James Roumasset
UHERO Research Fellow and Professor Emeritus of Economics
Education
Ph.D., Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison
M.A., Economics, University of Hawaii
B.A., Economics, University of California, Berkeley
Research Interests
Environmental & resource economics, water and watershed management, new institutional economics, development microeconomics, and sustainable development
Professor of Economics, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Dr. Roumasset’s primary areas of research stem an NSF grant on energy substitution and sustainable development, the ERS/USDA PREISM program and a number of USGS grants on the sustainable development and conservation of water resources. He has previously held positions at UC Davis; the University of the Philippines; ANU; Yale; the University of Maryland; the International Rice Research Institute and the World Bank, where he worked as a long-term consultant on irrigation economics. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Western Economic Association International and the editorial boards of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, Asian Journal of
Agriculture and Development, Asian Journal of Agricultural Economics, and SE Asian Journal of Agricultural Economics. His publications and extramural grants during the last 10 years have focused on developing new methods for policy analysis for resource and environmental management problems in Hawaii and the Asia-Pacific Region and promoting new connections both between and within disciplines via sustainability science. He has also published widely on agricultural development, transaction cost economics, risk and decision-making, and the nature, causes and consequences of public policy.
Selected Grants
2010 International Food Policy Research Institute” “Incentives for Carbon Sequestration in Forests: Offsets and Direct Payments,” $28,455 (Principal Investigator)
2009 National Science Foundation: “Ecosystem Function: Natural, Anthropogenic, and Invasive Species Contributions to Biogeochemical Evolution of Groundwaters and Coastal Environments of West Hawaii,” $135,000 (co-Investigator)
2008-09 United States Geological Survey (USGS) through University of Hawaii Water Resources Research Center (UH-WRRC): “Integrated Management of Multiple Aquifers in the Face of Climate Change,” $20,525 (Principal Investigator -PI)
2007-08 USGS through UH-WRRC: “Efficient Water Management and Block Pricing for Integrated Aquifers: Lessons from Southern Oahu,” $8,906 (PI)
2006-07 USGS through UH-WRRC: “Integrated water management with multiple aquifers,” $17,632; 2006-7. (PI)
2005-08 USGS through UH-WRRC: “Coastal Groundwater Management with Positive Stock Externalities,” $151,414; 2005-8. (PI).
2005-07 US Fish and Wildlife Service, “Optimal Public Control of Exotic Species,” $44,111 (PI)
2003-6 US Department of Agriculture (PREISM program): “Integrating Prevention and Control of Invasive Species: Lessons from Hawaii,” $200,000 (PI)
2003-05 NOAA/UH Sea Grant Program: “Mitigating Runoff as Part of an Integrated Strategy for Nearshore Resource Conservation,” $65,125 (PI)
2003-05 USGS through UH-WRRC: “Efficient Water Allocation and Pricing with Win-Win Conservation Surcharges: The Central Oahu Corridor,” $24,045 (PI)
2002-04 USGS through UH-WRRC: “A Win-Win Approach to Water Pricing and Watershed Conservation,” $24,375 (PI)
1998 The Nature Conservancy: “Environmental Valuation and the Hawaiian Economy,” $40,000 (PI)
1992-94 National Science Foundation (SES 91-22370): “Sustainable Resource Management and the Depreciation of Environmental Capital: Applications to Energy Use and Global Warming,” $106,918 (PI).
Selected Publications
Roumasset J., K. Burnett, and A.M. Balisacan (eds.) 2010. Sustainability Science for Watershed Landscapes. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Los Baños, Philippines: Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture.
Pongkijvorasin, S., J. Roumasset, K. Burnett, and T.K. Duarte. 2010. Renewable resource management with stock externalities: coastal aquifers and submarine groundwater discharge, Resource and Energy Economics, 32(3): 277-291.
Duarte, T. K., S. Pongkivorasin, J. Roumasset, D. Amato, and K. Burnett. 2010, Optimal Management of a Coastal Aquifer with Near-Shore Marine Ecological Interactions. Water Resources Research, under review.
Pitafi, B. and J. Roumasset. 2009. “Pareto-Improving Water Management over Space and Time: The Honolulu Case,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 91(1):138-153.
Roumasset, J. 2008. Population and Agricultural Growth. In S. Dulauf and L. Blume (eds), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, MacMillan Publishing Co.
Roumasset, J., K. Burnett, and H. Wang. 2008. Environmental Resources and Economic Growth, in China’s Economic Transition: Origins, Mechanism, and Consequences Brandt, L and T Rawski, eds. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
D’Evelyn, S. N. Tarui, K. Burnett, and J. Roumasset. 2008. “Learning-by-catching: Uncertain invasive-species populations and the value of information,” Journal of Environmental Management, 89(4): 284-292.
Pongkijvorasin, Sittidaj and James Roumasset. 2007. “Optimal Conjunctive Use of Surface and Groundwater with Recharge and Return Flows: Dynamic and Spatial Patterns,” Review of Agricultural Economics, 29(3):531-539.
Burnett, Kimberly, Brooks Kaiser and James Roumasset, 2007. “Economic Lessons from Control Efforts for an Invasive Species: Miconia calvescens in Hawaii”, Journal of Forest Economics, 13(2-3):151-167.
Im, Eric, Ujjayant Chakravorty and James Roumasset. 2006. “Discontinuous Extraction of a Non-Renewable Resource,” Economic Letters, 90(1):6-11.
Chakravorty, Ujjayant, James Roumasset, and Darrell Krulce. 2005. “Specialization and Non-renewable Resources: Ricardo meets Ricardo,” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 29(9):1517-1545.
Endress, Lee, James Roumasset, and Ting Zhou. 2005. “Sustainable Growth with Environmental Spillovers,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 58(4):527-547.
Roumasset, James. 2004. “Optimal Management of a Renewable and Replaceable Resource: The Case of Coastal Groundwater,” (with D. Krulce and T. Wilson), American Journal of Agricultural Economics, November 1997; and “Efficient Spatial Allocation of Irrigation Water,” (w/ U. Chakravorty), American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 73(1): 165-173. Both reprinted in W. Easter and M Renwick, Economics of Water Resources, Ashgate, 2004.
Chakravorty, Ujjayant, James Roumasset, and Kinping Tse. 1997. “Endogenous Substitution Among Energy Resources and Global Warming,” Journal of Political Economy, 105(6):1201-1234.; reprinted in M. Hoel (ed.), Recent Developments in Environmental Economics (Edward Elgar), 2004.
James Roumasset and Lee. Endress. 1996. “The Yin and Yang of Sustainable Development: A Case for Win-Win Environmentalism,” Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Vol. 1, No. 2, 185-194, (1996).
Roumasset, James. 1995. “The nature of the agricultural firm,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 161-177.
Roumasset, J. and K. Smith. 1990. “Exposure Trading: An Approach to More Efficient Air Pollution Control,” Journal of Economics and Environmental Management, 18:276-271.
Ramon Clarete and J. Roumasset. 1990. “The Relative Welfare Cost of Industrial and Agricultural Policy Distortions: A Philippine Illustration,” (with R. Clarete), Oxford Economics Papers, 1990.
Sumner LaCroix and J. Roumasset. 1990. “The Evolution of Private Property in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 50, No. 4.
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The Philippines provides an extreme example of Rodrik’s observation that late developing countries experience deindustrialization at lower levels of per capita income than more advanced …
Do Natural Disasters Make Sustainable Growth Impossible?
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