Dr. P. J. Hill served as the George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College for twenty-five years, retiring in 2011. As a prolific scholar, as well as highly-sought after teacher and mentor, he has published many books and articles in the areas of institutional economics, property rights, and natural resources. During his forty-two year career in addition to his work at Wheaton College he has taught at Purdue, Montana State and The University of Iowa. In 2002 he won the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education.
Much of Dr. Hill’s scholarly work focuses on the development of the frontier in the American West, where he is a third generation Montana rancher who spent his summer breaks during his teaching years at Wheaton to work on his ranch, and conduct research at the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana.
His books include The Birth of a Transfer Society (1989), The Political Economy of the American West (1994), Eco-Sanity: A Common Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), Environmental Federalism (1997), Who Owns the Environment? (1998), The Technology of Property Rights (2001), and The Not So Wild, Wild West (2004).
Dr. Hill and his wife Lois have three grown children, and now reside in Montana.