Justin Johnson
Ecosystem services and natural capital; macroeconomics; Earth-economy modeling
Background & Expertise
Justin Andrew Johnson is an associate professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota. Johnson co-founded and is faculty-director of The Earth-Economy Modelers (TEEMs), a research center in applied economics that links economic and ecosystem models to assess sustainability policies. He received his PhD from the department in 2014. TEEMs works closely with the Natural Capital Alliance at Stanford University and the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) at Purdue University. Johnson’s research focuses on how the economy affects the environment, and vice versa, on global to local scales. Currently, Johnson leads a project that links the GTAP macroeconomic (computable general equilibrium) model with the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model from the Natural Capital Project, aiming to build strong quantitative evidence on how changes in ecosystem services affect economic performance at the macroeconomic level and how global policies can be designed to sustainably manage our natural capital.
Welcoming the 2019 Class of IonE Affiliates
In recent weeks, quick glimpses of TV screens — and, for some, harrowing views from windows — have depicted flames ravaging the Amazon rainforest; hurricane-force wind and rain assailing the Bahamas and the east coast of the United States; and insidious, unseen forces weakening ice sheets and deepening an ever-expanding Arctic sea.