Rate My Professor David Pannell

David Pannell is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia, where he also serves as Senior Honorary Fellow and Co-Director of the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy and the Centre for Agricultural Economics and Development. He established the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy in 2008 and led it until 2025. Pannell earned his BSc(Agric), BEc, and PhD degrees from the University of Western Australia. His career includes serving as an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow from 2007 to 2012, Director of Natural Decisions Pty Ltd since 2013, Director on the Board of Land and Water Australia from 2002 to 2005, and member of the Western Australia Government’s Salinity Taskforce in 2001. He was co-editor of the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics from 2003 to 2006 and has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Pannell’s research focuses on agricultural economics, environmental economics, natural resource economics, economics of land and water conservation, environmental policy, farmer adoption of new practices, risk management, bioeconomic modelling, and economics of farming systems. He has authored seven books and over 220 journal articles and 40 book chapters, with highly cited publications including “Understanding and promoting adoption of conservation practices by rural landholders” (2006, 2291 citations), “The economics of risk, uncertainty and learning in the adoption of new agricultural technologies: where are we on the learning curve?” (2003, 978 citations), “A conceptual framework of adoption of an agricultural innovation” (1999, 695 citations), “Sensitivity analysis of normative economic models: theoretical framework and practical strategies” (1997, 683 citations), and “Predicting farmer uptake of new agricultural practices: A tool for research, extension and policy” (2017, 530 citations). His work has received more than 21,000 citations and awards from societies in the USA, Australia, Canada, and the UK, including the ARC Eureka Prize for Interdisciplinary Research (2009), Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (2023), Distinguished Fellow and past President of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, the W.E. Wood national prize for salinity R&D, Quality of Research Communication Award (2015), School of Agriculture and Environment Award in Research Impact and Innovation (2022), UWA Excellence in Teaching Award, and Vice-Chancellor’s Award in Research Mentorship. He developed tools such as ADOPT and INFFER and presented the MOOC “Agriculture, Economics and Nature” with 66,000 enrollments.