Gary Libecap

Gary Don Libecap (born 1946) is a Distinguished Professor of Corporate Environmental Management at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California Santa Barbara.^[1] Libecap is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; a research fellow at the Hoover Institution; and a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, and a member of the Research Group on Political Institutions and Economic Policy, Harvard University.^[2][3] He was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University 2010-11, and was previously the Anheuser Busch Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies, Economics, and Law at the University of Arizona.^[4]

Gary Libecap’s research focuses on the role of property rights institutions in addressing the open access losses for natural resources such as fisheries and freshwater, as well as the role of water markets in encouraging efficient use and allocation.^[3] Libecap has authored or coauthored over 200 scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals, has lectured widely, and written articles that have appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.^[2][5][6]

Other Institutions

• University of Arizona
• Cambridge University
• Texas A&M University
• University of New Mexico
• University of Paris
• Free University of Berlin

Appointed Positions

• Member, Global Think Tank on Wild Ocean Fisheries Management, World Wildlife Fund, 2015–Present
• Advisory Committee: Ostrom Workshop, Indiana University, 2015–Present
• Advisory Group: Water in the West, Stanford Woods Institute and Bill Lane Center, Stanford University, 2015–Present
• Fellow, the Economics and Science Group, Australian National University, 2015–Present
• Advisor Committee, UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, IGCC, 2013–16
• Member, Scientific Committee, International Center for Economic Research, Turin Italy, 2007-2014
• Member, Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education, National Science Foundation, 2005–08
• Member of various NSF research review panels.

Books

• Shopping for Water: How the Market Can Mitigate Water Shortages in the American West, Robert Glennon, Gary D. Libecap and Peter W. Culp. Washington DC: Island Press.
• Environmental Markets: A Property Rights Approach, Terry L. Anderson & Gary D. Libecap, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
• The Economics of Climate Change: Adaptations Past and Present. Co-editor with Richard Steckel, University of Chicago Press and NBER. May, 2011.
• Owens Valley Revisited: A Reassessment of the West’s First Great Water Transfer. Stanford University Press, 2007.
• Public Choice Essays in Honor of a Maverick Scholar: Gordon Tullock. Kluwer Academic, 2000. Coeditor.
• Titles, Conflict and Land Use: The Development of Property Rights and Land Reform on the Brazilian Amazon Frontier, with Lee Alston and Bernardo Mueller. University of Michigan Press, 1999.
• The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy: The Economics and Politics of Institutional Change, with Ronald Johnson. University of Chicago Press and NBER, 1994.
• The Political Economy of Regulation: An Historical Analysis of Government and the Economy, co-editor with Claudia Goldin. University of Chicago Press and NBER, 1994.
• Contracting for Property Rights. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Selected Publications

• “Addressing Global Environmental Externalities: Transaction Costs Considerations,” Journal of Economic Literature, June, 2014.
• "Large Scale Institutional Changes: Land Demarcation within the British Empire" with Dean Lueck and Trevor O’Grady, Journal of Law and Economics, November, 2011.
• “The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Institutions,” with Dean Lueck, Journal of Political Economy, June, 2011.
• “Institutional Path Dependence in Adaptation to Climate: Coman’s “Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation” American Economic Review, February, 2011.
• “Efficiency Advantages of Grandfathering in Rights-Based Fisheries Management,” with Terry Anderson, Ragnar Arnason, and Gary D. Libecap, Annual Review of Resource Economics, October, 2011.
• “Open-Access Losses and Delay in the Assignment of Property Rights,” Arizona Law Review, 2008.
• “Chinatown Revisited: Owens Valley and Los Angeles—Bargaining Costs and Fairness Perceptions of the First Major Water Rights Exchange.” Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, October, 2009.
• “Water Markets in the West: Prices, Trading, and Contractual Forms,” with Jedidiah Brewer, Robert Glennon, and Alan Ker, Economic Inquiry, April, 2008.
• “The Assignment of Property Rights on the Western Frontier: Lessons for Contemporary Environmental and Resource Policy” Journal of Economic History. June, 2007.
• “Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s,” with Zeynep Hansen, Journal of Political Economy, June, 2004.
• “Transactions Costs and Coalition Stability under Majority Rule,” with Ronald Johnson, Economic Inquiry, lead article, April, 2003.
• “The Self-Enforcing Provisions of Oil and Gas Unit Operating Agreements: Theory and Evidence,” with James Smith, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, July, 1999.
• “Unitization,” The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Peter Newman, ed., 1998.
• “Common Property,” The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Peter Newman, ed., 1998.
• “The Determinants and Impact of Property Rights: Land Titles on the Brazilian Frontier,” with Lee Alston and Robert Schneider, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, April, 1996.
• "Courts, A Protected Bureaucracy, and Reinventing Government," with R.N. Johnson, Arizona Law Review, Fall, 1995.
• "Patronage to Merit and Control of the Federal Government Labor Force," with R. N. Johnson, Explorations in Economic History, January, 1994.
• "Public Sector Employee Voter Participation and Salaries," with R. N. Johnson, Public Choice, January, 1991.
• "Bureaucratic Rules, Supervisor Behavior, and the Effect on Salaries in the Federal Government," with R. N. Johnson, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, March, 1989.
• "The Influence of Private Contractual Failure on Regulation: The Case of Oil Field Unitization," with S. N. Wiggins, Journal of Political Economy, August, 1985.
• "Oil Field Unitization: Contractual Failure in the Presence of Imperfect Information," with S. N. Wiggins, American Economic Review, June, 1985.
• "Contractual Responses to the Common Pool: Prorationing of Crude Oil Production," with S. N. Wiggins, American Economic Review, March, 1984.
• "Contracting Problems and Regulation: The Case of the Fishery," with R. N. Johnson, American Economic Review, December, 1982.

References