William D. Shipman Professor of Economics Emeritus Rick Freeman III has been inducted as a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE).

Freeman was honored during the AERE Fellows 2008 program, held January 4, 2009, in San Francisco.

AERE is an international scientific association in the field of environmental and resource economics.

In presenting him with the award, AERE noted that Freeman "wrote the book" on nonmarket valuation, adding that over a 30-year period, his books integrated all of the key theoretical literature in revealed and stated preference methods for valuing changes in environmental services, human health effects of pollution and environmental risks.

"Freeman's earliest research identified the importance of the distributional effects of public water projects, long before the literature on environmental justice had been considered, and he was the first analyst to develop a comprehensive benefit-cost assessment of federal air and water quality policies in 1982," read the AERE program.

"Freeman's extensive knowledge of the science, regulations and economics that underlie regulatory impact analyses have made him an especially effective advocate for economics on more than 25 advisory boards and review panels for agencies such as the U.S. EPA's Science Advisory Board, the National Academy of Science Committees and others."

In 2000 Freeman retired from teaching after 35 years.  Freeman received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington in 1965. He has been on the faculty at Bowdoin since that time and has served as chair of the economics department and Director of the Environmental Studies Program there. He has also held appointments as Visiting College Professor at the University of Washington and Robert M. La Follette Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, a research organization in Washington, DC.

Freeman's principal research interests are in the areas of applied welfare economics, benefit-cost analysis, and risk management as applied to environmental and resource management issues. Much of his work has been devoted to the development of models and techniques for estimating the welfare effects of environmental changes such as the benefits of controlling pollution and the damages to natural resources due to releases of chemicals into the environment.

He has authored or co-authored eight books including The Economics of Environmental Policy (with Robert Haveman and Allen Kneese), The Benefits of Environmental Improvement: Theory and Practice, Air and Water Pollution Control: A Benefit-Cost Assessment, The Economic Approach to Environmental Policy, a collection of his essays, and most recently, The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values: Theory and Methods, 2nd edition. The first edition of this book was named a Publication of Enduring Quality by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists in January, 2003. He has also published more than 70 articles and papers in academic journals and edited collections.

Freeman is presently a member of EPA's Committee on Valuing the Protection of Ecological Systems and Services. And of the National Academy of Science Committee on Mortality Risk Reduction Benefits from Decreasing Tropospheric Ozone Exposure. He has been a member of the EPA's Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, and the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee and its Science Advisory Board.