Alan Randall has helped set the agenda and mold the form of modern natural resource and environmental economics, through his contributions to theory, method, and application, his broad and innovative scholarship, his widely-used textbook, and his two decades of teaching at all levels and mentoring graduate students. He has been active in the policy process concerning resources and environmental issues, and has played an effective role in university governance.

Soon after he completed his education at the University of Sydney and Oregon State University, Alan's award winning 1972 American Journal of Agricultural Economics article established his reputation in the theory of market failure and the economics of institutions. While his work on these topics has been sustained, he has branched into other areas of resource economics. A series of papers with current and former graduate students, advancing the theory and methods of welfare change measurement and benefit cost analysis, has been published in American Economic Review, AJAE, Land Economics and Management. His 1974 JEEM article is seminal in the contingent valuation literature, and it remains the only winner of awards for a publication of enduring quality from both AAEA and AERE. Contingent valuation is now accepted in benefit cost analysis by domestic and international agencies, and by U.S. courts for natural resources damage assessment. Through sustained and innovative contributions to contingent valuation, Randall and his graduate students have remained at the forefront. Recently, Randall led the U.S. Dept. of Justice's economic assessment of environmental damage from the Exxon Valdez spill.

Carefully reading in philosophy of science has informed Randall's work in methodology for agricultural and resource economics. A series of current papers suggesting a philosophical justification for a policy framework that is sensitive to benefits and costs and to a safe minimum standard of conservation is attracting attention among ecologists and environmental ethicists, as well as economists.

Randall has produced three books and more than 190 papers and publications. His work is read widely and reprinted frequently in books of readings, and he is among the most-cited agricultural economist. He is in demand worldwide as a speaker and a lecture.

Alan Randall has had a major, positive effect on the graduate programs at the University of Kentucky and The Ohio State University in curriculum development and as a teacher and dissertation adviser. His Ph.D. graduates include an AAEA outstanding dissertation award winner and two honorable mention winners, and more than a dozen faculty members at major universities in the U.S. and other countries. Many of the young professionals who trace their academic lineage to Alan Randall have continued to work in areas that he helped define and develop. He inspires strong loyalty in his former graduate students, and repays that loyalty with enduring concern for their professional progress and personal well-being.

While Randall seldom shines from controversy, he is insightful and effective in university service roles. He has served as a university senator, chair of major university councils, and as a diligent colleague on many less glamorous committees. His service role extends beyond campus to the discipline and the nation. He has been an associate editor of AJAE, and has served on important AAEA and AERE committees. He has served on three National Research Council committees and a Council on Agriculture Science and Technology panel, and has been a consultant to the government, research organizations, and public interest groups.

Alan Randall is a broad-ranging but rigorous thinker and scholar, an innovative and productive researcher, an effective mentor, a major and continuing contributor to his discipline, and an unselfish servant to his university.