Irene Mussio

Written By Holly Sutherland

Irene is an Uruguayan postdoctoral research associate based at Newcastle University (Business School). Here we interviewed Irene to find out more about her role within the Hub.

What is your current role within the Hub?

I am a postdoctoral researcher in economics. I specialize in understanding behaviours under risky contexts (environment and health) using experimental and valuation methods. I currently focus on understanding how local communities in the Mekong delta to reduce water pollution and how to value risks through non-monetary methods.

Why did you want to be part of the Hub?

I believe that the Hub so far has been a great fit for me, as my research is interdisciplinary and involves other fields such as psychology, geography, environmental science and health. The appealing factor of the Hub is to be able to interact with researchers from other fields and collaborate to make sure that our projects can bring something back to the communities we hope to engage with.

What does the Hub mean to you?

The Hub has given me the opportunity to connect with local communities and directly work with them to solve real-World problems by applying what I have learned in the last 20 years in economics. In the last two years, I was also lucky to meet new colleagues in other disciplines, make new friends and develop new research that goes beyond economic analysis. So you could say it’s a win-win situation!

What areas of research are you interested in?

“I am hoping that the outcomes of my research come back to policymakers and local communities to change the way environmental issues are tackled in the different deltas that the Hub targets. This way, we can find sustainable avenues to increase farmer income in the long term, as well as healthy futures for our delta dwellers.”
— Irene Mussio

I am currently interested in how people deal with situations that have underlying risk. For example, how to value people’s preferences for reducing the impact of climate change in both rural and urban areas of the GBM delta, how we can incentivize people to make healthier decisions or decisions that are better for the environment. I am mainly a quantitative economist and I use games to examine behaviour in different settings. For example, I can measure how risk averse you are in different domains (such as health, safety, and environment), how averse you are to losses and how this can be applied to things such as long-term sustainability.

Tell us about your research?

With Sue Chilton, Darren Duxbury and Smriti Sharma, we are working on two main lines of research:

  • Understanding how people in different countries trade-off mortality risks due to climate change with other more common risks (like traffic accidents). For example, would you prefer to move to a city that has more floods than traffic accidents or viceversa? We have extended this methodology to India and we will be assessing the impact of cyclones on people’s preferences for location in urban areas of the GBM delta.

  • Assessing how people behave when they have to come together to solve an environmental-based problem. For example, can people contribute towards a common good to build a water dam, a canal to separate clean and polluted water, and mangroves to reduce the risk of flooding without the local authorities having to intervene?

How did you get into this area of research?

I wanted to be an economist since I was six years-old! I was always interested in why people behave in different ways and studying environmental and health economics has been an extension of my personal interests. The projects under the Hub have come from merging the history of research in the value of life (pioneered by Mike Jones-Lee) and risks to the environment and health at Newcastle University as well as my own research development during the PhD, as well as extensive conversations with researchers in our partner universities in the Hub.

How will your research make a difference to the future?

I am hoping that the outcomes of my research come back to policymakers and local communities to change the way environmental issues are tackled in the different deltas that the Hub targets. This way, we can find sustainable avenues to increase farmer income in the long term, as well as healthy futures for our delta dwellers.

What are your most important publications?

Holly Sutherland
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