Scott Taylor Receives AERE Publication of Enduring Quality Award

Scott Taylor, a professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts, has been awarded the 2026 Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) Publication of Enduring Quality Award for the influential paper "The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model of Renewable Resource Use," co-authored with James Brander and published in the American Economic Review in 1998. The award recognizes research that has made a lasting contribution to the field, and the selection committee selected the paper for its enduring impact on environmental and resource economics. This marks Taylor's second AERE Publication of Enduring Quality Award. He was previously recognized for the influential paper "Is Free Trade Good for the Environment?", co-authored with Werner Antweiler and Brian Copeland and published in the American Economic Review in 2001, making him one of the few scholars to receive the honour twice.

The awards committee praised the paper for using calibrated economic theory to address a longstanding historical puzzle: why some isolated societies with open-access renewable resources have persisted over time while others—notably Easter Island—collapsed under the strain of resource depletion. Because societies that failed through resource overuse are no longer directly observable, the committee noted that the question is difficult to answer through empirical analysis alone. Instead, the paper demonstrates theoretically that the relationship between the growth rate of renewable resources and that of the human population is a critical determinant of whether a society can sustainably manage its resources. Although isolated societies like Easter Island are rare, the committee observed that the paper offers a broader lesson by reminding us that our planet is itself an isolated system, making these insights highly relevant to contemporary global environmental policy.

The committee also recognized the paper for demonstrating the importance of integrating economics with the natural sciences. By showing how the decisions of optimizing individuals influence the dynamics of natural systems, the research underscores the value of well-designed natural resource policies that benefit both people and the environment. Over the past quarter-century, the paper has been cited hundreds of times, has inspired a substantial body of subsequent research, and has significantly advanced our understanding of natural resource use across time and space. Its continued influence on scholars and policymakers illustrates the kind of lasting contribution the Publication of Enduring Quality Award is intended to recognize.

Here are the previous Publication of Enduring Quality Award recipients.