Rate My Professor Richard Howarth

Richard B. Howarth is the Richard and Jane Pearl Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College and serves as Co-Chair of the PhD Program in Ecology, Evolution, Environment, and Society. He is an environmental economist whose research examines the interplay between economic analysis and the biophysical, moral, and social dimensions of environmental policy and governance. His work focuses on the valuation and management of ecosystem services, theories of discounting and intergenerational justice, climate stabilization policy, energy transitions, and the relationship between economic growth, human well-being, and environmental quality.

Professor Howarth earned an A.B. summa cum laude from the Biology and Society Program at Cornell University in 1985, an M.S. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1987, and a Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley in 1990. Prior to joining the Dartmouth faculty in 1998, he held research and teaching positions at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1990 to 1993 and at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1993 to 1998. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ecological Economics from 2008 to 2022. His selected publications include the book Status, Growth, and the Environment: Goods as Symbols in Applied Welfare Economics (2002, co-authored with K.A. Brekke) and numerous peer-reviewed articles on topics such as shared social values in deliberative valuation, dual-track transitions to global carbon pricing, and pro-environmental behavior.