Eli Fenichel appointed the Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics
Eli Fenichel, the newly named Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, studies the intertemporal allocation, valuation, and management of natural assets and liabilities by bridging natural science, dynamical systems, and economics. His appointment will be effective on July 1.
Fenichel is a member of the faculty at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His research approaches natural resource management and sustainability as a portfolio management problem by considering natural resources as a form of capital. He is interested in how people can and do allocate natural resources and consider natural resource risks through time. This leads to his strong interest in feedbacks among humans, ecosystems, and the management of coupled ecological-economic processes. His research is applied in a wide variety of systems including natural capital valuation, fisheries, infectious disease, groundwater, tropical forests, and grasslands.
Fenichel has been writing on the economics of social distancing during an epidemic since 2011. He recently published on paper on COVID-19 and childcare for healthcare workers in Lancet Public Health, and has submitted a paper on national risk assessment for the U.S. labor force to the journal Science.
A graduate of the University of Maine, Fenichel earned a Ph.D. in fisheries and wildlife at Michigan State University. He began his academic career as an assistant professor of ecological- and bio-economics at Arizona State University. In 2012, he joined the Yale faculty as an assistant professor of bioeconomics and ecosystem management. He currently serves as associate professor of bioeconomics and ecosystem management.
Fenichel has contributed more than 60 peer-reviewed articles to professional journals. His research has been supported by numerous grants from federal agencies, private foundations, and the United Nations. He has been invited to deliver presentations throughout the United States, as well as in China, Canada, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, among other countries.
