Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Chair of the Faculty | Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration
Economic Analysis and Policy
Leading expert on energy and environmental economics
About
Catherine Wolfram is the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business. She also serves as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Chair of the Faculty. She is the Program Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Environment and Energy Economics Program, and an affiliated faculty member in the Agriculture and Resource Economics department and the Energy and Resources Group at Berkeley.
Wolfram has published extensively on the economics of energy markets. Her work has analyzed rural electrification programs in the developing world, energy efficiency programs in the US, the effects of environmental regulation on energy markets and the impact of privatization and restructuring in the US and UK. She is currently implementing several randomized controlled trials to evaluate energy programs in the U.S., Ghana, and Kenya.
She received a PhD in Economics from MIT in 1996 and an AB from Harvard in 1989. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard.
Expertise and Research Interests
- Energy Policy and Climate Change
- Energy In The Developing World
- Environmental Regulation
- New Data Collection Techniques
- Catherine Wolfram, Meredith Fowlie, and Michael Greenstone. Do Energy Efficiency Investments Deliver? Evidence from the Weatherization Assistance Program. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
2018 - Catherine Wolfram, Paul Gertler, Orie Shelef and Alan Fuchs. The Demand for Energy-Using Assets among the World’s Rising Middle Classes. American Economic Review.
2016 - Catherine Wolfram, Kenneth Lee, Eric Brewer, Carson Christiano, Francis Meyo, Edward Miguel, Matt Podolsky, and Javier Rosa. Barriers to Electrification for “Under-Grid” Households in Rural Kenya. Development Engineering.
2016 - Catherine Wolfram, Paul Gertler, and Orie Shelef. How Will Energy Demand Develop in the Developing World?. Journal of Economic Perspectives.
2012
At Haas since 2000
July 2019 – present, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Chair of the Faculty
2018 – 2019, Acting Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
2016 – present, Program Director, National Bureau of Economic Research’s Environment and Energy Economics Program
2013 – present, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business
2013 – present, Faculty Director, The E2e Project
2009 – 2018, Faculty Director, Energy Institute at Haas
2005 – 2013, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business
2000 – 2005, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business
1996 – 2000, Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University
- Faculty Scientist, Energy Technologies Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research
- Board of Editors, The Energy Journal
Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Evening MBA Program
2008
Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow
Fellow
Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Evening & Weekend MBA Program
2006
E2e Evidence-Based Policy Fellowships
Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Co-Principal Investigator (with Michael Greenstone and Chris Knittel)
2018-2021
The Political Economy of Rural Electrification
Funded by the Department for International Development
Co-Principal Investigator (with Ted Miguel)
2018-2021
A Pilot Study of Novel Low-Cost Technologies for Measuring Electricity Reliability in Urban Ghana
Funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation
Co-Principal Investigator (with Prabal Dutta and Jay Taneja)
2017-2018
- Utilities can help their central banks, “loaning” electricity during the slump, Energy Post, 04/03/2020
- Predicting global air conditioning demand, by nation, Energy Post, 12/12/2019
- October’s Power Shutoffs Prompt Interest in Getting off the Grid, KQED Forum, 11/01/2019
- Massive power shut-off would cost businesses in California, Marketplace, 10/08/2019
- Why extreme climate scenarios no longer seem so unlikely, PBS News Hour, 09/19/2019
- Ontario’s energy woes should be a warning, The Hill, 07/12/2019
- GDP – gross environmental damage = actual wealth creation, Energy Post EU, 06/27/2019
- Opinion: What are you getting if you buy clean electricity?, Mercury News, 09/05/2018
- Down to the last mile: Key research needs for energy access, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 08/28/2018
- California’s zero-carbon bill aims to set climate example, Bloomberg News, 08/15/2018
- State subsidies and electricity markets, Cato Institute, 07/19/2018
- Does Providing Electricity To The Poor Reduce Poverty? Research Suggests Not Quite, Forbes, 03/09/2018
- Sacramento Nudges People to Use Less Electricity at Peak Hours, Bloomberg Businessweek, 10/17/2017
- As Solar Pushes Electricity Prices Negative, 3 Solutions for California’s Power Grid, Inside Climate News, 06/14/2017
- Trump wants to cut programs that help buildings save energy. This new study says they work., The Washington Post, 03/27/2017
- Design and Evaluation of Development Technology, MBA292T-2
- Design, Evaluate and Scale Development Technologies, EWMBA292T-2
- Managerial Economics, XMBA201A-1
