Ben White is an Associate Professor in the School of Agriculture and Environment within the Faculty of Science at the University of Western Australia. He graduated with a degree in agriculture from the University of London in 1981 and obtained his PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1989. White spent 20 years at Newcastle University, starting as a lecturer and advancing to senior lecturer in 1999. In 2001, he joined UWA as a senior lecturer and later served as Head of the School of Agriculture and Resource Economics from 2007 to 2013. Currently, he is a member of the UWA Centre for Agricultural Economics and Development and contributes to various research projects, including the GRDC National Risk Management Investment project from 2023 to 2027 and the ARC Training Centre for Behavioural Insights for Technology Adoption from 2022 to 2026.

White specializes in environmental economics, with research interests in environmental and agricultural economics, particularly environmental contracts and incentives for farmers to provide environmental public goods. His expertise covers biosecurity economics, environmental policy, household economics, natural resource economics and management, and risk management. He has made substantial contributions to the academic field through over 60 research outputs. Key publications include the co-authored textbook Introduction to Environmental Economics (Oxford University Press, 2013, with Nick Hanley and Jason F. Shogren). Among his highly cited papers are "Farm household efficiency in Bangladesh: a comparison of stochastic frontier and DEA methods" (2000, with A. Wadud, 682 citations), "Efficient contract design for agri-environment policy" (1999, with A. Moxey and A. Ozanne, 231 citations), "Efficient compliance with agricultural nitrate pollution standards" (1994, with A. Moxey, 110 citations), "Selecting permit allocation rules for agricultural pollution control: a bargaining solution" (2003, with A. Kampas, 95 citations), and "Should we pay for ecosystem service outputs, inputs or both?" (2016, with N. Hanley, 70 citations). His work has garnered over 2,800 citations on ResearchGate, influencing discussions on policy instruments for agricultural pollution control, non-point source pollution management, and payments for ecosystem services.

Professional Email: benedict.white@uwa.edu.au