2021 Cal Poly Distinguished Scholarship Award

Economics professor Stephen Hamilton was recognized among other Cal Poly faculty at the 2021 Fall Convocation ceremony, receiving the 2021 Cal Poly Distinguished Scholarship Award. The university gives this honor to highlight instructors who exemplify the teacher-scholar model by involving students in their research and applying Cal Poly expertise in direct contributions to our region, state and nation.

Hamilton has stood out as a teacher-scholar in agricultural and resource economics and in public policy and as an internationally recognized leader in environmental economics since his arrival at Cal Poly in 2004. He served as Economics Department chair from 2005-2017 and from 2016-2019 as director of graduate studies for the quantitative economics master’s program.

Hamilton has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles on improving economic outcomes for renewable energy, climate change policies and material waste at leading journals, such as the American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Hamilton has stood out as a teacher-scholar in agricultural and resource economics and in public policy and as an internationally recognized leader in environmental economics since his arrival at Cal Poly in 2004.

He secured $5 million in grants at Cal Poly and uses this funding to involve student researchers. He has 13 publications with student co-authors. Results of his studies have brought international recognition to Cal Poly through his presentations at economic association meetings, in keynote addresses at prominent international conferences and his work on the editorial boards of prominent journals.

His research earned the Atlas Award from Elsevier Science Press for research with a social impact in 2018, and the Quality of Research Discovery Award from the European Association of Agricultural Economists in 2020.

Hamilton earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in economics and environmental studies from UC Santa Barbara in 1991. He received his doctorate in agricultural and resource economics from UC Berkeley in 1996, and a master’s there in 1994.