Sheth Sustainable Business Chancellor’s Chair
Business & Public Policy
About
B. Kelsey Jack is an associate professor in the Business and Public Policy group at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental and development economics, with a focus on how individuals, households, and communities decide to use natural resources and provide public goods. Much of Jack’s research uses field experiments to test theory and new policy innovations. She has done research in numerous countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and has ongoing work in South Africa, Ghana, Malawi and Niger. She co-chairs the Environment and Energy sector at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT (J-PAL), and is an associate editor at the American Economic Review and Econometrica.
Jack has held past appointments at UC Santa Barbara and Tufts University, and also completed a postdoc position at MIT, with the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) at J-PAL. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University. Before graduate school, she spent two years in Lao PDR working for IUCN.
Expertise and Research Interests
- Environmental economics
- Development economics
- Field experiments
- Jack, B.K., S. Jayachandran, F. Malagutti and S. Rao (2024). “Environmental externalities and intrahousehold inefficiency”. Journal of Development Economics, 170.
- Kar, A., T. Tawiah, L. Graham, G. Owusu-Amankwah, M. Daouda, F. Malagutti, S. Chillrud, S. Iddrisu, E. Apraku, R. Tetteh, B.K. Jack, S. Abubakari, D. Jack, K.P. Asante (2024). “Factors associated with the use of liquefied petroleum gas in Ghana vary at different stages of transition”. Nature Energy, 9: 434-445.
- Aker, J. and B.K. Jack (2023). “Harvesting the rain: The adoption of environmental technologies in the Sahel”. Review of Economics and Statistics, Accepted. Appendix.
- Fehr, D., G. Fink and B.K. Jack (2022). “Poor and rational: Decision-making under scarcity”. Journal of Political Economy, 130(11): 2862-2897.
- Jack, B.K., K. McDermott and A. Sautmann (2022). “Multiple price lists for willingness to pay elicitation“. Journal of Development Economics, 159. Technical appendix. Implementation package.
- Fink, G., B.K. Jack and F. Masiye (2020). “Seasonal liquidity, rural labor markets and agricultural production”. American Economic Review, 110(11): 3351–3392. Appendix.
- Pilot study: 2014 NBER Working Paper 20218.
- Jack, B.K. and G. Smith (2020). “Charging ahead: Prepaid electricity metering in South Africa”. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 12(2): 134-168.
- Oliva, P., B.K. Jack, S. Bell, C. Severen and E. Walker (2020). “Technology adoption under uncertainty: Take-up and subsequent investment in Zambia” Appendix.Review of Economics and Statistics, 102(3): 617-632.
- Jack, B.K. and S. Jayachandran (2019). “Self-selection into payments for ecosystem services programs“. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(12): 5326-5333.
- Guiteras, R. and B.K. Jack (2018). “Productivity in piece rate labor markets”. Journal of Development Economics, 131: 42-61.
- Jack, B.K. (2017). “Environmental economics in developing countries: Introduction to the Special Issue”. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 86: 1-7.
- Jack, B.K. and G. Smith. (2015). “Pay as you go: Pre-paid metering and electricity expenditures in South Africa”. American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, 105(5): 237-41.
- Jack, B.K. and M. Recalde (2015). “Local leadership and the voluntary provision of public goods: Field evidence from Bolivia”. Journal of Public Economics, 122: 80-93.
- Greenstone, M. and B.K. Jack (2015). “Envirodevonomics: A research agenda for an emerging field”. Journal of Economic Literature, 53(1): 5-42.
Book Chapters
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Cole, H., B.K. Jack, D. Strong and B. Maughan-Brown (2020). “City of Cape Town, South Africa: Aligning Internal Data Capabilities with External Research Partnerships” in Handbook on Using Administrative Data for Research and Evidence-based Policy, S. Cole, I. Dhaliwal, A. Sautmann and L. Vilhuber, Eds.
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Greenstone, M. and B.K. Jack (2019). “Environmental Economics in Developing Countries” in Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings (Seventh Edition), Robert Stavins, Ed., Edward Elgar.
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Abajian, A., C. Cole, B.K. Jack, K. Meng and M. Visser (2024) “Dodging Day Zero: Drought, Adaptation, and Inequality in Cape Town” Working Paper.
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Jack, B.K., S. Jayachandran, N. Kala and R. Pande (2023) “Money (not) to burn: Payments for ecosystem services to reduce crop residue burning” American Economic Review: Insights, Conditionally accepted.
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Augenblick, N., B.K. Jack, S. Kaur, F. Masiye and N. Swanson (2023) “Retrieval Failures and Consumption Smoothing: A Field Experiment on Seasonal Hunger” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Revise and resubmit.
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Jack, B.K. and K. Walker (2023) “Integrating remote sensing and randomized controlled trials: Challenges, opportunities and practical guidance” Mimeo.
- 2024 – present, Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
- 2018–2024, Associate Professor, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara
- 2023–2024, Visiting Faculty, Department of Economics, MIT
- 2011–2018, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor of Economics, Tufts University
- 2013–2014, Visiting Faculty, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley
- 2010–2011, Post-doctoral Fellow, Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative, J-PAL, MIT
- Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), Fellow (2022-), Affiliate (2017-2022), Board member (2023-)
- Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT Affiliate (2013-), Board Member (2018-), Executive Committee (2021-)
- Associate Editor, Econometrica (2023-)
- Editorial Board, American Economic Review (2021-)
- Editorial Council, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (2014-)