, and intersect them with environmental policy. While I worked in collaboration with my supervisor and gained input from peers, the opportunity to independently research and dictate the project’s direction is incredibly valuable at the undergraduate level. A major objective, perhaps even greater than the subject itself, was to learn how to manage a large research project, a teaser of whether I want to pursue graduate schooling after McGill.
The highlights of my project were the mapping and data visualization components once I had finished the microsimulation of carbon pricing, which was a relatively computational and difficult endeavor. I found myself having to make conscious decisions about how I wanted to express my results; gaining valuable skills in Stata and ArcGIS pro, allowing creativity, and preparing me with outputs to use in my honours thesis. Another highlight was being able to split my time between working remotely and in the geographic information centre, as well as setting my own hours to take advantage of the beautiful summer in Montreal.
A project of this magnitude will involve challenges, and mine were sufficiently flexible. I had to adjust my aims and methods as I assessed data, reviewed literature, and tried out different techniques. A significant roadblock was not getting access in time to the confidential microdata I had intended to at the start of the ARIA - although the project was approved, I had to alter my data sources to ones publicly available. Working with survey data in STATA was something I had never done before, and limitations on what I could code led to the outputs of the project looking quite different from what I had expected going into it. Finally, the literature on carbon pricing in Canada is still in its infancy in comparison to other countries with similar systems, and much data had to be inferred and combined from different sources.
Over the next year, I will write my honours thesis based on the data I researched and methods I developed this summer. The ARIA award has given me the opportunity to significantly improve the depth of my undergraduate thesis, and I’m hopeful that the final results can be used to inform future policy objectives for future areas of improvement. I can say with certainty that experience in undergraduate research will have opened doors down the line; an additional portfolio for applying to graduate schools, data analytics and visualization skills, and a thorough understanding of the economic facets in Canadian environmental policy.
Finally, I’d like to thank Mark Gallop for his generous donation to fund my award, who I am very grateful to, allowing me the valuable experience to conduct independent research at the undergraduate level, as well as the Arts Internship Office and my supervisor, Sebastien Breau.
