FSI researchers examine the role of energy sources from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) investigates how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality. Professors assess natural gas and coal markets, as well as the smart energy grid and how to create effective climate policy in an imperfect world. This includes how state-owned enterprises – like oil companies – affect energy markets around the world. Regulatory barriers are examined for understanding obstacles to lowering carbon in energy services. Realistic cap and trade policies in California are studied, as is the creation of a giant coal market in China.
Frank Wolak
Stanford University
Economics Department
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072
Website: https://fawolak.org/
Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.
PESD researcher Erik Woodhouse presents at MIGA/Georgetown symposium on international political risk management
Private investment in electricity generation (so called "independent power producers" or IPPs) in developing countries grew dramatically during the 1990s, only to decline equally dramatically in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and other troubles in the late 1990s. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University undertook a detailed review of the IPP experience in developing countries to identify the principal factors explaining the wide variation in outcomes for IPP investors and hosts. Erik Woodhouse
presented lessons for the next wave in private investment in electricity generation at "International Political Risk Management: Meeting the Needs of the Present, Anticipating the Challenges of the Future," the fifth installment of an annual symposium sponsored by the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and Georgetown University's
School of Foreign Service.
Read his general report on Political Economy of International Infrastructure Contracting, Lessons from the IPP Experience and a more detailed analysis of his case selection in a following report titled IPP Study Case Selection and Project Outcomes: An Additional Note.