As a new faculty member at the University of Tennessee with a joint appointment in the Baker School of Public Policy and the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Manning will use research to address pressing environmental and resource challenges facing Tennessee farmers and citizens while producing generalizable knowledge that can inform policy and economic decision-making at national and global levels.

He is a member of the UT faculty cluster in Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry.  Within this initiative, they will leverage a wide range of disciplinary expertise to enhance productivity and resilience in agriculture and forestry while identifying pathways through which agriculture and forestry can contribute to climate change abatement.

In his research, Manning uses optimization, simulation, and econometric methods to study how the economy interacts with natural capital, including land, soil, water, and biodiversity.  He study ways that environmental and natural resource policies can improve environmental resources, productivity, and well-being. His research often focuses on conservation and agriculture, the importance of non-market resources for the market economy and human well-being, and optimal responses to natural hazards.  While he leverages natural experiments to identify causal relationships, when possible, he also uses economic theory to guide empirical work while developing structural models of economic behavior to characterize policy impacts and the linkages between economic behavior and the natural world.

Ongoing research includes:

Investigation of the local government impacts of biodiversity, using the impacts of bat population losses on county government revenue and borrowing costs (with Eli Fenichel, Anya Nakhmurina, and Amy Ando)

Estimating the scope of climate change abatement from agriculture in the US Midwest (with Stephen Ogle and Mani Rouhi Rad)

Examining how inland floods impact local economies and how information provision can affect damages (with Jude Bayham, Chris Goemans, and Jordan Suter)

Valuing improvements in weather prediction in the agricultural sector

Estimating rural labor market exposure to changes in US and international trade policies (with Amanda Countryman and Diane Charleton)

Characterizing access, barriers, and preferences for voluntary carbon markets among Midwest farmers (with Amy Ando, McKenzie Johnson, and Chloe Wardropper).