About Robert Stavins
Robert N. Stavins is the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, Chairman of the Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Group at the Kennedy School, Director of Graduate Studies for the Doctoral Programs in Public Policy and Political Economy and Government, Co Chair of the Harvard Business School Kennedy School Joint Degree Programs, and Director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements. He is a University Fellow of Resources for the Future, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Editor of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, and a Member of: the Board of Directors of Resources for the Future, the Board of Academic Advisors of the AEI Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, the Editorial Boards of Resource and Energy Economics, Environmental Economics Abstracts, B.E. Journals of Economic Analysis & Policy, and Economic Issues. He is also an editor of the Journal of Wine Economics. He was formerly a member of the Editorial Board of Land Economics, The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the Board of Directors of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, a member and Chairman of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Science Advisory Board, the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, a Lead Author of the Second and Third Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a contributing editor of Environment. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Northwestern University, an M.S. in agricultural economics from Cornell, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
Professor Stavins' research has focused on diverse areas of environmental economics and policy, including examinations of: market based policy instruments; regulatory impact analysis; innovation and diffusion of pollution control technologies; environmental benefit valuation; policy instrument choice under uncertainty; competitiveness effects of regulation; depletion of forested wetlands; political economy of policy instrument choice; and costs of carbon sequestration. His research has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, Science, Nature, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Ecology Law Quarterly, Journal of Regulatory Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Resource and Energy Economics, The Energy Journal, Energy Policy, Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Explorations in Economic History, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, other scholarly and popular periodicals, and several books. He is the co-editor of Architectures for Agreement: Addressing Global Climate Change in the Post-Kyoto World (Cambridge University Press, 2007), editor of the fifth edition of Economics of the Environment (W. W. Norton, 2005), co editor of Environmental Protection and the Social Responsibility of Firms (Resources for the Future, 2005), editor of The Political Economy of Environmental Regulation (Edward Elgar, 2004), co editor of the second edition of Public Policies for Environmental Protection (Resources for the Future, 2000), and the author of Environmental Economics and Public Policy: Selected Papers of Robert N. Stavins, 1988 1999 (Edward Elgar, 2000).
Professor Stavins directed Project 88, a bi partisan effort co chaired by former Senator Timothy Wirth and the late Senator John Heinz, to develop innovative approaches to environmental and resource problems. He continues to work closely with public officials on matters of national and international environmental policy. He has been a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences, several Administrations, Members of Congress, environmental advocacy groups, the World Bank, the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development, state and national governments, and private foundations and firms.
Prior to coming to Harvard, Stavins was a staff economist at the Environmental Defense Fund; and before that, he managed irrigation development in the middle east, and spent four years working in agricultural extension in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer.
