# Current and Former HEEP Faculty Fellows Featured in ‘The Palgrave Companion to Harvard Economics’ July 23, 2024 [Harvard Environmental Economics Program (HEEP)](/) Director [Robert Stavins](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/robert-stavins) and other current and former HEEP Faculty Fellows are featured in [*The Palgrave Companion to Harvard Economics*](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-52053-2), published in July 2024 by Palgrave Macmillan, the latest in a series of volumes devoted to the contributions of economics programs and economists at leading universities. Previous volumes have featured economists at Cambridge University, the London School of Economics, Oxford University, and the University of Chicago. The book includes three chapters on sub-disciplines of economics that are well-represented at Harvard, followed by 41 chapters providing insight into the work of individual economists. Martin Feldstein, John Kenneth Galbraith, Wassily Leontief, and Joseph Schumpeter are among the leading economists featured in the book. HEEP is well-represented with seven current and former [Faculty Fellows](/people/people-terms/faculty-fellows) profiled in the volume. Current HEEP Faculty Fellows who are featured are: - [Jerry Green](https://scholar.harvard.edu/green/home), John Leverett Professor in the University and the David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Economics at Harvard University; - [N. Gregory Mankiw](https://scholar.harvard.edu/mankiw/home), Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University; - [Eric Maskin](https://scholar.harvard.edu/maskin/home), Adams University Professor at Harvard University; and - [Robert Stavins](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/robert-stavins), A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School and HEEP Director. Also featured are former HEEP Faculty Fellows [Michael Kremer](https://economics.uchicago.edu/directory/Michael-Kremer), now a University Professor in Economics, University of Chicago; [Dale Jorgenson](https://scholar.harvard.edu/jorgenson/home), formerly the Samuel W. Morris University Professor (deceased); and [Martin Weitzman](https://scholar.harvard.edu/weitzman/home), formerly Professor of Economics (deceased). [The chapter about Weitzman was co-authored by Robert Stavins and Gernot Wagner.](https://scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/weitzman_chapter.pdf) The 24-page [chapter devoted to Stavins’ contributions](https://scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/stavins/files/stavins_chapter.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1I1T-F13mC_Y4_nbh5XwglR3MjK6cj069PTvVVibV7cXPxyepvH-QFL2s_aem_h-ClZxjWnfER4dvAZC6FGA) is authored by [Lori Bennear](https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/bennear), Professor of Energy Economics and Policy and the Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Bennear is a former HEEP Pre-Doctoral Fellow, having earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard in 2002. Bennear writes that, “Together with Marty Weitzman…Rob built the environmental economics programme at Harvard over decades and his work largely defines the Harvard approach to the field.” His work, she states, “has always been at the intersection of economics and policy—bringing rigorous theoretical and empirical insights to the most pressing environmental policy problems, from wetlands depletion to acid rain to the fundamental environmental challenge of our time, climate change.” Bennear highlights several seminal research projects over the course of Stavins’ career, including a cost-benefit analysis of preserving the Tuolumne River located in and near Yosemite National Park, which he conducted while working at the Environmental Defense Fund. “Rob’s benefit–cost analysis supported preservation of the River in its current state over hydroelectric development, showing that benefit–cost analysis can be an important, and non-partisan, decision aid,” she writes. “These insights foreshadow themes that will recur throughout Rob’s research career—that rigorous and quantitative economic analysis can be applied to environmental problems and that such analysis can be used to enhance environmental quality and preserve resources and not only as a tool to deregulate and promote development.” Bennear argues that Stavins’ contributions to environmental economics have been shaped by key experiences in his life, including the four years he spent as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone working on paddy rice development. At Harvard, she points specifically to his work on policy analysis, the economics of policy instruments, the economics of technology change, natural resource economics, the economics of land-use change, and the economics of climate change, which is the focus of much of Stavins’ recent work, including his academic research on cap-and-trade systems and the interactions of subnational and federal policies in the U.S. Bennear concludes by writing that Stavins “does not just publish academic articles that can inform policy debates. Rather, he is an active participant in policy processes, from Project 88 which formed the basis of a movement towards market-based approaches to environmental policy, to serving on the Scientific Advisory Board of the US EPA, to serving as an author and lead author on the IPCC. Such connected and policy-engaged research is the hallmark of the Harvard Kennedy School and Rob has become one of its most prominent thought leaders.” See also:- [ 2024 ](/news-year/2024) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)