For this Merrick Lecture, Catherine Wolfram, Visiting Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School ​and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Treasury, will join the Batten community. This event will consist of a presentation and discussion on global climate change, policies surrounding the issue and the role economists can (and do) have.  This Merrick Lecture is jointly sponsored by Batten and the UVa Department of Economics.

Wolfram is on leave from UC Berkeley where she is the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration. From 2019 to 2021, she served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Haas School of Business.  

​Before leaving for government services, she was the Program Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Environment and Energy Economics Program, Faculty Director of The E2e Project, a research organization focused on energy efficiency and a research affiliate at the Energy Institute at Haas. She was also an affiliated faculty member of 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.

The talk is intended for the general UVa community, and will also be accessible via webinar. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Jennett Murphy, Faculty Affairs Manager jennett.murphy@virginia.edu.