Researcher Profile

James W. Boyd

Senior Fellow and Director, RFF Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth

202.328.5013 [email protected]

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Topics of Interest

• Ecosystems
• Environmental Economics Topics
• Land Use
• Biodiversity
• Ecosystem Services and Management
• Environmental Accounting
• Natural Infrastructure
• Policy Instruments and Evaluation
• Valuation

Jim Boyd’s research lies at the intersection of economics, ecology, and law, with a particular focus on the measurement and management of ecosystem goods and services. Boyd emphasizes the need to better coordinate economic and ecological research to improve the practical performance of green incentives, markets, and investments. He advocates and works on the practical design of a “green GDP”—national environmental accounts to capture and track the status of environmental public goods and services and measure the environmental consequences of economic growth. 
  
Boyd is co-director of the RFF Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth, which was created to work with practitioners, scholars, and policymakers to incorporate ecological science into public policies to protect, enhance, and manage the social wealth arising from natural systems. 
 
He has served on National Academy of Science and other advisory panels, including most recently the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Committee on Valuing Ecological Systems and Services. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University (2007–2008) and Washington University in St. Louis (1996) and was director of the Energy and Natural Resources Division at Resources for the Future (2002–2007).

Education

PhD, Applied Microeconomics, The Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, 1993
BA, History, the University of Michigan, 1986

Recent Work

• Discussion Paper

  Ecosystem Services Indicators: Improving the Linkage between Biophysical and Economic Analyses

  Sep 14, 2015 | James W. Boyd, Paul Ringold, Alan J. Krupnick, Robert J. Johnston, Matthew A. Weber, Kim Hall | 86 pp.

  Social consequences can provide potent justifications for environmental protection and management, and human preferences and related behaviors are the key to understanding both the cause of and solutions to most environmental challenges.

  Ecosystems
• Discussion Paper

  Best Available Science and Imperiled Species Conservation: Challenges, Opportunities, and Partnerships

  Aug 14, 2015 | James W. Boyd, Rebecca Epanchin-Niell | 23 pp.
• Discussion Paper

  Best Available Science and Imperiled Species Conservation: Challenges, Opportunities, and Partnerships. A Business, Government, and NGO Dialogue

  Dec 18, 2014 | James W. Boyd
• Discussion Paper

  Measuring the Return on Program-Level Conservation Investments: Three Case Studies of Capabilities and Opportunity

  May 15, 2014 | James W. Boyd

  Three large-scale conservation projects in Brazil, Canada, and the United States reveal important conservation assessment innovations and demonstrate barriers and opportunities to improve return on investment analysis in conservation.

  Ecosystems Forests Land Use Water
• Resources Article

  Goings On: Highlights from Recent Events at RFF

  Apr 11, 2014 | Juha V. Siikamäki, Dallas Burtraw, James W. Boyd, Jon A. Krosnick