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James L. Johnston

Senior Fellow, Economic Policy

Jim Johnston passed away on January 21, 2022.

Jim Johnston was a founding member of the Board of Directors at The Heartland Institute in 1984. He was also Heartland’s senior fellow for energy and regulatory policy. He retired in January 1993 from his position as senior economist at Amoco Corporation, whose Economics Department he joined in 1975.

His primary responsibilities while at Amoco included the economic analysis of public policy issues and the hedging of corporate risk. Prior to his employment at Amoco, Mr. Johnston served as an economist with the RAND Corporation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, and the Secretary’s Office of the U.S. Treasury. He served on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea.

Mr. Johnston’s research focused on electric utility deregulation in Illinois and other states; pollution trading under the climate change treaty, Clean Air Act, and the RECLAIM system for the South Coast Air District; and a general theory of regulation, published in the Cato Institute’s Regulation magazine.