Environmental economist Robert N. Stavins has received tenure as professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, the school's dean, Joseph S. Nye Jr., announced in a press release.

Stavins, who has served at the school as an associate professor of public policy since 1988, focuses on environmental and resource policy issues. He will assume his professorship July 1.

In an interview yesterday, Stavins said he is currently working on a book titled Public Policies for Environmental Protection, co-authored with Paul Portney, president of Resources for the Future, a Washington-based think tank at which Stavins is a university fellow.

Stavins currently teaches three courses at the Kennedy School. Two of them--a class on environmental and natural-resources economics and a graduate seminar on environmental economics and policy--are cross-listed with the Faculty of Arts of Sciences.

Stavins also teaches a Kennedy School policy workshop "which introduces students to the real-world practice of government," he said.

Before coming to Harvard, Stavins was a staff economist at the Environmental Defense Fund in Berkeley, Calif.

He also directed Project 88, a bipartisan endeavor co-chaired by former Sen. Timothy E. Wirth '61 (D-Colo.) and Sen. John Heinz (R-Va.) that worked on developing market-based solutions to environmental problems. That initiative was credited for helping to break a Congressional deadlock in 1990 over the Clean Air Act amendments.

"What broke the logjam is a tradable-permit system for acid-rain control," Stavins said. "That was an idea that came directly from Project 88."

The Clean Air Act amendments are designed to reduce sulfur-dioxide emissions by half by 2005 and are expected to save between $1 billion and $1.5 billion a year in consumer electricity bills, Stavins said.

Stavins also has been named faculty chair of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at the KSG's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

In addition, Stavins will continue to pursue his research interests in global climate change, technology innovation and environmental benefit valuation.

Stavins, a member of the environmental economics advisory committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's science advisory board, received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1988. A graduate of Northwestern University, he received a master's degree in economics from Cornell in 1979