In 1979, AERE held its first official annual meeting with the ASSA in Atlanta, Georgia. During the AERE business meeting, those attending were polled to elect both officers and a board of directors. This began two traditions that continue today. The first is that the AERE winter meetings are held jointly with the ASSA. These meetings feature a number of AERE sessions, including one joint AERE/ASSA session. The AERE Luncheon, the highlight of the annual meetings, precedes the business meeting. The second tradition is that the working heart of AERE is at Resources for the Future, including the office of the executive secretary.
The two most important actions of that first year were the initial membership drive and the initiation of discussions with Academic Press, Inc. about making the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM), first published in 1974, the official journal of the association. The recruiting effort resulted in AERE having 400 members by the end of 1980 and 575 by the end of June 1981. In the matter of JEEM, the first issue that included the imprint of AERE, including a list of officers, was volume 10, number 3, of September 1983.
The other AERE publication, the AERE Newsletter, was begun in 1981 with volume 1, number 1. Then, as now, the AERE Newsletter included policy essays, meeting announcements, calls for papers, new publications, research reports, and position announcements.
Two other features of the current AERE also date from those early days: the workshops and the informal relationship with the AAEA. The AERE summer meetings are held jointly with the AAEA. These meetings feature a number of sessions and a well attended reception.
The AERE Workshop focuses on a particular topic and always take place in a remarkable location. The first workshop, focusing on recreation demand modeling, was held in 1985 in Boulder with 53 participants and was funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Recent workshops have attracted 60-70 participants and have been held in Jackson Hole, Lake Tahoe, and Bar Harbor, among other locations. Topics have ranged from environmental policy to non-point source pollution to heath risks. Current sponsors of the workshop are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Economic Research Service (US Department of Agriculture), and the Fish and Wildlife Service (US Department of the Interior).
The most recent AERE activities are the website and the listserv. The website began as the AERE gopher (AERE-G) in 1994 at the University of Kentucky. The domain name aere.org was purchased in 1999. The volunteer AERE e-mail listserv (AERE-L) also began in 1994. Shortly thereafter, AERE-L merged with the market leader -- the environmental and resource economics e-mail listserv RESECON. RESECON is now the official e-mail listserv of AERE.
