Professor Paul L. Joskow has been named to succeed Professor Richard Schmalensee as director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), a joint center of the Sloan School, Department of Economics and Energy Laboratory. Professor Schmalensee, who has been director of CEEPR for the past eight years, became dean of the Sloan School in November 1998.
"I am delighted that Paul Joskow has agreed to follow Dick Schmalensee as director of CEEPR," said Chancellor Lawrence S. Bacow, who announced the appointment. "CEEPR has prospered under Dick's leadership. It is now widely recognized as one of the world's leading sources of scholarship on SO2 emissions trading, electricity sector competition, privatization and regulatory reform. Given that Dick and Paul have collaborated on much of this research, the transition is likely to be seamless.
"Paul will bring to CEEPR the same strong leadership he exercised as head of the Department of Economics from 1994-98. Like Dick, he is a world-class scholar who moves easily between industry, government and the academy. We are fortunate that he has taken on this new challenge."
Professor Joskow is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics and Management in the Department of Economics and at Sloan, and he was also head of economics until last June. He specializes in the economics of government regulation, industrial organization and competition policy. He has published three books (a fourth, co-authored with Dean Schmalensee on SO2 emissions trading, is in press and expected to be available by early next year) and numerous articles on issues in industrial organization, government regulation, competition policy, and energy and environmental economics. His recent research has focused on restructuring, privatization and deregulation of electric power sectors around the world and on the use of market-based mechanisms to control pollution.
CEEPR has been the locus for applied research activity in energy economics at MIT since the founding of its predecessor organization (the Center for Energy Policy Research) in the mid-1970s, and in environmental economics since the early 1990s. In recent years, it has become the foremost center for the study of emissions trading with special emphasis on the SO2 emissions trading under the US Acid Rain Program. CEEPR seeks to provide stable financial support for empirically grounded economic research at MIT on issues related to energy and environmental policy, and to introduce the results to the decision-making processes of government and industry.
Professor Joskow, an MIT faculty member since 1972, received the BA in 1968 from Cornell University, and a master's degree (1970) and PhD (1972) from Yale University.
A version of this article appeared in the April 28, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 28).
