Sofia Franco
Sofia Franco
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Economics
Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal
sfranco@novasbe.pt
Sofia Franco is an Assistant Professor (Adjunct) at Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE), Portugal. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2007, and was a faculty member at the University of California-Riverside and a visiting Assistant Professor at Pomona College, before joining Nova SBE in 2010. In 2013, Dr. Franco also held a visiting Associate Research position at the University of California-Irvine where she worked on the MRPI project: application of the RELU-TRAN model to the Greater Los Angeles Region.
Most of Dr. Franco’s research lies at the boundaries of environmental, urban and real estate economics, and uses theoretical models and state-of-the-art econometric and computable general equilibrium methods, as well as geographical information (GIS) tools. Dr. Franco has published scholarly articles dealing with the efficiency and distributional impacts of anti-sprawl policies, urban sprawl and land use change in the United States. Additional work has focused on the impacts of minimum parking requirements on urban sprawl, land consumption and real estate prices. A further branch of her research has examined the impacts of urban growth controls and policy uncertainty on forest management practices.