GATTO PAOLA

Paola Gatto was born in Padova in 1960. She graduated with honours in Forestry at the University of Padova in 1985. In 1990 she got her PhD in Forest Economics and Planning from the University of Florence and, in the following year, an MPhil in Agricultural Economics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK). In January 2003 she was appointed Researcher at the Faculty of Agriculture on the University of Padova. Since March 2006 she is Associate Professor at the same University.
Her research field falls into forest and environmental economics and rural development. Over time, her activities have focused in particular on optimisation methods for the economic improvement of natural resources in marginal area, the applications of Cost Benefit Analysis to the forest sector (the topic of the PhD thesis), the methods for the valuation of forest externalities within the total Economic Value umbrella and the most appropriate policy tools for the remuneration of public goods provided by agriculture and forestry.
On these themes, she took part to numerous research projects both at a national and international levels, including six European Research Projects and some COST Actions. She is author or co-author of around 50 papers, of which 6 on Journals of the ISI catalogue. She is also acting as consultants for some territorial institutions in the Alpine area.
Her teaching activity is carried out within the MSc Course in Forest and Environmental Sciences, where she is presently teaching ‘Evaluation and Assessment of Forest and Environmental Investments’ (since the Academic Year 2003/2004), Economics of the Forest-wood System for the BSc in Wood Technology and Industry (since the Academic Year 1996/1997) and International Timber, non Wood Forest Products and Forest Services Trade for the l’European Erasmus Mundus MSc in Sustainable Tropical Forestry.