• Michael Greenstone
    Director, EPIC; Director, Becker Friedman Institute; The Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago

    Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. Greenstone also directed The Hamilton Project, which studies policies to promote economic growth, and has since joined its Advisory Council. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.

    Greenstone’s research, which has influenced policy globally, is largely focused on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society’s energy choices. His current work is particularly focused on testing innovative ways to increase energy access and improve the efficiency of environmental regulations around the world. Additionally, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change as a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab. He also created the Air Quality Life Index™ that provides a measure of the gain in life expectancy communities would experience if their particulates air pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with global or national standards.

    Greenstone received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a BA in economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.

    Fiona Burlig
    Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy

    Fiona Burlig is an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She studies energy and environmental economics, with a focus on the developing world. Her ongoing research examines the impacts of rural electrification in India, the design of developing-country electricity markets, and groundwater management in California. Fiona holds a PhD and an MS in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in economics, political science, and German from Williams College.

    Guojun He
    Director of Research, EPIC-China; Associate Professor, University of Hong Kong

    Guojun He is an associate professor in economics and management & strategy at the University of Hong Kong. He holds a concurrent appointment at the Energy Policy Institute of University of Chicago (EPIC) and serves as the research director of its China Center (EPIC-China).

    Prof. He’s research tries to address some of the most challenging problems faced by developing countries and seeks to produce empirically-grounded estimates for optimal policy design. The majority of his work focuses on understanding the benefits and costs of environmental policies, while he also has broader research interest on development and governance issues.

    Koichiro Ito
    Associate Professor, Harris School of Public Policy

    Koichiro Ito is an Associate Professor at Harris School of Public Policy at University of Chicago. He received a BA from Kyoto University, an MA from University of British Columbia, and a PhD from UC Berkeley. Prior to joining University of Chicago, he was a SIEPR Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and an Assistant Professor at Boston University.

    His research interests lie at the intersection of environmental and energy economics, industrial organization, and public economics. These include analyses of how consumers respond to nonlinear pricing, dynamic pricing, and rebate programs in electricity markets, how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation affects their economics decisions, how firms strategically react to attribute-based regulation such as fuel economy standards, how firms respond to dynamic incentives in sequential forward markets in wholesale electricity markets, and how much people in China value air quality. His research uses a variety of methods including randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental designs, and structural estimation to address policy relevant questions in energy and environmental economics.

    He is a recipient of the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities and the Nikkei Prize for his book, The Power of Data Analysis: How to Approach Causality, published by Kobunsha in April 2017. The original book was published in Japanese and then has been translated to Korean and Taiwanees.

    Professor Ito is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at the E2e Project, a Faculty Fellow at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a Fellow at the International Growth Centre, a Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, and a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Economics at Kyoto University.

    Shaoda Wang
    Deputy Faculty Director, EPIC-China; Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago

    Shaoda Wang is the deputy faculty director at EPIC-China and an assistant professor at the UChicago Harris School of Public Policy. He was previously a Liang Family Fellow and a postdoctoral scholar at UChicago Economics. His research interests include political economy, development economics, and environmental economics. His research aims at understanding the political economy of public policy (design, implementation, effectiveness), with a regional focus on China. Prior to Chicago, he received his BA from Peking University, and PhD from UC Berkeley.

     

    bili bili video