The University of Western Australia

Having been brought up on a farm in Buckinghamshire, UK, I had no real interest in agriculture as a career destination. However, a first degree in Economics from Bath University (1981), and the lure of a postgraduate scholarship took me to Manchester University for a Masters in Agricultural Economics. This provided the basis for the type of research that I have followed since: an interest in applied economics within the area of agricultural (and later natural resource) economics, with a strong emphasis on the application of quantitative techniques. A Ph.D., again at Manchester, led me to build a statistical model of the UK agricultural sector but gave the freedom to follow research interests into almost any area, in particular the analysis of food demand. I joined the academic staff in the-then Department of Agricultural Economics at Manchester in 1985, and remained there until I joined Agricultural and Resource Economics at UWA in 1998. The shift in hemispheres has led to a change in focus, but not in approach: I am currently working in the area of quantitative approaches to valuing environmental resources, with a particular focus on the assets in WA that are under threat from salinity and other factors.