WALTER C. LABYS

Walter C. Labys is Benedum Distinguished Scholar, Professor of Resource Economics in the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences, and Adjunct Professor of Economics in the College of Business and Economics.He also holds the position of Gunnar Myrdal Scholar from the UN Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva.He earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1959, a M.B.A. from Duquesne University in 1962, a M.A. in economics from Harvard University in 1965 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Nottingham in 1968. He is a graduate of the Preparatory School at St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe.He served as Economic Affairs Officer with the United Nations in Geneva from 1969 to 1971 and as a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Geneva from 1971 to 1975.He was appointed at West Virginia University in 1975 to help found the Ph.D. Program in resource economics; in 1990 he was given the University’s highest academic award, Benedum Distinguished Scholar and in 1998 was named Outstanding Researcher.During 1981-82, he was a Visiting Scholar in the Energy Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.He is a Faculty Research Associate of the of the Regional Research Institute, and served as founding President of the WVU “Faculty Club.”

Over the past thirty-two years, Dr. Labys has pioneered in the development and application of econometric methods important for analyzing commodity price behavior, the building of structural commodity models, and the impact of commodity markets on the stability and growth of surrounding developing economies.His numerous books and articles have been of particular interest not only to other economists but also to industry and government planners at national and international levels.

Throughout his career, Dr. Labys has taken a strong interest in the relationship of his research to international policy making. He was honored as the first Gunnar Myrdal Scholar by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva. He has served as Research Fellow at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (The United Nations University) in Helsinki. He also has been a visitor at the following universities: the Faculty of Economics and GREQAM at the University of Aix-Marseille; the Department of Applied Economics at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna; the Center for Industrial Econometrics at the University of Montpellier in France; the Research Center for World Commodity Markets at CNAM-Paris; he Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow; the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna; the Institute for International Economics in Stockholm; and the London School of Economics in England. He has acted as a consultant or research advisor to several international organizations and has visited more than 80 nations. He has worked with the U.S. Information Agency, the U.S. Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Dr. Labys has authored or collaborated on 15 books, more than 120 research articles and chapters, and has presented more than 130 invited addresses, colloquia and papers. In January of 2000 he delivered the millenium lecture at the Center for Economic and Policy Research at St. Vincent College. He has directed more than 40 masters and doctoral theses. Selected studies have been translated and published in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Polish, and Russian.

Dr. Labys has served with several professional organizations and organized the Conference on International Commodity Market Modeling with the support of the World Bank for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the French-based Association d’Econometrie Applique. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Environmental and Resource Economics.He is a Committee Member of the Office International du Vin in Paris and a Master Knight of the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Vine in Sacramento. In addition, he is a member of the American Economic Association, the American Agricultural Economics Association, the Regional Science Association International, the Societe d’Honneur Francaise, and the Harvard Alumni Association of Western Pennsylvania. He was married to Jane Reardon Labys (deceased) and has two children, Paul and Lottie.

Books Published:

Speculation, Hedging and Commodity Price Forecasts (with C.W.J. Granger, 1970), Dynamic Commodity Models (1973), Quantitative Models of Commodity Markets (1975), Market Structure, Bargaining Power and Resource Price Formation (1980), Commodity Exports and Latin American Development; A Modeling Approach (with M.I. Nadiri and J. Nunez del Arco, 1980), Commodity Models for Forecasting and Policy Analysis (with P. Pollak, (1984), Commodity Markets and Models – An International Bibliography (1987), Quantitative Methods for Market-Oriented Economic Analysis Over Space and Time (with T. Takayama and N. Uri, Gower, 1989), International Commodity Market Models (with O. Guvenen and J.B. Lesourd, Chapman Hall, 1991), Politiques Economiques et Marches Internationaux des Matieres Premieres (with O. Guvenen and J.B. Lesourd, Paris, Economica, 1991), LeVin (Market Structure of the International Wine Market) (with P. Spahni, Paris, Economica, 1992), Univariate Tests for Time Series Models (with J. Cromwell and M. Terraza, SAGE, 1994), Multivariate Tests for Time Series Models (with J. Cromwell, M. Terraza and M. Hannan, SAGE, 1994), Industrial Development and Environmental Degradation (with Se-Hark Park, Edward Elgar, 1998), and Modeling Mineral and Energy Markets (Kluwer, 1999).