Office Hours:
Monday:
2:00-3:30 p.m., Thursday: 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
or by appointment

Jon Isham
Luce Professor of International Environmental Economics
Hillcrest 214
Phone: (802) 443 - 3238
Email: jisham@middlebury.edu
Years at Midd: since 1999
Web Site
Degrees, Specializations & Interests:
Ph.D., University of Maryland, Assistant Professor (1999); Environmental Economics and Economic Development.

After receiving an A.B. in social anthropology from Harvard College in 1984, Jon served in the Peace Corps in Benin for two-and-a-half years under a government program to promote more fuel-efficient cook stoves. Upon returning to the U.S. in
1987, Jon studied Spanish at the Middlebury College Language School, worked as a site supervisor in the East Bay Conservation Corps, and received an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University in international studies. From 1990 to 1993, he was a full-time consultant to the World Bank, where he co-authored papers on the policy and institutional determinants of project performance and oversaw development projects in Chad and Mali. From 1993 to 2000, Jon was in the doctoral program in economics at the University of Maryland, where he has specialized in international development and environmental and natural resource economics and also worked as a research associate at the IRIS Center.

In the fall of 1999, Jon joined the department of economics and the program in environmental studies at Middlebury College. Jon teaches classes in environmental economics, environmental policy, introductory microeconomics, social capital in Vermont, and global climate change. Jon is co-editing a new book, Ignition: The Birth of the Climate Movement; has co-edited Social Capital, Development, and the Environment (Edward Elgar Publications); has published articles (several forthcoming) in Economic Development and Cultural Change, The Journal of African Economies, The Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Rural Sociology, Society and Natural Resources, The Southern Economic Journal, The Vermont Law Review, and the World Bank Economic Review; and has published book chapters in volumes from Ashgate Press, The New England University Press, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press. His current research focuses on building the new climate movement; the demand for water among poor households in Cambodia; information asymmetries in low-income lending; and the effect of local social capital on environmental outcomes in Vermont.