Jonathan M. Harris

Global Development and Environmental Institute
Tufts University

Biographical sketch: Jonathan M. Harris is Director of the Theory and Education Program at the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute. He is the author of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics: A Contemporary Approach (2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin, 2006); co-author of Macroeconomics in Context; co-author of Environmental and Social Issues in Economics (Encyclopedia of Earth, 2006); co-editor of New Thinking in Macroeconomics: Social, Institutional and Environmental Perspectives (Edward Elgar 2003); and of the Frontier Issues in Economic Thought volumes A Survey of Sustainable Development, A Survey of Ecological Economics and Human Well-Being and Economic Goals (Island Press, 2001; 1995; 1997). He is also editor of Rethinking Sustainability: Power, Knowledge, and Institutions (University of Michigan Press, 2000). His current research focuses on the implications of large-scale environmental problems, especially global climate change, for macroeconomic theory and policy.

Candidate Statement: My interest is in the potential for an ecological perspective to transform the narrow views of macroeconomics and economic development that currently dominate mainstream economics, and are taught to a generation of students who will have to shape the twenty-first century. I propose some initial ideas for such a transformation in my chapter “Reorienting macroeconomic theory towards environmental sustainability” in Jon Erickson and John Gowdy’s new edited volume Frontiers in Ecological Economic Theory and Application. In my text and educational modules I have attempted to present fundamental ecological economics concepts in sufficiently subversive ways to become part of the curriculum in standard economics courses. I would like to contribute to USSEE efforts to transform the teaching of economics and related fields so that students gain knowledge of the interdisciplinary perspectives they will need to help reorient macroeconomic development both in currently “developed” and currently “developing” nations. Specifically, this would involve having more curricula and teaching materials featured on the USSEE website, accessible both to those who are developing programs in ecological economics and those who are teaching in more traditional economics departments but seeking to broaden their course content.