Fellow,
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Fellow,
Australian Institute of Company Directors
Editorial
Boards Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal
of Economic Behavior and Organization, Australian Journal of Agricultural
and Resource Economics, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
1981
and 2001 Editors' Prize, best article Australian Journal of Agricultural
Economics
1993
Australian Social Science Academy Medal
1997
American Agricultural Economics Association, Quality of Research
Discovery Prize Honorable Mention
1997
and 2000 Institute of Public Administration, Australia, Sam Richardson
Prize, Best Journal Article
2001
American Agricultural Economics Association, Quality of Research
Discovery Prize Honorable Mention.
John Quiggin has made fundamental contributions to both theoretical
economics and practical policy debates on economic issues in Australia.
He is also an influential economic and political commentator,
who has helped frame the economic debate on a wide variety of
issues within the last decade.
His most important theoretical contributions have been to the
economics of risk and uncertainty, with a focus on choice under
uncertainty and on agricultural production under uncertainty.
The rank-dependent expected utility model, which he first developed
under the name 'anticipated utility theory', is now the most popular
alternative to the expected-utility model of choice under uncertainty
and the most widely-accepted resolution of the famous Allais paradox.
Quiggin's original article on this topic (published in Journal
of Economics and Behavioral Organization in 1982) is one of the
best-known works in the literature on the representation of choice
under uncertainty. This article, which formed the core of the
Ph.D. thesis that he submitted to the University of New England
under the supervision of Jock Anderson, is one of the most highly-cited
research articles ever published by an agricultural economist.
Quiggin has also worked extensively in the field of environmental
economics. Important areas in which he has made contributions
include: the analysis of property rights systems, with a focus
on common property; irrigation-related and dryland salinity; valuation
of public goods; and self-protection against environmental hazards.
Quiggin's widely-cited work on the valuation of public goods has
included both technical contributions aimed at refining the contingent-valuation
model and critical assessments of the theoretical underpinnings
of the model, focusing on such issues as altruism and interactions
within households. His analysis of property rights contributed
to a fundamental reassessment of the concept of 'common property'.
More recently, in collaboration with Robert G Chambers, Quiggin
has developed and extended the Arrow-Debreu state-contingent model
of production under uncertainty, using modern methods of convex
analysis and duality theory. This work has led to generalizations
of existing models of production under uncertainty and has been
recognized twice since 1997 by the American Agricultural Economics
Association for its research quality. Particular applications
have included nonpoint-source pollution control, hedging behavior
for agricultural producers through futures and financial markets,
moral hazard, agricultural insurance, and agricultural price stabilization.
Although he has lived and worked in his native Australia for most
of his career, Quiggin forged close links with the University
of Maryland in the early 1990s and has since published more than
20 journal articles and book chapters in collaboration with Maryland
agricultural economists including Robert G. Chambers, John Horowitz
and Richard Just.
In an era when leading agricultural economists rarely play a major
role in framing policy debates, Quiggin has been a leading force
in extending the profession's research expertise into practical
Australian policy debates. Since 1992, he has been a fortnightly
columnist in the Australian Financial Review, the Australian equivalent
of the Wall Street Journal, covering topics ranging from global
warming to labeling of genetically modified food.
Quiggin has also been an active participant in the Australian
public policy debate, publishing reports and submissions to public
inquiries on topics including ecological tax reform, the implications
of competition policy for regional communities and the agricultural
sector, the sustainability of environmental funding, and tariff
policy.
Quiggin has received many research grants from the Australian
Research Council (roughly the Australian equivalent to the National
Science Foundation) and was recently honored with a Federation
Fellowship, the most prestigious appointment currently available
to Australian researchers.
Quiggin has contributed to the profession as an associate editor
of numerous journals, including the Journal of Environmental Economics
and Management, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization,
Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty and as a member of the nominating
panel for the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.