MEA 2007 Annual Conference
About the Speakers
Chad Hart, an Agricultural Economist with the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD), serves as head of CARD's new division, Biorenewables Policy. His research interests are in the examination of biorenewable fuels production and the utilization of crops for that production, the analysis of federal agricultural program effects on the biorenewable fuels industry, and the impact of biorenewable fuels expansion on the traditional uses of agricultural crop production. Hart is also the U.S. Policy and Insurance Analyst with the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at Iowa State University. In this capacity, he is responsible for directing econometric and modeling efforts for the crop insurance component of the FAPRI modeling system. Hart received a Ph.D. in economics and statistics from Iowa State University.
John Ledyard is the Allen and Lenabelle Davis Professor of Economics and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology Division of Humanities and Social Sciences. He has been a Professor of Economics at the California Institute of Technology Division of Humanities and Social Sciences since 1985 and is a former chair of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division. He was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1977, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999, and a fellow of the Public Choice Society in 2004. Ledyard's research interests focus on the areas of using markets to solve problems and improving public sector decisions. He also serves as an associate editor for Economic Design and Economic Theory. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Economic Theory, Experimental Economics, and the Oxford Handbook of Political Economy. Ledyard received a Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University.
Stephen Polasky holds the Fesler-Lampert Chair in Ecological/Environmental Economics at the University of Minnesota. Polasky was the Senior Staff Economist for Environment and Resources for the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 1998-1999. He has served as associate editor and co-editor for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. Polasky serves on advisory boards for the Environmental Protection Agency and The Nature Conservancy. His research interests include biodiversity conservation, endangered species policy, integrating ecological and economic analysis, ecosystem services, renewable energy, environmental regulation, and common property resources. His papers have been published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, International Economic Review, Land Economics, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, and other journals. Polasky received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in 1986.
C. Ford Runge is a Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota, where he also holds appointments in the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Department of Forest Resources. His teaching and writing interests concentrate on trade and natural resources policy. He has served on the staff of the House Committee on Agriculture and as a science and diplomacy fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He continues as Subdirector in charge of Commodities and Trade Policy of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. Runge received a Ph.D. in agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin.
Sarah West is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Macalester College. She taught economics at Syracuse University in 1998, held a position as Assistant Instructor at the University of Texas in 1997, and was a visiting professor at El Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico City in 1996. West currently teaches on the topics of environmental economics and the principles of economics. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Public Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, and the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. In 2005, she co-edited Environmental Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, a nontechnical interdisciplinary collection of 12 essays, each of which uses natural or social science methods. West received a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Texas at Austin.
Elizabeth Wilson is an Assistant Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy and Law at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the development of carbon-managed energy systems. Recent work examines the regulatory and legal contexts for the deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies. She was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on carbon capture and sequestration and currently leads the World Resources Institute working group on liability for carbon capture and sequestration. Before joining the University of Minnesota, she served for six years as an Environmental Scientist with the National Risk Management Research Laboratory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She has also worked throughout Europe researching integrated waste and resource management, and in Kenya, Burundi, and Tanzania. Wilson received a doctorate in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University and a master's in human ecology from the Free University of Brussels in Belgium.