Peter Berck

Peter Berck was an outstanding economist who made major contributions to his profession and society, a compassionate friend and colleague, and a wonderful mentor to generations of students.

Peter was born in New York City on April 26, 1950, and died too young on August 10, 2018. He received a B.A. in mathematics and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1976. His doctoral thesis, “Natural Resources in a Competitive Economy,” was a major contribution to forestry economics.

Upon graduating from MIT, he returned to Berkeley, where he spent his entire academic career in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE), spanning 1976 to 2018. He was the S.J. Hall Professor of Forest Economics and professor of agricultural and resource economics.

Peter was widely known as the world’s foremost forestry economist. All told, Peter wrote hundreds of papers in a variety of fields. His research throughout most of his career concentrated on the economics of the environment, agriculture, forestry, and economy-wide impact of regulation. Initially, the central theme of most of his work was the management of nonfinancial capital by both public and private sectors.  He primarily focused on renewable resources, such as trees and fish, but also addressed food stocks, state-owned enterprises, and clean air. He was the first to derive capital-market rules for renewable resources such as trees and fish in an equilibrium context, incorporating rational expectations. Later he turned to land protection and land use and other topics.

In recent years, he focused on food security and environment in Africa and other emerging economies, particularly the role of futures contracts to farmers, production issues, the role of entry and exit, marketing orders, and particularly food security. 

Peter co-wrote two well-regarded textbooks. One, The Economics of the Environment (with Gloria Helfand), is an introduction to natural resources economics. The other is the Economists’ Mathematical Manual (with Knut Sydsæter and Arne Strøm), which graduate students and academics throughout the world rely upon as a basic reference.

He visited several departments around the world, including Harvard University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and Umeå University and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He was a Research Associate of the Environment for Development Program, University of Gothenburg, and a Research Fellow of the Center for Agricultural Economics Research, Hebrew University.

He received an honorary doctorate from Umeå University in Sweden in 2002 and was named a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association in 2008.

Peter was an editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Natural Resource Modeling, the Giannini Foundation Monograph Series, and the Environment for Development Discussion Paper Series. He was a member of the Board of Directors, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

Peter’s contributions to society went well beyond writing academic papers. He was an advisor to the California Air Resources Board. He was the working group leader, Canadian-U.S. Spruce Bud Worm Project. He advised the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; the U.S. Forest Service; the U.S. Department of Justice; the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange; the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund; and the California Department of Finance.

His academic and applied research greatly influenced public policy, particularly in California. His evaluation of the California Bottle Bill for the State Legislature resulted in an increased container deposit.

Peter was very involved with decision-making in California. The chief economist for the Department of Finance recruited him to construct a computable general equilibrium, dynamic revenue analysis model (DRAM), which the California has relied upon to evaluate major money and environmental bills. Later he advised the Air Resources Board (ARB). To analyze California’s State Implementation Plan (SIP) under the Clean Air Act, he modified the DRAM model to evaluate these new regulations. He then created a series of EDRAM (E for environmental) models, which were used by the ARB and the California Energy Commission to examine alternative fuels and to consider regulating greenhouse gasses.

Beyond his work in his field, Peter was also a very active member of his department, the College of Natural Resources, and the Berkeley campus. However, he probably is best remembered for his contributions to the University of California system. Peter was the secretary and parliamentarian of the Assembly of the Academic Senate for many years. He chaired the UC Committee on Educational Policy. He also served on the Task Force on Instructional Activities, the Task Force on Copyright, and the Educational Finance Model Steering Committee.            

Most importantly, when the University of California prepared to open its 10th campus at Merced, Peter chaired the task force that hired the founding faculty. He was vice chair of the Committee on Rules and Election at UC Merced and served as Merced’s representative to the Academic Council.

By insisting that the new campus provide a strong education in all major fields, including the sciences, he helped ensure that the campus would be attractive to California generally and particularly those who lived nearby. Thanks in part to his work, this campus attracts and serves students who traditionally were underrepresented in the UC system, thus promoting diversity.

Here at Berkeley, Peter was a very good teacher, but his major contribution to education was as a mentor. His office door was always open for students. He spent hours with them talking about their lives, giving them advice, but more importantly, providing empathy. He was particularly helpful to and caring for students who were struggling, particularly those with psychological issues. While many of us avoid speaking to people with behavioral challenges, Peter spent hours helping students overcome their difficulties.

He frequently volunteered to advise undergraduate and graduate students as well as visiting students. He involved undergraduates in his research, starting them on their own careers. He worked tirelessly with his graduate thesis students on their research. But he also provided support and guidance to other students who never took a class from him or worked with him. He worked to find good jobs for them.

Because of his outstanding work as an undergraduate teacher and mentor, he won Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources Distinguished Teaching Award in 2018. 

In addition to his mentoring work on campus, Peter was very active in scouting. He was the district chair of the local Boy Scouts Council, was particularly invested in overseeing their Camp Herms, and developed their environmental science camp.

In his last few days, when he was too weak to meet with people, he was sending emails to former students, making sure that they submitted reports about their work, sending messages to colleagues asking them to look after his students. The week before he died, he was delighted to tell his colleagues that a paper he wrote with a former student was just accepted. He obviously didn’t need one more publication, but he was pleased for her success, and he wanted to tell his colleagues that she’d just received tenure.

In his last few weeks, his former students sent him close to 1,000 messages. In addition, many traveled across the country to say goodbye and to tell him how much he had done for them. He will be greatly missed by his wife Cyndi; his children David, Michelle, and Joseph; his four grandchildren; his brother Alan; as well as by his colleagues and former students around the world.

Jeffrey M. Perloff, David Sunding, and Sofia Villas-Boas,  2018

Berckonomics

Berckonomics(*), August 2019

http://www.dailycal.org/2018/08/19/brought-us-together-uc-berkeley-profe...

The Red Queen