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I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, at the University of Maryland, College Park.
I am an energy and environmental economist. Much of my research focuses on interacting market distortions in U.S. energy markets. My recent work studies market power in U.S. coal transportation, and analyzes the extent to which decreasing coal markups may lead to incomplete pass-through of a carbon tax. I am currently working to quantify the extent to which the decline of the U.S. coal sector is causing carbon emissions to leak out of the country via coal exports.
I also study the intersection of environmental and development economics, focusing on the economic impacts of electricity access in the developing world. This work focuses on many points along the electricity supply chain in India, including generation, dispatch, transmission, and both rural and urban end-uses. A recent working paper investigates the extent to which blackouts in developing countries are driven by a combination of utilities’ discretion and misallocation of generation.
I also work at the intersection of energy, water, and agriculture. A recent working paper combines (i) detailed electricity data for California farmers, (ii) detailed technical audits for 12,000 agricultural groundwater pumps, (iii) high-frequency measurements of groundwater depth, and (iv) satellite-derived measures of crop cover—-in order to estimate how changes in the cost of pumping groundwater impact both agricultural groundwater use and cropping decisions.