Biography
Wesley W. Wilson is a Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon. He received his PhD from Washington State University in 1986. He was awarded the Distinguished Member Award from the Transportation and Public Utilities Group in 2013 for “…significant contributions to the field and to the Transportation and Public Utilities Group during [his] career.” And, in 2018, he was awarded the Distinguished Transportation Researcher Award from the Transportation Research Forum which recognizes researchers “…who have distinguished themselves as research scholars in transportation.” He has also been recognized multiple times for teaching. Most notably, he received the University of Oregon Ersted Award for Distinguished teaching in 1996 and several other awards throughout his career.
Professor Wilson has published widely in the areas of transportation, industrial organization, trade, labor, agriculture and applied econometrics. His work focuses on demand, cost, efficiency and spatial competition in transportation markets. He has also worked on survival of lumber mills, steel plants, movies, and hospitals, and more recently on trade and trade costs in international markets. His research has led to positions as a Technical Advisor to the Navigation and Economics Technologies (NETS) Program of the Institute for Water Resources, Army Corps of Engineers. He has also been an expert economist working with the Surface Transportation Board to identify alternative strategies for estimating costs in a multiproduct industry. In 2013, he was named to the National Academy of Sciences Committee for Study of Freight Rail Regulation. He has a long history of sponsored research from a wide variety of sources, most notably from the National Science Foundation (with Bruce Blonigen) to examine the effects of trade policy in steel markets and more recently from the United States Department of Agriculture to identify sources of change in the prices of shipping grain to market. Much of this research has been used or is under consideration for use by government agencies.
Finally, he has a long history of professional service. He is currently is the Editor of Economic Inquiry and an associate editor for Maritime Policy and Management and the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum. He also serves on the board of editors for Transport Policy, the Review of Industrial Organization, the Journal of Regulatory Economics, and was formerly on the board of editors for Agribusiness: An International Journal. He has been active as a former President of the Transportation and Public Utilities Group (one of the oldest of the American Economic Associations) and also of the Agricultural Chapter of the Transportation Research Forum. He has also served on two Transportation Research Board Committees (The Agricultural Committee and the Inland Waterway Committees). Through these activities, he has edited two books – The Handbook of International Trade and Transportation and Airline Efficiency, as well as two special issues in the Review of Industrial Organization on railroad regulation and one in Maritime Policy and Management commemorating 40 years of maritime research. He has given about 200 presentations at conferences, universities, government agencies, including several keynote addresses.