Bureau of Business and Economic Research, Pacific Northwest Regional Economic Conference

Speaker Bios

Dr. John Cromartie
John Cromartie is a geographer with the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Geography at George Washington University. At ERS, he oversees a program of research on rural migration, population distribution, and the effects of demographic change on rural well-being. He serves on the Office of Management and Budget’s committee on metropolitan area definitions and the National Economics Council’s committee on the National Broadband Plan. John received a Ph.D. in geography from the University of North Carolina in 1989 and has been at the Economic Research Service since 1990.

Dr. Hart Hodges
Hart Hodges is Director of Western’s Center for Economic and Business Research. He received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1994 from the University of Washington. While at the University of Washington, Hart received awards for both undergraduate and graduate teaching instruction. He taught economics from 1993-1995 at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA and then served as the natural resource damage assessment economist for the U.S. Department of the Interior. Hart also spent several years working with an economic consulting firm in Alaska. He joined the faculty at Western in the fall of 2000. His research interests include natural resource and environmental economics and applied business economics. Hart is currently managing several research projects and public service efforts with an emphasis on sustainable economic development.

Chris Lawless
As chief economist of the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Chris provides research, analysis and advice on economic, capital market, and pension issues. Chris has been a close observer of the B.C. and Canadian economic scenes for a number of years. Previously, he was chief economist with the British Columbia Ministry of Finance, and served as a economist with the Library of Parliament research service in Ottawa and with House of Commons and Senate committees. Chris is secretary and director of the Pacific Northwest Regional Economic Conference.

Dr. George S. Masnick
George Masnick joined the Harvard Faculty in 1974 with appointments in both the Sociology Department and Department of Population Sciences in the School of Public Health, where he served as Department Head. Dr. Masnick has been affiliated with the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard since 1978. He moved to the Bitterroot Valley in western Montana in 1987 with his wife Reisa and son Max, and has continued consulting for the Joint Center. The tele-commute to Cambridge is way more pleasant than the actual commute was when he lived back east. Dr. Masnick is well known for his research and writing in the areas of household and family demography, population dynamics, housing studies, and household forecasting. He is a regular contributor to the Joint Center’s annual report The State of the Nation’s Housing. He has recently authored a series of papers on household formation and homeownership trends in the United States with particular attention to immigrants and minorities.

Dr. Tom P. Potiowsky
Tom Potiowsky is a State Economist for the State of Oregon. Dr. received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado in 1981 and a B.B.A. degree in Economics from Ohio University. Upon graduation from the University of Colorado, he was an Assistant Professor at the University before moving to Portland State University in 1983. At Portland State University, Dr. Potiowsky was Chair of the Economics Department and Co-Director of the Applied Economics Research Group (AER Group). Tom was appointed as Acting State Economist on February 1, 1999 and State Economist on August 1, 1999, serving through September of 2006. Dr. Potiowsky returned to Portland State to teach until January of 2008 when he returned to serve as the State Economist.

Dr. Michael J. Scott
Michael J. Scott is a Staff Scientist and senior economist in the Technology Planning and Deployment Group, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He joined the laboratory in 1980. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Washington. He was previously on the staff of the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska, from 1975 through 1979.

Over the last 25 years, Dr. Scott has specialized in studying the effects of global environmental change on natural resources and the economy, particularly impacts on human systems and the effects of uncertainty. He has managed a series of projects analyzing the effects of global warming on water supply and utilization of the Columbia River system by hydropower, irrigation, and fisheries interests, the impact of climate change on human settlements, and policies for limiting greenhouse gas emissions (including carbon sequestration). He was a major contributor to three out of the four major assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2007 “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” His current research is in the areas of impacts of climate change on energy consumption in buildings and irrigated agriculture. He also conducts socioeconomic impact analysis for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and economic analysis in support of the U.S. Department of Energy Appliance Standards Program.