Anthony Dalton Scott | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Anthony Dalton Scott

Anthony Dalton (Tony) Scott, OC, FRSC, economist (born 2 August 1923 in Vancouver, BC; died 17 February 2015 in Vancouver). Scott made pioneering contributions to the economics of natural resource use and management

Anthony Scott’s PhD thesis, published as Natural Resources: The Economics of Conservation (1955), is a classic in the field. His book with Francis Christy, The Commonwealth in Ocean Fisheries (1965), is also seminal. Scott was a professor at the University of British Columbia for 35 years until his retirement in 1989. He remained an active scholar into his later life, publishing The Evolution of Resource Property Rights in 2008.

Scott is also noted for work on human capital flows (the “brain drain”) and for work on the economics of federalism. He served with several government bodies and many professional associations. He was a member of the International Joint Commission from 1968 to 1972. 

Scott was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) in 1969. In 1980, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Guelph. The governor general named him an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982. His citation for that honour recognizes his trailblazing work “applying economic-mathematical analysis to pollution control.” Scott won the RSC’s Innis-Gérin Medal for social science in 1987.