The LBJ School of Public Affairs, UT Economics, and the McCombs Department of Business, Government, and Society will continue our Environmental Economics research series for the Fall 2025 semester. Come hear from academics and subject matter experts in the field, including:
- August 29: David S. Rapson, Department of Economics, UC-Davis
- September 24: Steven Puller, Department of Economics, Texas A&M University
- October 17: Lucas Davis, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
- October 29: Sarah Armitage, School of Business, Boston University
- November 7: Meredith Fowlie, Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley
- December 3: Jonathan Elliot, Department of Economics, Johns Hopkins University
About the Speakers
David S. Rapson is a Chancellor’s Leadership Professor in the UC Davis Economics Department. The central objective of Professor Rapson’s work is to understand and demonstrate how consumers and firms respond to incentives, and what this implies for effective energy, environmental, and economic policy. His work examines a central tension of the energy transition. Government intervention can improve outcomes when markets fail and when policies create proper incentives, but poorly conceived policies may undermine goals that they are trying to achieve or inadvertently harm people’s economic circumstances. Professor Rapson is an expert on electric vehicles, energy markets, climate policy, and regulation, and has recently written on the effects of sanctions on Russia.
Steven Puller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Texas A&M University. Steven's research has a wide range of implications throughout the world. His recent work studies the effect of the mandatory energy efficiency disclosure in housing markets. His work on energy with publications on "Does Strategic Ability Affect Efficiency? Evidence of Electricity Markets showcases an understanding of the Texas electricity market. Steven holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and an A.B. from the University of Chicago.
Lucas Davis is a Jeffrey A. Jacobs Distinguished Professor in Business and Technology Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Faculty Affiliate Energy Institute at Haas, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Coeditor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 2005. His teaching uses a combination of energy and environmental markets, which attracts MBA and non-MBA students. In recent work, he has examined the political ideology and U.S. Electric Vehicle Adoptions, and Why Air Conditioning adoption accelerates faster than predicted? Evidence in Mexico.
Sarah Armitage is an Assistant Professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University, with a disciplinary focus on environmental economics, industrial organization, and public finance. During the 2022-2023 academic year, Sarah was an Economist Fellow at the Environmental Defense Fund. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a consultant at Industrial Economics, Inc., supporting state and federal government clients on a variety of environmental projects, and as a research assistant at MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. She has also served as an Impact Fellow at Prime Coalition, overseeing Prime's inaugural impact audit of investments with gigaton-scale emissions reduction potential. She holds an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and a B.A. in History from Yale University.
Meredith Fowlie is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. She is a faculty director at the Energy Institute at Haas and a co-director of the Environment and Energy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Meredith Fowlie holds the Class of 1935 Endowed Chair in Energy at UC Berkeley and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Energy and Environmental Economics group. Fowlie has worked extensively on the economics of energy markets and the environment. Her research investigates real-world applications of market-based environmental regulations, the economics of energy efficiency, the demand side of energy markets, and energy use in emerging economies. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and other academic journals. She received a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley in 2006, an M.Sc. from Cornell in 2000, and a B.Sc. from Cornell in 1997. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan
Jonathan Elliot is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Johns Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. from NYU, with research interests in industrial organization, energy, and environmental economics. He has published a paper on Market Structure, Investment, and Technical Efficiencies in Mobile Telecommunications for the Journal of Political Economy. He has a working paper on Investment, Emissions, and Reliability in Electricity Markets. He has earned the Young Economists’ Essay Award & Paul Geroski Prize for Most Significant Policy Contribution (50th EARIE Annual Conference) in 2023. He has taught Industrial Organization (PhD) at Johns Hopkins University since 2023.