James Wilen

James E. Wilen is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis (UCD). Before joining UCD he was at the Universities of British Columbia and Washington in the Departments of Economics.  He received his B.A. degree from California State University Sonoma in 1970 and his Ph.D. from U.C. Riverside in 1973, under Ralph d’Arge. Wilen’s research focuses broadly on natural resource economics and specifically on the impact of policy options on the economic and ecological health of fisheries.  Representative research addresses microeconomic behavior under open access exploitation, property rights solutions to fisheries management, analysis of marine reserves, fisheries bycatch problems, spatial models of resource use, and policy reform in developing country fisheries. Wilen has served on thesis committees for over 80 Ph.D. students, 50 as supervisor. He has received a number of research and graduate teaching and mentorship awards, including: the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) Quality of Research Award (1998, 2000, 2004, 2009), the Western Agricultural Economics Association Outstanding Published Research Award (1998), the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) Publication of Enduring Quality (2011, 2023), AAEA Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award (1998), the UCD Graduate Mentor Award (2004), and AAEA Outstanding Dissertation Award supervisor (6 times).  He was elected Distinguished Fellow of the AAEA in 2001, Fellow of AERE in 2011, Fellow of the Institute for Fisheries Economics and Trade in 2012, and a Fellow of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics in 2007.   

Charter Members:

Spiro Stefanou, Scott Rozelle, Shi-Ling Hsu, Martin Smith, Jon Sutinen, Ashok Mishra, Pierce Donoran, Fangbin Qiao, Cathy Roheim, Joshua Abbott, Lovell Jarvis, Mark Evans, David and Neeta Layton, Amanda Lindsay, Hirotsugu Uchida, Catherine Kling, Peder Andersen, James Anderson, Frank Asche, Ragnar Tveteras, Ted Gilliland, Steve Newbold, Rebecca Epanchin-Niell, David Zilberman, James Sanchirico, Marc Bellemare, Frances Homans, and Kailin Kroetz