Frontiers in Environmental Economics
Resources for the Future, with the support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Center for Environmental Economics, convenes a conference in Washington, DC to explore the frontiers of environmental economics.
In February 2006, RFF opened an international competition through a call for paper proposals from environmental economists, other economists, and academics of any other discipline who could offer research papers at the frontiers of environmental economics and contribute to identifying or resolving important public policy problems addressed within the sub-discipline of environmental economics. A program committee consisting of Joseph Aldy, RFF; Catherine Kling, Iowa State University; Alan Krupnick, RFF; John List, University of Chicago; former RFF President Paul Portney, University of Arizona Eller College of Management; and V. Kerry Smith, Arizona State University evaluated more than 175 submissions. The committee selected nine papers for the conference and organized a closing panel of distinguished scholars to identify research questions on the frontiers of environmental economics.
These papers advance theoretical and empirical methods in environmental and resource economics and illustrate how expanding the research frontier can inform the design and evaluation of environmental policy in the future. Some of the papers address the implications of neuroeconomics, behavioral economics, experimental economics and virtual reality for environmental economics. Other papers explore the consequences of adding more sophisticated representations of space and time to models of natural resource growth and use, such as fisheries. Many of these papers involve multiple disciplines; for instance, one involves economists, historians and paleo-ecologists to examine the effects of agriculture on biodiversity over a 400 year period.
Provocative and intense discussions and a packed room testify to the interest shown in these papers. Next steps include revising the papers and publishing them as RFF Discussion Papers. Updates will be made to this page as they become available.
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Introduction and Welcoming
Phil Sharp, President, Resources for the Future
Phil Sharp is president of RFF. His career in public service over the last 35 years includes 10 terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana and a lengthy tenure on the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard University. He served as director of the IOP from 1995 to 1998 and again from 2004 until August 2005. Sharp is co-chair of the Energy Board of the Keystone Center and a member of the National Research Council's Board of Energy and Environmental Systems. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Energy Foundation, the Cinergy Corporation, and the Electric Power Research Institute. He received his Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University.
Paul Portney, Dean, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona
Paul R. Portney is dean of the Eller College of Management. From 1972 through 2005, he was with RFF. From 1986 to 1989 he headed two of its research divisions, in 1989 became its vice president, and was named president and CEO in 1995. From 1979 to 1980, He served as chief economist for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He has held visiting teaching positions at the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University. He is the author or co-author of 10 books, including Public Policies for Environmental Protection, and was recently named one of the 100 most-cited researchers in economics and business. Portney received his Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University and his B.A. from Alma College.
Alan Krupnick, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future
Alan Krupnick is a senior fellow and director of the Quality of the Environment division at RFF. He works extensively on valuing benefits of environmental policies. He has studied the value that New York residents place on ecological benefits in the Adirondacks, the valuation of children's health in the context of lead abatement in U.S. homes, and the willingness of Canadians to pay for improvements in the quality of their drinking water. Krupnick also conducts significant research in China, tracking the health effects of Taiyuan's sulfur dioxide permit trading program and examining whether emissions reductions are leading to measurable health improvements. He also has conducted surveys worldwide that elicit willingness to pay for mortality risk reductions. Krupnick received a Ph.D. and an M.A. in economics from the University of Maryland and a B.S. in finance from Pennsylvania State University.
Paper 1: Using Biomedical technologies to inform economic modeling: Challenges an opportunities for improving analysis of environmental policies
- Brian Roe
- Timothy Haab
Conference Presentations: Brian Roe, Author, Ohio State University
Brian Roe is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at Ohio State University. Prior to his employment at Ohio State, Roe worked on food safety and health information disclosure policy issues as a staff fellow at the FDA. His research focuses on issues ranging from information disclosure policies to livestock economics to behavioral contracting. His most recent work employs a mix of behavioral and biomedical methodologies to explore the heterogeneity and stability of individual response to economic risk. He holds a Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Maryland and a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
