APPAM is delighted to honor David L. Weimer, Edwin E. Witte Professor of Political Economy at the LaFollette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison with our inaugural Policy Field Distinguished Contribution Award. This award was created to honor those who have made significant and long-term contributions to the development and growth of Public Policy Analysis and Management as a field, including through research, teaching, and contributing to policymaking, to APPAM, and to the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Over his career, David Weimer has contributed to each and every one of those critical tasks.
David’s research has focused on cost-benefit analysis, one of the key tools of our field. He served as president of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis (2013) and received the Society’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2018. He is a heavily cited and prolific scholar, with over 150 published articles and chapters. The importance and influence of his work has led to his service on multiple expert panels convened by distinguished authorities including NAPA, Pew, the National Academies, and the National Research Council. David’s research has had a significant influence on policy, both in Wisconsin and at the national level.
David’s distinguished research and service has informed his substantial contributions to policy analysis education. He has co-authored one of our field’s core textbooks-- Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice; a leading textbook in cost-benefit analysis, and most recently a text that integrates behavioral economics and cost-benefit analysis. Through these texts, David’s influence has extended to several further generations of scholars and practitioners.
David has also been a generous contributor to our field as a whole. He has served as the Editor of JPAM (1985-1989) and continued on as a member of the JPAM board through 2003. He was a member of the APPAM Policy Council from 1988-1992, on many APPAM committees, and served as President of APPAM in 2006.
Throughout his career, David has demonstrated the values our field holds dear. His research has informed the design of social policies to address the needs of the most vulnerable among us. His work on healthcare has addressed disparities in services and outcomes. His work on performance measurement bridges the space between policy analysis and policy implementation and management that is so critical to policy success. He has been a mentor to numerous graduate and undergraduate students.
As one of his nominees wrote “though our relatively new field has been fortunate to have many distinguished contributors, I know of no single person who has contributed so significantly and over such a span of time “to the development of and growth of Public Policy Analysis and Management as a field.””