Papers of Robert A. Young

Agricultural economist Bob Young was a professor at Colorado State University (CSU) who offered insightful analysis related to water management and policy. He published extensively about economics as related especially to water issues in Colorado, the western United States, and the world, including a textbook, Determining the Economic Value of Water: Concepts and Methods (2005).

Robert Alton Young was born in 1931 in Minden, Nebraska, and his family moved to California when he was eight. In his youth, he was involved in his local agricultural community through 4-H. He attended the University of California, Davis, earning bachelor degrees in animal science (1954) and agricultural economics (1958). He then spent two years in the U.S. Army and afterward married Lynn, who would be his wife for 55 years.

Young earned his Ph.D. in agricultural economics at Michigan State University in 1963. Later that year, he began his career as a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Arizona. In 1968, after co-authoring a controversial paper about the Central Arizona Project, he went to Washington, D.C., to be a visiting scholar at Resources for the Future.

In 1970, Young began his career at CSU as a professor in the Department of Economics and later moved to the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He taught classes related to his areas of expertise and published widely. His research focus was natural resource and agricultural economics with an emphasis on water and environment as related to agriculture, including water allocation, water quality, river basin planning, water valuation, management, irrigation economics, and agricultural production economics.

Young was unafraid of controversy and often took unpopular positions, relying on his economic point of view in debates over water issues in the western U.S. He challenged colleagues in his field, starting important conversations about economic evidence and analyzing data with integrity. Young received several awards for his research and service, including the Warren A. Hall Medal from the Universities Council on Water Resources and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Western Agricultural Economics Association, both in 2004. He was a member of many economics, agricultural, and water resources associations.

After retirement from CSU in 1992, Young worked as a private consultant, including with developing countries on water policy. Young passed away on July 17, 2013. Young and his wife, Lynn, had three sons, Wes, Doug, and Brian, and two daughters, Kathy and Kristi.