Maureen L. Cropper
University of Maryland, College Park
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Primary Section: 64, Human Environmental Sciences Secondary Section: 54, Economic Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2008)
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Biosketch
Maureen Cropper is a Distinguished University Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. She is also a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, a member of the Board of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Cropper served as a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Research Department from 1993-2006 and was a member of the USEPA’s Science Advisory Board from 1994-2006, where she chaired the Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis and the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee. She recently co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Assessing Approaches to Updating the Social Cost of Carbon. Professor Cropper’s research has focused on valuing the health impacts and health benefits of environmental programs, especially program to reduce air pollution. She is an author of the recent Lancet Commission report on Pollution and Health. Her current research centers on evaluating energy and environmental policies in India.
Research Interests
I am an environmental economist whose research has focused on valuing non-market benefits associated with environmental improvements-primarily health benefits, such as increases in life expectancy associated with reductions in air and water pollution, and reductions risk of chronic illness associated with improvements in air quality. Some of this research has been theoretical-analyzing how the value of reductions in risk of death should vary over the life cycle-and some empirical-attempting to estimate what people will pay for reductions in their risk of dying, and to see how these values vary with a person's age and how far in the future the risk reduction occurs. These estimates are used in cost-benefit analyses of health and safety regulations by the USEPA and other agencies. Another strand of my research has analyzed regulatory decisions issued by the USEPA to infer the value of lives saved implicit in these regulations. In many cases, these values are much greater than what individuals would themselves pay for risk reductions. Other research has focused on inferring the value of environmental amenities from housing prices and from migration decisions. More recently, I have analyzed preferences for environmental and safety improvements in developing countries.
