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The University of Western Australia has another winner - the sixth in 40 years - in a big international essay prize that is open to young agricultural and resource economists anywhere in the world.

Assistant Professor Marit Kragt from UWA's School of Agricultural and Resource Economics will be presented with her prize during the conference of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Society in Warwick, UK, on 9 April.

Her winning essay is titled "Comparing stated and inferred attribute attendance models in environmental choice experiments".  Choice experiments are a non-market valuation method, used to estimate what values people attach to characteristics of environmental assets.  The winning essay looks at respondents' choice behaviour in these experiments.

Assistant Professor Kragt said winning the competition, and being another winner from the School, was important to her because it re-iterates the high level of research undertaken at the UWA School of Agricultural and Resource Economics, which was well above world standard.

Assistant Professor Kragt, whose research focuses on economic valuation of environmental changes, said policy-makers are more likely to be convinced about the importance of improving environmental management if they are presented with sound economic data.

She studied Environmental Science with a Major in Environmental Management at Wageningen University in The Netherlands before working in Beijing on environmental issues and completing a PhD in Environmental Economics at Australian National University.

Assistant Professor Kragt's UWA co-winners - all of whom have gone on to excel in the field - were Michael Burton (1982), Ben White (1985), David Pannell (1989), Abbie Rogers, nee McCartney (2006) and Graeme Doole (2010).

Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, Winthrop Professor David Pannell, said Assistant Professor Kragt's achievement showed that the School's research was relevant globally, and reiterated the Academic World Ranking of University's ranking of UWA's Life and Agricultural Sciences at 26th in the world.

Media references

Assistant Professor Marit Kragt (UWA School of Agriculture and Resource Economics) (+61 8)  6488 4653
Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)                 (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783