Arthur J. Caplan is an environmental economist in the Department of Applied Economics at Utah State University. Originally from Birmingham, Michigan, he received a BA degree in Economics and Communications from the University of Michigan in 1983. In 1986 he received an MA degree in Agricultural Economics from Washington State University and then promptly joined the U.S. Peace Corps for what ended up being a four-year stint as an extension economist in the southern African nation of Botswana. Arthur met his wife in Botswana (she was also a Peace Corps Volunteer stationed in the same village) and the two of them moved to Oregon in 1991, where Arthur began his PhD degree in Economics at the University of Oregon. Although he studied mostly econometrics and macroeconomics in the PhD program, Arthur hit the job market as an environmental economist in 1996 (his dissertation research was in the area of climate change). After a five-year stint as an assistant professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, Arthur moved to Utah State University in 2001, where he has remained since with his wife and two children. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005 and Full Professor in 2011.
Arthur’s primary research foci have been in three areas of applied environmental economics – the control of transboundary pollution problems (e.g., climate change and acid rain), non-market valuation of environmental goods (in particular, waste management), and most recently water quality trading. He has also published or is working on what he calls “fun, little, provocative” articles on topics such as grade inflation, procrastination, and the environmental cost of hypocrisy. His work has appeared in a variety of general-interest and field journals, such as the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Environmental and Resource Economics, Land Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Water Resources Research, Ecological Economics, and Oxford Economic Papers. He was recently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Hydrology.