Special Conference on the Frontiers of Environmental Economics
February 26-27, 2007
Washington, DC

Resources for the Future (RFF) will host a special conference on "The Frontiers of Environmental Economics" in Washington, DC on February 26-27, 2007. This conference is being funded by the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, and will be organized by Alan Krupnick of RFF (krupnick@rff.org), with assistance from Joe Aldy of RFF (aldy@rff.org) and a Paper Selection Committee that includes, in addition to Alan Krupnick, Catherine Kling, Iowa State University; John List, University of Chicago; Paul R. Portney, University of Arizona; and V. Kerry Smith, North Carolina State University.

This call for abstracts is open to environmental economists, other economists, and academics of any other discipline who wish to offer research papers at the frontiers of environmental economics and can contribute to identifying or resolving important public policy problems addressed within the sub-discipline of environmental economics.

Respondents submitting abstracts selected by the committee for the conference will be contracted to write papers based on the abstracts for an honorarium of $4,000 per paper. Limited travel support is available. The current plan calls for acceptance of 10-12 papers. Papers will appear on the RFF and EPA websites along with other materials from the conference. Depending on the quality of the papers, they may be published as a symposium or a special issue in a journal or as an edited volume.

Abstracts should be submitted as a PDF file attachment by email to Mischejohn@rff.org by April 1, 2006. Include the acronym FEE on the subject line. RFF will acknowledge receipt of all submissions via email. Notification of acceptance will be made by May 15, 2006. Authors must complete contracted papers by February 1, 2007.

To merit consideration, the abstract package should include the following information:

(I) Title of abstract, name and institutional affiliation of author(s) and their disciplines.
(II) CV of principal author(s).
(III) On a page separate from author identification: Abstract (limited to 1,500 words).
(IV) Short responses separate from abstract addressing:
a. Why you consider the proposed paper to be on the "frontier" of environmental economics and
b. How the proposed frontier research contributes to the identification or resolution of public policy problems.

The Paper Selection Committee is especially interested in non-mainstream, truly new ideas and papers that could take environmental and resource economics and the policies informed by the discipline in new directions. For example, ideas beyond the traditional scope of environmental and resource economics may bear on important issues to this sub-discipline. Topics may include but are not limited to: (1) the implications of recent research in behavioral economics for the concept of consumer sovereignty and welfare economics as it is applied in environmental and resource economics; (2) the implications of the new area of neuroeconomics on theories of valuation of environmental and health commodities; (3) engineering or history of science studies that shed light on the causes of and policy levers for innovation; and (4) the role for agent-based models.

Research located at the intersections of disciplines can also push the frontiers of environmental economics and further inform the policy community on environmental economic questions. The development of measurement metrics and bioeconomic models by ecologists and economists are examples of very underdeveloped areas that could have a big impact on the profession as well as policy design. Improved accounting for the role of "place" in environmental and resource economics, by integrating methods and theories from the natural sciences, geography, and sociology could further push the frontier.

There may also be frontiers located squarely within the discipline. EPA's Environmental Economics Research Strategy and the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of EPA's Science Advisory Board have assessed and analyzed major economics research gaps. The four broad areas identified by EPA are: (1) valuation of the benefits of regulations, with emphasis on human health benefits and ecological benefits; (2) environmental behavior and decision making; (3) market methods and incentives; and (4) benefits of environmental information disclosure. Illustrative examples suggested by these areas include (but are not limited to) research on Bayesian methods in benefit transfers; the characterization of uncertainty in benefit-cost analysis; the role of natural experiments and laboratory methods versus or in combination with stated preference and revealed preference approaches; research on the practical implementation of market-based incentives; research on how to calculate benefits for large- scale, multi-faceted policy changes and value of information studies to inform priorities in information investment and disclosure.

RFF retains final decision-making authority on awarding honoraria, subject to any federal contract constraints.