Faculty
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James BushnellCo-Director
DEEP Professor Department of Economics |
Energy Areas
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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 and Director of the Biobased Industry Center 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.
Prof. Bushnell has been actively involved in energy and environmental policy for over a decade. During 1999 and 2000, he served as a member of the Market Monitoring Committee (MMC) of the California Power Exchange. Since 2002, he has served as a member of the Market Surveillance Committee (MSC) of the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). Both the MMC and MSC were establish to provide external monitoring and analysis to complement the internal market monitoring functions at the PX and CAISO, respectively. Prof. Bushnell has also served as a member of the Economic Analysis and Allocation Committee (EAAC) and Market Simulation Group (MSG) of the California Air Resources Board. Both groups were charged with analyzing California’s emissions market for greenhouse gasses and advising the ARB on the markets design and performance.
Prof. Bushnell has been actively involved in energy and environmental policy for over a decade. During 1999 and 2000, he served as a member of the Market Monitoring Committee (MMC) of the California Power Exchange. Since 2002, he has served as a member of the Market Surveillance Committee (MSC) of the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). Both the MMC and MSC were establish to provide external monitoring and analysis to complement the internal market monitoring functions at the PX and CAISO, respectively. Prof. Bushnell has also served as a member of the Economic Analysis and Allocation Committee (EAAC) and Market Simulation Group (MSG) of the California Air Resources Board. Both groups were charged with analyzing California’s emissions market for greenhouse gasses and advising the ARB on the markets design and performance.
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David RapsonCo-Director
DEEP Associate Professor Department of Economics |
Energy Areas:
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David Rapson joined the Economics Department at UC Davis in 2008. Prof. Rapson’s research focuses on energy and environmental economics, industrial organization, and applied econometrics. His research includes several collaborative studies with regulated utilities and government agencies, with a focus on the transportation and electricity sectors. Current projects seek to understand how vehicle choice and usage decisions affect emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. His models will help to analyze the effectiveness of federal and state policies that seek to reduce reliance on fossil fuel sources and promote adoption of next generation powertrain technologies and fuels. An area of ongoing research interest explores how adoption and diffusion of electric vehicles will affect requirements for the electricity grid, and how dynamic electricity pricing can help to integrate distributed energy resources onto the grid.
Prof. Rapson is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (JEBO). His research appears in the American Economic Review, Science, Nature and other academic journals. Prof. Rapson holds an AB in economics from Dartmouth College; an MA in economics from Queen’s University; and a PhD in economics from Boston University.
Prof. Rapson is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (JEBO). His research appears in the American Economic Review, Science, Nature and other academic journals. Prof. Rapson holds an AB in economics from Dartmouth College; an MA in economics from Queen’s University; and a PhD in economics from Boston University.
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Mark Agerton
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Mark Agerton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis. He works on issues in energy and resource economics, with a special focus on dynamic investment problems. His current research examines several aspects of the U.S. shale boom, including how firms learn where to drill, the economics of mineral leasing, constraints in midstream infrastructure, and market structure in oilfield services. Agerton earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Rice University, an M.A. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a B.A. in Spanish from Davidson College.
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Katrina JessoeAssociate Professor
Agricultural and Resource Economics |
Energy Areas
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Katrina Jessoe is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis, where she specializes in environmental and energy economics. Much of her research centers on consumer and firm behavior in the energy and water sectors. In her research, she often collaborates with electric and water utilities, as well as state agencies. Some ongoing and recent research projects include the analysis of time-variant pricing programs for residential and commercial electricity customers, a field experiment on the energy and water conservation potential of pecuniary and non-pecuniary water and natural gas conservation programs, and the interaction between energy and water conservation programs. She received a BA from Princeton University in 2002 and a PhD in Environmental and Resource Economics from Yale University in 2009.
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Erich MuehleggerAssociate Professor
Department of Economics |
Energy Areas:
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Erich Muehlegger is an associate professor in the economics department at UC-Davis and a faculty research fellow at the NBER. Formerly, he was on the faculty at Harvard Kennedy School, a fellow of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and former faculty chair of the Regulatory Policy Program. His research interests include industrial organization, public finance and environmental policy, especially in the context of the energy and transportation sectors. His research focuses on how regulatory policy can be used to affect the decisions of firms and consumers and, in particular, how insights can be used to design better regulations and incentives. One line of research examines how a broad array of environmental policies, from fuel taxes to hybrid vehicle incentives to fuel content regulations, affect the behavior of producers and the decision of consumers. Examples of his work in this area include an examination of how drivers change driving behavior and vehicle purchase decision in response to changes in state gasoline taxes, a comparison of the efficacy of different hybrid vehicle incentives and a paper that models how refineries respond to changing environmental regulations. A second set of projects estimate counterproductive effects of regulation and energy taxes, including a paper that studies the effect of federal regulatory innovation on diesel fuel tax evasion. His work has been published in top academic journals and covered by the popular press, television and radio. He received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005.
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Kevin NovanAssistant Professor
Agricultural and Resource Economics |
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Kevin Novan joined the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at UC Davis in 2012. His research interests are in the fields of energy and environmental economics, focusing primarily on questions surrounding the design and implementation of policies targeted towards the electricity sector. Recent work quantifies the impact of renewable electricity on pollution, examines the social costs and benefits of storing electricity, and evaluates the energy and pollution savings provided by residential energy efficiency investments. He holds a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Western Washington University and a Ph.D. in economics from UC San Diego.
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Aaron SmithProfessor
Agricultural and Resource Economics |
Energy Areas:
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Aaron Smith is a Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis, where he has been since 2001. Originally from New Zealand, he earned his PhD in Economics from the University of California, San Diego. His research addresses trading and price dynamics in commodity and financial derivatives markets. Recent project topics include identifying informed traders in commodity futures markets, estimating the effects of ethanol production on agricultural and energy markets, and explaining recent failures of grain futures markets to accurately price the underlying commodity. His research has been published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Econometrics, the American Journal of Agricultural Economicsand other academic journals.
