CEA Fellow: John Hartwick

After obtaining his PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1969, John Hartwick has been at Queen’s ever since. John’s research initially focused on urban economics and regional science, but he turned his attention to resource economics in the mid 1970s. John has been an active researcher for more than fifty years, celebrating 50 years at Queen’s in 2019, and has published in the top journals in economics, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Review of Economic Studies.

His frequently and widely cited 1977 AER paper, “Intergenerational Equity and the Investing of Rents from Exhaustible Resources”, introduced the Hartwick Rule. In its simplest form, this rule tells us to “Invest all profits or rents from exhaustible resources in reproducible capital such as machines”. This fundamental insight continues to influence both economic theory and public policy and the lasting influence of John’s 1977 paper was recognized in 2014 by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics with its Publication of Enduring Quality award, which is awarded to one or sometimes two papers each year (just one in John’s case). In 2023, John was inducted as a fellow by the Canadian Resource and Environmental Economics Association for his work in environmental and resource economics and his contributions to CREEA|ACERE.