Economic cost of PG&E blackouts estimated at $1 billion

Berkeley Haas Prof. Catherine Wolfram has estimated the economic cost of the PG&E blackouts to be about $1 billion, based on a loss of about 100,000 megawatt hours of lost power. Read Wolfram's full analysis here: Wolfram is an economist with the Energy Institute at Haas and is the Cora Jane…

Experts available: Economic impact of PG&E shutoffs

Berkeley Haas Professors Catherine Wolfram and Severin Borenstein are available to share insights on the economic impact of the California power shutoffs. B oth are economists with the Energy Institute at Haas. Is it possible to gauge the economic impact of this week’s power shutoffs? Cather…

Experts available: The psychology of political incorrectness

Covering a politically incorrect leader? Berkeley Haas Asst. Prof. Juliana Schroeder and PhD candidate Michael Rosenblum are available to offer insights on the psychology of political incorrectness. Politically incorrect speech can be controversial and divisive—so why are so many politicians wil…

Published in PNAS: In Tanzania, unreliable electricity impedes development

Berkeley, July 29, 2019 — Six researchers from the University of California, Berkeley examined the quality of electrical services in Unguja, Tanzania, and found that voltage quality varied significantly for households connected to the grid, according to a study published today in the Proceedings o…

Can’t stop checking your phone? Blame your brain.

A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food. “To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond whether it’s useful,” says Assoc. Prof. Mi…

How hedge funds are using satellite images to beat Wall Street

While Assoc. Prof. Panos Patatoukas was discussing Walmart in his Financial Information Analysis course last year, a student brought up the story of how company founder Sam Walton used to count cars in store parking lots to gauge how sales were going. Patatoukas knew that sophisticated investors …

Prof. Laura Kray on team size and the gender pay gap

Women are often told that to close the gender pay gap, they need to negotiate their salaries just as men do. But not only does that advice put the onus on women to solve the problem, it perpetuate stereotypes that may not be true, says Berkeley Haas Prof. Laura Kray, an expert on gender and negotiat…