Gordon C. Rausser, Robert Gordon Sproul Distinguished Professor, University of California, Berkeley, has become one of the major statesmen of our profession. A man of boundless energy, his cumulative and continuing contribution have established him as a world-class professional. Rausser was reared on a farm in California's San Joanquin Valley, a farm he managed from 1967 to 1973. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Davis, in 1971, and at that same institution he held his first professional appointment.

Over the course of his professional career, Rausser has become one of the effective and demanding mentors of Ph.D. in our profession. Moreover, he has been responsible for developing at least four new areas of research and has been one of the pioneers in another nine areas. As a result, in 1972, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1986, and 1987, he and his collaborators were selected to receive the Outstanding Published Research Awards by the AAEA or the WAEA.

He has written more than 200 scholarly contributions in such areas as applied econometrics; financial and monetary economics; industrial organization; natural resource economics; public policy and economic regulation; statistical decision and information theory; exchange rates and agricultural trade; macroeconomic linkages with agriculture; and, most recently, in the areas, of political economy of policy reform and new institutional economics. In many of these area, his Ph.D. students have received departmental, university, or AAEA Outstanding Dissertation Awards.

Rausser's economic research is of the highest order: (a) he was the first economist to apply adaptive control methods to public policy, which formed the basis for one of his major books; (b) his work in environmental economics was the first formal incorporation of information and measure theory, treating explicitly the inherent dynamic and stochastic behavior of environmental stacks and flows; (c) his collaborative research on commodity futures markets represents one of the first empirical treatments of rational expectation formation processes; and (d) he was the first to vigorously examine endogenizing governmental behavior, constructing political preference functions, and conceptualizing PESTs and PERTs. He, as much as anyone else, has made the political economy of policy a relevant research area for our profession.

Rausser is an inspirational and enthralling speaker, a characteristic which enhanced his leadership effectiveness in research, teaching, and administration. Only three illustrations of his leadership contributions will be cited here. First, during one of the most critical periods of the Berkeley department's organizational life, he served as chairman for almost seven years. He accepted his responsibility at a time when almost one-half of the faculty was still to be recruited and almost all of the physical capital needed replacement. His leadership was instrumental in selecting outstanding faculty, refocusing limited resources, raising private research funds, redesigning the instructional programs, and enhancing the department's credibility on the Berkeley campus.

Second, whenever crises have arisen on the Berkeley campus, Rausser is generally asked to serve in one capacity or another. In one instance, he chaired an economic review council for the entire Berkeley campus, emphasizing the Department of Economics. His council presented a number of recommendations that have led to a steady and remarkable improvement in the department's performance.

Third, of paramount importance has been Rausser's role in designing and forming new institutions; the success of more than one research center can be attributed to his intellectual leader leadership. For example, as Chief Economists of A.I.D., Rausser used his scholarly work in the political economics of policy reform to develop an extension program for its implementation, leading to the establishment of the Institute of Policy Reform, the Economic Development Consortium, University Centers of Research Excellence, and the A.I.D. Research Fellow Program.

The weight and significance of his contributions to scholarly research, academia, the U.S. government, international organizations and agencies, the AAEA and other professional economic and statistical associations, and to the development and nurturing of Ph.D. students and junior faculty members are extraordinary. His pro bono activities and his unselfish contributions to public service and university administration have few equals.