About ECOnorthwest
Analysis for Action
We stand at a unique vantage point. Born in the northwest, our firm grew up during painful economic transitions. Through that journey, we learned that broadly shared progress requires thinking across disciplines and listening to diverse, and often conflicting, voices.
Policymakers and business leaders trust ECOnorthwest to inform the complex issues that shape communities today. We craft our research through an independent and interdisciplinary approach that integrates economics with other fields of insight. Delivered with clarity, our guidance creates the path to better human outcomes.
50 years of policy insights
Across states, across disciplines
3,700
total projects throughout 45 states
2000+
clients
48
34
employees play an instrument, 16 different instruments played
+5
decades as a firm, founded in 1974
23
languages spoken
44
board or committee commitments
259
total employees since our founding
79
dogs, cats, and other pets
Northwest roots. National reach.
Featured projects spanning regions throughout the US
Founded in the northwest, we grew up during the region’s transition from a resource to a knowledge economy. Innovation has been an imperative and change a constant. As our region and society have evolved, so have we. 50 years later, we’re still just as independent and curious, asking questions from many perspectives to find insights that create impact. And as our perspectives broaden, so does our geographic range. We bring our insight to the nation using what we’ve learned locally to create impact on a larger scale.
Insight across disciplines
We work at the intersection of neighborhoods and highways. Of development and conservation. Of poverty and prosperity.
The choices we make at these intersections matter. To help guide your decisions, we’ve built a team of experts in economics, urban planning, public policy, finance, demography, geography, and sociology.
Rooted in economics, our interdisciplinary expertise lights the way to a broader understanding of how policy choices affect peoples’ lives.
Practice Area
Litigation
Our experienced expert witnesses, economists, and economic analysts provide rigorous economic analyses and clear, concise written and oral testimony. We help attorneys assess economic liability; calculate the present value of damages, harm, or impacts due to alleged acts; conduct market analysis; and manage and analyze data. Our experts have provided support for representatives of both plaintiffs and defendants, producing impartial and rigorous assessments of claims for economic losses.
Initiatives
Our commitment to equity
The challenges of issues like climate change, economic resilience, and community development are all intertwined, and can’t be addressed until we recognize and make efforts to overcome the persistent inequities in access to power and resources that have played a role in creating them. To be responsible, rigorous, and trustworthy, public policy research must consider equity.
We embrace equity as both an outcome that we aspire to and a process to which we commit attention and deliberate action over time. Our Research Equity Framework guides our deliberate efforts to promote equity in policy and analysis as a process, shaping the questions we ask, how we interpret results, and how we make policy recommendations.
A trusted thought partner
ECOnorthwest has worked with a diverse range of public, private, non-profit, and foundation clients in the United States and around the world to craft effective and feasible solutions.
Our reputation is defined by the projects we have turned down as much as the ones we have completed. Our clients hire us because they value our independent research methods and approach to complex analysis. We avoid clients who ask narrow questions to mislead decision-making, and we reject those who predetermine their answers and promote false claims or suppress facts.
Selected Partners
Our ability to respond to our clients’ needs quickly and comprehensively is the foundation of our business model. ECOnorthwest often teams with other firms to solve complex problems. We appreciate the opportunity to be an integrated thought partner with professionals who have skills or local contexts that we don’t. We constantly seek new ways to do our work better.
Half a century of insight through impact
Our founder, Ed Whitelaw, was a visionary. He saw the implications of information gaps on a region’s economic future. With the right input, better public policy decisions could be made.
See how our expansion into interdisciplinary research, rooted in economics, has created paths to better human outcomes for over 50 years.