Kyumin Kim (김규민)

I am a natural resource economist at the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), where I work in the Socioeconomics Section. My work centers on three areas:

• Evaluating the socioeconomic costs, benefits, and impacts of water and aquatic resource management projects
• Building econometric and quantitative models to assess tradeoffs in ecosystem water uses
• Producing policy-relevant economic analysis for statewide planning efforts such as the California Water Plan and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)

More broadly, my research examines how changes in aquatic environments, from water resources to fisheries, affect resource-dependent communities and social welfare, and how policy instruments, including restoration, can mitigate those impacts under climate change and environmental shocks.

As an applied economist, I focus on integrated decision-making under uncertainty. My methodological toolkit includes stochastic and dynamic optimization, machine learning, and econometrics with a particular emphasis on time series methods. These tools travel well beyond any single domain, and I enjoy bringing them to data-intensive problems wherever rigorous quantitative reasoning can add value.

I received my Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis in Summer 2026, where I was a member of the NatuRE Policy Lab and the Kelp RiSES research partnership.

Selected awards:

• 2025 NAAFE Best Student Paper Award
• 2023 North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) Fellowship
• 2023 California Sea Grant Graduate Student Research Fellowship

Before joining DWR in October 2026, I worked as a consulting economist at Northern Economics, contributing to applied research projects including federal government studies and quantitative work on fishing community resilience. Beyond natural resources, I am interested in applying cutting-edge quantitative methods, such as forecasting, optimization, and machine learning for decisions under uncertainty, to a broader range of problems. I welcome collaborations across fields. If any of this resonates with you, feel free to reach out at kyumin.kim.econ@gmail.com.

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