Research trends in environmental and resource economics: Insights from four decades of JEEM

This paper provides a contemporary analysis of how research issues have developed in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM) over the four decades of its existence. We have classified the articles in the journal along five dimensions: content, methods, environmental media, the regional dimension of studies, and cross-cutting issues. While up to about 10 years ago, non-market valuation and cost-benefit analysis, natural resource economics, and environmental policy instruments represented the lion's share of articles published in the journal, more recently we observe a significant shift towards a more diversified array of research areas, with climate change and energy issues finding their way into the journal. In addition, increasing methodological plurality becomes apparent, reflected in a significant shift away from economic theory and towards empirical approaches. We also analyze key distinctions between the major environmental economics journals. Finally, we analyze JEEM's external influence on leading general economics (A+) journals. We find that A+ citations are positively correlated with a focus on climate change economics, market-based environmental policies and policy comparisons, the use of econometric and statistical methods or experimental approaches, and negatively correlated with a focus on water pollution and other pollutants such as pesticides.