Gary Libecap

Gary Don Libecap (born 1946) is an American economist who is currently an emeritus professor in the Department of Economics and the Bren School at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Libecap's specialty is environmental economics, and his research focuses on the role of property rights institutions in addressing the open access losses for natural resources such as fisheries and freshwater, as well as the role of water markets in encouraging efficient use and allocation. He has authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers, lectured widely, and written articles that have appeared in the ''New York Times'' and the ''Wall Street Journal''.

Born in 1946, Libecap received a BA in economics from the University of Montana in 1968, and a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976; he also served in the U.S. Air Force from 1969 to 1973. He held positions at the University of New Mexico, Texas A&M University, and the University of Arizona, before joining the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was eventually made a Distinguished Professor, and later a professor emeritus.

Libecap is a research associate at the NBER, and was a fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2005 to 2020. He is also a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. He served as President of the Western Economic Association International in 2005;President of the Economic History Association in 2006; and President of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics—Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics, 2005. Between 2010 and 2011, he served as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge and 2019 Erskine Professor, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He served on the editorial board of the ''Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organisation'', and formerly was editor of the ''Journal of Economic History'' and on the editorial board of ''Explorations in Economic History''. Provided by Wikipedia