Ariaster Baumgratz Chimeli
Assistant Professor of Economics
Ohio University
Department of Economics
319 Bentley Hall Annex
Athens, OH 45701
Phone: (740) 593-9849
Fax: (740) 593-0181
Dr. Chimeli is from Aimorés, a city form the interior of Minas Gerais (MG) State in Brazil. He moved to Belo Horizonte, the capital of MG, when he turned seven. He lived there until he finished his undergrad studies. After that, he moved to the U.S. and he has been living there for 13 years.
His interest in economics started when he was in high school. He liked some subjects, such as history, geography, math and physics. According to him, economics would be a way to combine and analyze all these areas. At that time, he did not know much about economics. However, he knew that it was different from business administration and that it attempted to analyze social phenomena. He enjoyed his choice particularly after he was exposed to this discipline.
During his undergrad course, Chimeli did an internship in an environmental consultant firm in Brazil. There he learned about the necessity of economic analysis in the decision making process that involved environmental impact, such as projects and public policies. At that point he started to do some research in this area, given that in Brazil there were no economic courses focused on the environment. His undergrad monograph used economic techniques to analyze the environmental-economic feature of the valley of the Piracicaba River in MG. His monograph was well accepted and it received two awards. This was the incentive Chimeli needed to further his research in this field.
Since Brazil did not offer any courses on economics of the environment, he came to the US to do his masters degree and his doctorate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After he finished his doctorate, he received an opportunity to do his post-doctorate at Columbia University in New York. Both his doctorate and post-doctorate theses focused on economic development. This is his research area of specialization. After he finished his post-doctorate, the economic department of Ohio University (OU) was looking for an economist specialized in environment and development. “It fit like a glove.” Since 2003 he has been teaching four classes at OU: Fundamentals of Microeconomics, Intermediate Microeconomics, Economics of Environment, and Economics of Energy.
His area of interest is environment and development. The theory part of his research investigates the process of economic growth and its consequences to environmental quality. He has written some theoretical articles about environmental and market economies, economies of transition of the Soviet Union, and a theoretical critique about the empirical works on the relation between growth and environment. He has also worked with climatic variability and prediction of its effect in the Ceará state in Brazil. Currently, he is doing research on international markets of wood and deforestation of tropical forests.