About
I am an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and, by courtesy, in the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. I am also a research affiliate of the Cornell Institute for China Economic Research (CICER) and a Friedman Faculty Fellow in the Real Estate Center at the McCombs School of Business at UT. For 2026-27, I am the Fellow of the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy. In 2022-3, I was a Visiting Scholar at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.
I am an applied microeconomist studying environmental, energy and urban policy. My research asks how policies and individual decisions shape pollution, emissions and inequality, through where people live and work, how they commute, and how energy and carbon markets are designed. Current projects examine incentives for carbon capture and storage, how quality is priced in voluntary carbon offset markets, when energy storage subsidies improve welfare, migration and commuting in urban China, and low emission zones in Vietnam. Earlier work studied congestion pricing, subway expansion and driving restrictions in Los Angeles and Beijing.