Lead Researchers

Real solutions to resource, environment, and infrastructure challenges.

Western Economics LLC is led by researchers who pair applied economic methods with hands-on experience in resource governance, municipal infrastructure, and public-sector accounting — the kind of background that keeps analysis grounded in how decisions actually get made, funded, and implemented.

Lead Researcher

Alexander Maas, PhD

PhD economist with 11 years of experience

Alexander Maas has 11 years of experience applying economic methods to resource, environmental, utility, and policy questions. His work emphasizes practical analysis, careful interpretation, and communication that helps clients understand options, impacts, and tradeoffs.

Alex's published work has addressed water scarcity, residential water demand and conservation, water-rights institutions, ecosystem-service valuation, common-pool resource risk, agricultural adaptation, and the economics of resource and environmental policy.

Alex has worked on projects for AgWest, True Oil, The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, Fort Collins Utilities, and other public, private, and nonprofit organizations.

Alex has served on a water board as well, bringing direct experience with water governance, stakeholder considerations, and the operational context behind public resource decisions.

Lead Researcher

Christopher Goemans, PhD

PhD economist with 22 years of experience

Christopher Goemans brings more than two decades of experience in resource, environmental, and applied economics. His work supports impact analysis, cost-benefit analysis, utilities questions, and policy decisions where economic evidence must be clear, defensible, and useful.

Chris's research has focused on the allocation and management of scarce resources, especially water, including water transfers, drought-period demand management, climate variability, water markets, and how residential customers respond to prices, restrictions, and information.

Chris has also served on a water board, giving him firsthand perspective on governance, public process, infrastructure priorities, and the practical constraints that shape water-resource decisions.

Infrastructure & Public Works Lead

Tyler Palmer, MPA

Deputy City Administrator & Public Works Director with 23+ years in local government

Tyler Palmer serves as Deputy City Administrator and Public Works Director for the City of Moscow, Idaho, with executive oversight of water, wastewater, streets, stormwater, environmental services, fleet, parks, facilities, and sanitation — a role built over 23 years rising through public works leadership in Idaho and the Salt Lake City metro area.

He holds an MPA from the University of Idaho and is a Jennings Randolph International Public Works Fellow. His leadership includes chair roles with the American Public Works Association, AWWA's Blue Mountain Sub-Section, and the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee, giving him direct, working familiarity with the regulatory and governance realities behind infrastructure decisions.

CPA & GASB Specialist

Stephen Masser, CPA

CPA and GASB specialist with 14 years of experience

Stephen Masser brings 14 years of governmental accounting and financial reporting experience to projects where economic analysis has to connect cleanly to public-sector books. Before joining Western Economics, he worked for the City of Missoula, Montana, handling municipal accounting, financial reporting, and compliance with Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) requirements.

A graduate of Montana State University, Stephen specializes in GASB standards, fund accounting, and capital asset and infrastructure reporting — expertise that helps ground cost-benefit, rate, and infrastructure-investment analysis in the accounting realities agencies and utilities actually operate under.

Shared Perspective

One team, several disciplines, one standard of evidence.

The Western Economics team draws on economics, municipal infrastructure leadership, engineering, governmental accounting, and board-level water governance — assembled around each project's question rather than a fixed roster. That range shows up in the work: residential and commercial water demand, conservation policy, climate adaptation, ecosystem-service valuation, agricultural production, water markets, public-works operations, GASB and public-sector financial reporting, and integrated watershed planning.