Stephen Polasky
Class of 2015-16
University of Minnesota
National Academy of Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Stephen Polasky is widely recognized as a leading economist working at the intersection of ecology and economics.
His research examines the contributions of nature to human well-being and analyzes the impacts of land use and land management on the provision and value of ecosystem services and natural capital. His research interests extend to issues in biodiversity conservation, sustainability, environmental regulation, renewable energy, climate change, and management of common property resources.
Polasky attended the London School of Economics from 1977 to 1978 and received his bachelor’s degree from Williams College in 1979. He earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan in 1986.
He joined the economics faculty of Boston College as an assistant professor in 1986 and moved to Oregon State University as an associate professor in 1993. Polasky also served as the senior staff economist for environment and resources for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1998–99.
In 1999, Polasky became the Fesler–Lampert Professor of Ecological/Environmental Economics and Regents Professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Applied Economics and the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, as well as a fellow at its Institute on the Environment.
In addition, Polasky serves on the board of directors and science council for the Nature Conservancy, the sustainability external advisory board for the Dow Chemical Company, the science advisory board for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the science advisory board for the Environmental Protection Agency.
As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, he is one of six economists in the Human Environmental Sciences section. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He has co-written or edited three books and published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles. His research has appeared in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Frontiers of Ecology and Environment, Land Economics, and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, among other publications. He is an associate editor for Ecology and Society and the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics. Polasky also serves on the editorial board for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Annual Review of Environment and Resources. He has served as coeditor and associate editor for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and associate editor for the International Journal of Business and Economics, Conservation Letters, and Ecology Letters.
As a TIAS Faculty Fellow, Polasky will collaborate with faculty–researchers and graduate students from the Department of Agricultural Economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and from the Department of Economics in the College of Liberal Arts.
For more updated information:
Polasky_CV 1_21.pdf – Google Drive