2008 AERE Fellow: Thomas D. Crocker

Tom Crocker began publishing in the field of environmental and resource economics back in 1959, as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College. He went on to get a PhD in Agricultural Economics in 1967, and now, a full 50 years later, he is still publishing. His recent vita lists three publications forthcoming in 2009 and another 7 under review or revision. This level of sustained research productivity over a half-century is an astounding feat. But it isn’t just the quantity of Tom’s work that warrants the recognition today; it is the influence that this work has had, both directly and indirectly, over the course of his career.

Tom’s research and teaching have helped make the field of environmental economics what it is today. He is viewed as one of the founders of the field.  Tom’s research included seminal work in a number of areas that are at the forefront of research and policy discussions today. Few economists of the current generation realize that Tom developed the original theory behind tradable pollution permits, or cap-and-trade systems as we call them today, in a 1966 paper that received the AERE Publication of Enduring Quality in 2001. While the analysis in that paper was informal, it touched on and anticipated a number of issues and nuances that others would refine and state more rigorously over the decades to follow. Given the prominence of cap-and-trade systems in current policy discussions, particularly in the context of climate change, it is hard to over-state the impact that Tom’s idea has had.

Tom was also a pioneer in research combining economics and ecology, another area of great importance today. He recognized early on the similarities between economic and ecological systems and the fundamental linkages between the two. He was working on “valuing ecosystem services” over 25 years ago, long before this area of research had the visibility that it has today.

 

 

Tom made significant early contributions to:

  • the development and application of hedonic property value models to measure willingness to pay for decreases in air pollution;
  • the economic analysis of non-convexities (in context of acid rain);
  • contingent valuation; and
  • climate change.

 

More recently, he has focused much of his attention on children’s health and the environment (in particular, exposure to lead), and valuing environmental risk reductions when individuals can endogenously self-protect. 

Beyond these research contributions, Tom has been an outstanding teacher and mentor. He created, along with Ralph d’Arge and other faculty at Wyoming, one of the first internationally recognized PhD programs in environmental and resource economics. And the PhD students he helped to train are among the leaders in the field today. He encourages students (and others around him) to examine the pros and cons of our profession’s methods and mindset, and they are better economists for it. He has a long legacy, stemming both from his own work and the work of those he has mentored and influenced, intellectually, professionally, and personally.

For his role in developing environmental economics as a subfield of economics and defining the field; his seminal research contributions, particularly related to tradable permits and linkages between economic and ecological systems; his outstanding mentoring of graduate students; and for half a century of dedication and sustained research productivity and teaching in environmental economics, we hereby induct Thomas D. Crocker as a 2008 Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.


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