Robert Stavins

Robert Stavins

HEEP Director and Faculty Fellow
A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School
Robert Stavins photo

Robert N. Stavins is the A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development, Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, and Chairman of the Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Group at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also Director of Graduate Studies at Harvard for the Doctoral Program in Public Policy and the Doctoral Program in Political Economy and Government. He is a University Fellow at and a Member of: the Board of Directors of Resources for the Future, the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, and the Editor of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. He is a former member and Chair of the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board.

Professor Stavins’ research has focused on diverse areas of environmental economics and policy, including examinations of: policy instrument choice under uncertainty; competitiveness effects of regulation; design and implementation of market-based policy instruments; diffusion of pollution-control technologies; and depletion of forested wetlands. His current research includes analyses of: international policy alternatives for addressing climate change; technology innovation; environmental benefit valuation; political economy of policy instrument choice; and econometric estimation of carbon sequestration costs.

Prior to coming to Harvard, Prof. Stavins was a staff economist at the Environmental Defense Fund; and before that, he managed irrigation development in the Middle East, and spent four years working in agricultural extension in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer.

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