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 28: Dalia Ghanem, Agricultural & Resource Econ., University of California, Davis
- September 25: Robyn Meeks, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
- November 6: Soren Anderson, Department of Economics, Michigan State University
- November 13: Jingyuan Wang, Department of Economics, University of Michigan
- December 4: Reed Walker, Haas School of Business & Dept. of Econ., University of California, Berkeley
About the Speakers
Dalia Ghanem is Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis. Previously, she was Assistant Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California. She is co-editor of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. Dalia holds a Ph. D. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego.
Robyn Meeks is the Mark and Lynne Florian Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She is a research affiliate at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, senior editor of the VoxDevLit on Electricity Infrastructure, and an associate editor at AEJ: Applied Economics.
At Duke, Prof. Meeks is a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and the incoming director of graduate studies for the Master of International Development Policy (MIDP) Program.
During the 2023 – 2024 academic year, Prof. Meeks was a Climate Fellow at Harvard Business School’s Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society (BiGS).
Her research is at the intersection of environmental, energy, and development economics with much of her work focusing on understanding individual, household, and firm responses to the introduction of various water and energy technologies, policies, and types of infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries. Much of this work relates to and informs development policies as well as climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. Professor Meeks has implemented research in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and North and South America. On-going research is in Benin, China, Nepal, Pakistan, and the United States.
Professor Meeks has a bachelor’s degree from Brown University, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Soren Anderson is a tenured Associate Professor. He joined MSU in 2008 and holds joint appointments in the Department of Economics and the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in economics from Macalester College. He has studied a range of issues in energy and environmental economics. The majority of his work focuses on markets for cars and the fuels they use, including oil, gasoline, biofuels, and electricity. More recent work studies the political economy of carbon taxes. His research is published in the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Journal of Industrial Economics among other journals. He is appointed as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He previously served on the board of directors for the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, as a visiting researcher at the Energy Institute at Haas at UC Berkeley, as a staff economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and as a research assistant at Resources for the Future.
Jingyuan Wang is an Assistant Professor at the Economics Department at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University in 2024. Her research focuses on industrial organization and energy and environmental economics. Jingyuan's recent work explores industry dynamics and government policies in the clean energy transition.
Reed Walker is a Professor of Business and Public Policy and Economics at UC Berkeley. His research explores the social costs of environmental externalities, such as air pollution, and how regulations to limit these externalities contribute to gains and/or losses to the economy. He is the faculty co-director of the UC Berkeley Opportunity Lab’s Climate and Environment Initiative. He is also a Research Associate at the Energy Institute at Berkeley, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research fellow at IZA. He received his PhD in economics from Columbia University.