The LBJ School of Public Affairs, UT Economics, and the McCombs department of Business, Government and Society will be continuing our Environmental Economics research series over the course of the Spring 2025 semester. Come hear from academics and subject matter experts in the field including:
- January 31: Jim Bushnell, Economics, UC-Davis
- March 7: Sarah Johnston, Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
- April 4: Akshaya Jha, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
- April 11: Teevrat Garg, School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC-San Diego
- April 25: Mar Reguant, Economics, Northwestern University
About the Speakers
James Bushnell is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining UC Davis, he spent 15 years as the Research Director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley, and two years as the Cargill Chair in Energy Economics at Iowa State University. Prof. Bushnell received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from U.C. Berkeley in 1993. He has written extensively on the regulation, organization, and competitiveness of energy markets. His research on restructured electricity markets has appeared in leading economics journals such as the American Economic Review and RAND journal of economics.
Sarah Johnston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sarah was a PERC Lone Mountain Fellow in 2019. She is interested in energy markets and the interaction between government policy and firm decision-making. Her recent work studies the effect of federal subsidies on the wind power industry and the relationship between electricity prices and investment in U.S. manufacturing. Sarah holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from Dartmouth.
Akshaya Jha is an Associate Professor (without tenure) of Economics and Public Policy at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He completed his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2015. His research uses a combination of economic modeling and causal inference techniques to quantify the economic and environmental costs and benefits of a wide range of policies impacting wholesale electricity supply. In recent work, he has examined the introduction of financial trading to California’s wholesale electricity market, the phase-out of nuclear power in Germany, the dramatic growth of rooftop solar capacity in Western Australia, and the determinants of electricity blackouts in India.
Teevrat Garg (he/him) is an Associate Professor of Economics in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. His research focusses on environmental policy and energy transitions in low- and middle-income countries. His current portfolio of research involves working directly with regional governments and utilities in understanding climate adaptation and decarbonization. In recent years, he has conducted research in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Uganda and Vietnam. Teevrat’s work has been published in leading academic journals and covered by prominent media outlets such as the New York Times and Science Magazine. His policy engagements include serving as an Academic Advisor to the Green Growth Initiative at the International Growth Center and serving as a Technical Contributor to the 5th National Climate Assessment. He currently serves as the editor of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (JAERE).
Mar Reguant is an economist whose research deals with the economics of energy, with an emphasis on electricity and the pollution associated with electricity generation. She is an ICREA Researcher at the Institute for Economic Analysis of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, an affiliated professor at the Barcelona School of Economics, a part-time professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, vice president of climate change at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.