The utility of happiness has long been an economist’s conundrum. Student Jessica Nagle recalls how Richard England explained it by sharing a personal anecdote in an economics course.

“He told us about when he was just out of high school and worked at a book warehouse moving stock,” says Nagle. “All day long, he’d work very hard while the other guys took it easy. But, they all got paid the same. If utility is happiness, the slackers maximized their utility by minimizing their labor. Professor England maximized his utility and theirs by working very hard. So, the conundrum is why do some people work more for money and others work less for time off?” Nagle laughs, adding that “He says he got the shaft because he also got flat feet.”

At UNH, England teaches a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses: introductory economics, macroeconomic theory, economic history, and a course in ecological economics. He also helped to develop a minor in War and Peace Studies and is on the faculty of the new doctoral program in Natural Resources and Environmental Studies.

England has taught for 25 years mostly at UNH but also as a visiting professor internationally in Casa Blanca, Morocco, and Budapest, Hungary. “His commitment to teaching has continued to grow over the years,” says Professor Marc Herold, his colleague and office neighbor of many years. “Ecological Economics is one of our most highly sought-after courses. In it he uses innovative tools such as the Fish Banks Ltd. game that teaches players to manage a natural resource.”

England’s teaching style is pleasantly conversational and Socratic. Facing the small seminar in his course, Economic History of the United States, he asks, “So what happened to all of those state-owned industries after World War II?”

“They were sold off so the government wouldn’t be socialist?” offers one student.

“Yes,” nods England. “For how much and to whom?”

Or as Nagle recounts, “The divestiture of public goods to private wealth after the war isn’t highly publicized, but it was a huge transfer of taxpayer wealth to established industrialists. Economically, it’s very interesting. He always finds stuff like that.”

David Howland, a doctoral student in natural resources, recently took Ecological Economics with England. “He started with the fundamentals of supply and demand and slowly moved on to the writings of ecological economists,” says Howland. “One of the nicest gifts that Richard gave me was to show how critically connected economics and the decisions that our government makes are. And, consequently, how that affects our environment. Our consumer habits are often separated in our minds. But he’s not afraid to make those connections.”

When England’s students go to the library to read assigned articles, the journals are not conveniently on reserve. By design, the students have to search for them in the stacks. There, in the dreamy quiet world of the library, they might find Ecological Economics, one of the newer international journals in which England has recently published. Much of England’s work is obviously pragmatic—he’s worked on position papers regarding a two-tiered tax structure to help encourage downtown development in New Hampshire’s cities and a proposal for a state transportation policy. But he is also a macroeconomic theorist, at home with large-scale calculus, searching for rigorous alternatives to the gross domestic product (GDP), measures that take into account finite resources, quality of life, and sustainability.
What makes England a great teacher? Knowledge, range, courage, compassion, and—most definitely—flat feet.

—Carrie Sherman,
University Publications