Biographies

Maureen L. Cropper is a principal economist at the World Bank, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, and a university fellow at Resources for the Future. She is a former president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and a member of the Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board. Ms. Cropper's research has dealt with valuing environmental amenities, especially environmental health effects, from both an empirical and a theoretical perspective. It has appeared in such journals as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, among others. Ms. Cropper has conducted studies of public preferences for saving lives at different times and among persons of different ages. In collaboration with colleagues she has also completed studies of EPA decision making that infer the value of lives saved by various regulations, as well as the implicit value of Superfund cleanup options. Her current research deals with valuing the health effects of pollution in developing countries and with the economics of deforestation.

Robert W. Hahn is the director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, and a research associate at Harvard University. He also served as a senior staff member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers for two years. Mr. Hahn frequently contributes to general-interest periodicals and leading scholarly journals, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the American Economic Review, and the Yale Law Journal. He has served as a consultant to government and industry on a variety of issues involving regulation andprivatization. In addition, Mr. Hahn is the cofounder of the Community Preparatory School-an inner-city middle school in Providence, Rhode Island, that provides opportunities for disadvantaged youth to achieve their full potential.

Robert E. Litan is the codirector of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and the director of the Economic Studies Program and Cabot Family Chair in Economics at the Brookings Institution. At Brookings, he served as a senior fellow from 1984 to 1993 and as director of two research centers from 1987 to 1993. Mr. Litan has written, cowritten or edited numerous books and articles on government policies affecting financial institutions, regulatory and legal issues, international trade, and the economy in general. From 1995 to 1996 he was associate director of the OMB, and from 1993 to 1995 he was deputy assistant attorney general, in charge of civil antitrust litigation and regulatory issues at the Department of Justice. From 1977 to 1979 he was the regulatory and legal staff specialist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Litan has also consulted for numerous organizations, public and private, and testified as an expert witness in a variety of legal and regulatory proceedings.

Randall Lutter was recently appointed fellow at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He previously served as senior economist for the environment and regulation on the President's Council of Economic Advisers and as staff economist for regulatory affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. He was a faculty member at the School of Management at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and he taught health economics and policy at American University. His research on government regulation, environmental policy, and other topics has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Political Economy and Environmental Science and Technology.

Paul R. Portney is president of Resources for the Future (RFF), an independent, nonpartisan research and educational organization specializing in natural resources and the environment. Mr. Portney has been a visiting professor at the graduate school of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, and a visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He has served as chief economist at the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and as a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Panel on Contingent Valuation. From 1994 to 1997 he was a member of the Executive Committee of EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB) and was chairman of the SAB's Environmental Economics Advisory Committee. He has published widely on the costs and benefits of environmental regulation, including the forthcoming second edition of his book Public Policies for Environmental Protection, used in college and university classrooms around the country. He also lectures frequently on developments in U.S. and international environmental policy.