Scientific Director

Contact

Email maria.loureiro@usc.es

Information
Positions held in scientific societies

Member of the Board of Directors of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (EAERE).

Positions held on scientific committees of other entities

Miembro del Comité Científico de la European Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (EAERE) en el congreso anual organizado por esta asociación (años 2020 y 2021).

Journal editorial committees

Editor: Ecological Economics (ongoing) (H-index: 202; IF. 5.3 (2020), Q1).

2020-present Associate editor: Environmental & Resource Economics; Q Open (Developed in collaboration between Oxford University Press, the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, and the European Association for Agricultural Economics).

2018-present Associate editor of the Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research

Ongoing Reviewer for the following Journals: Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Economía Agraria y Recursos Naturales, Economic Modeling, Environmental and Resource Economics, European Review of Agricultural Economics, Forest Policy and Economics, Food Policy, Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Forestry Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Revista de Economía Aplicada, Marine Resource Economics, Risk Analysis: An International Journal, Spanish Economic Review.

Recognitions obtained

2026 Recognition by the Major of Santiago de Compostela on March 8th, 2026

2024 María Wonenburger Research Award (Xunta de Galicia, December 2024)

2020 Prize to the Best Scientific Journal Article published in 2018 and 2019 by a member of the Spanish-Portuguese Association for Environmental and Resource Economics (AERNA) (joint with X. Labandeira)

2014 Prize Valentín Paz Andrade (Economics), IDEGA-USC.

2013 Included into the “Highly Cited Researcher List” by Thomson Reuters.

2007 Montero Rios Research Prize in Social Sciences for Young Researchers, Xunta de Galicia.

María Luz Loureiro García

Governing Board / Permanent Researchers
Academic and professional trajectory

Professor in the Department of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis at the University of Santiago de Compostela. PhD and postgraduate degree from Washington State University (Washington, USA). Degree in Economics from the University of Santiago de Compostela. She was a professor at Colorado State University (Colorado, USA), visiting professor at Universidad Carlos III (Madrid, Spain), and full researcher at the Oslo Bioeconomy Institute (Oslo, Norway). She was a beneficiary of the Ramón y Cajal Programme and obtained the I3 certificate.

Research topics and main scientific contributions

Climate Change, Environmental Valuation, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Economics. Her fields of research are heavily influenced by the Galician environment where he was born (A Pontenova), and encompass environmental economics, natural resource economics, and, more recently, the economics of climate change.

According to REPEC, she is one of the most cited economists in Spain, and is included among the 2% of the most influential scientists worldwide, according to the ranking compiled by Stanford. She is an editor of the journal Ecological Economics and co-editor of Environmental & Resource Economics.

Throughout her career, she has received several research awards, including the Best Young Researcher in Social Sciences in Galicia award (Galician Government, 2006). In 2022, she was elected to the Royal Academy of Sciences, becoming the first woman in its economics section. She is also a member of the scientific committee of the Royal Elcano Institute and the Gadea Foundation.

Her work has had an impact beyond academia. Notably, her study on the environmental and economic impacts of the Prestige oil spill was used by the prosecution in the trial following the disaster.

Reference to main publications

1- Do fair trade and eco-labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience? 2005

ML Loureiro, J Lotade

Ecological economics 53 (1), 129-138

 

2- A choice experiment model for beef: What US consumer responses tell us about relative preferences for food safety, country-of-origin labeling and traceability 2007

ML Loureiro, WJ Umberger

Food policy 32 (4), 496-514

 

3- Discovering niche markets: A comparison of consumer willingness to pay for local (Colorado grown), organic, and GMO-free products 2002

ML Loureiro, S Hine

Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 34 (3), 477-487

 

4- Will consumers pay a premium for eco‐labeled apples? 2002

ML Loureiro, JJ McCluskey, RC Mittelhammer

Journal of consumer Affairs 36 (2), 203-219

 

5- Estimating consumer willingness to pay for country-of-origin labeling 2003

ML Loureiro, WJ Umberger

Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 287-301

 

6- Assessing consumer preferences for organic, eco-labeled, and regular apples 2001

ML Loureiro, JJ McCluskey, RC Mittelhammer

Journal of agricultural and resource economics, 404-416

 

7- Assessing consumer response to protected geographical identification labeling 2000

ML Loureiro, JJ McCluskey

Agribusiness: An International Journal 16 (3), 309-320

Other merits of interest

2022- present Member of the ERC Evaluation Committee of the Advanced Grant SH1

Reviewer in the H2020 programme, German Ministry of Education.

Collaborates with the Galician Environmental Prosecutor’s Office in the preparation of the expert opinion on the economic and environmental costs caused by the Prestige in Spain, ratified by the Supreme Court in 2016.