2011 Speaker Bios

Otto Doering:

Otto C. Doering III is a professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University where he has teaching, research and engagement responsibilities. He is a public policy specialist in agricultural, resource, and environmental policy issues. He served the U.S. Department of Agriculture working on the 1977 and 1990 Farm Bills. He was a Principal Adviser to USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service for implementing the 1996 Farm Bill and worked again in 2005 with NRCS on the design and implementation of conservation programs. In 1999, he was team leader for the economic analysis of the White House’s National Hypoxia Assessment focused on the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Doering has been President of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and Chair of the National Public Policy Education Committee. He was founding director of Indiana’s State Utility Forecasting Group and director of Purdue’s Energy Policy Research and Information Program. He serves on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board and chairs EPA’s Integrated Nitrogen Committee. He is a member of the National Academies’ Water Science and Technology Board and serves on National Academy committees focused on protecting and restoring water quality in the Mississippi River. He served with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and currently directs Purdue’s Climate Change Research Center. His climate work has focused on agricultural adaptation to climate change. He has served in Southeast Asia with the Ford Foundation and the Governments of Malaysia and Indonesia. Dr. Doering received a B.A. in Government from Cornell, a M.Sc. (Econ) from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural economics from Cornell. In earlier incarnations he has been a legal investigator in the New York City Municipal Courts and a horse wrangler in the Canadian Rockies. His recent publications focus on agricultural policy, agricultural adaptation to climate change, trade-offs involved in using biomass energy, improving water quality in the Mississippi River, and alternative approaches to controlling reactive nitrogen.

Madhu Khanna:

Dr. Madhu Khanna is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research focuses on environmental policy analysis, corporate environmental management, technology adoption and the economic and environmental implications of biofuels. She has authored more than 100 papers, chapters and reports and most recently edited the Handbook of Bionergy Economics and Policy_. She is a member of the Science Advisory Board of the US Environmental Protection Agency. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and is a member of the Board of the South Asian Network of Development and Environmental Economists. She has held editorial positions at several environmental and agricultural economics journals and is the incoming editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. She is a University of Illinois Scholar and a Leopold Leadership Fellow of the Woods Institute at Stanford University.

Dietrich Earnhart:

Dietrich Earnhart teaches environmental economics, environmental policy analysis, comparative economics, and principles of economics at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on environmental economic issues that involve legal dimensions, such as optimal strategies for enforcing environmental protection laws, the effects of regulatory factors on corporate environmental performance in the U.S. and Europe. His research also examines the valuation of land-related and water-related environmental amenities; in particular, this line of research combines revealed and stated preference valuation methods.

Thomas Lyon:

Thomas P. Lyon is the Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.  He holds the Dow Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce, with appointments in both the Ross School of Business and the School of Natural Resources and Environment.  Professor Lyon is a leader in using economic analysis to understand corporate environmental strategy and how it is shaped by emerging government regulations, non-governmental organizations, and consumer demands.  His book Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy, published by Cambridge University Press, is the first rigorous economic analysis of this increasingly important topic. Professor Lyon earned his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University and his doctorate at Stanford University.  His current research focuses on corporate environmental information disclosure, greenwash, the causes and consequences of renewable energy policy, and voluntary programs for environmental improvement.