Christopher R. Knittel

Christopher Knittel is the George P. Shultz Professor of Energy Economics and Professor of Applied Economics and the Associate Dean of Climate, Energy, and Sustainability in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He directs MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research which has served as the hub for social science research on energy and the environment since the late 1970s and is the Director of MIT’s new Climate Policy Center which works directly with policy makers to analyze existing, proposed, and potential policy measures.

He joined the faculty at MIT in 2011, having taught previously at UC Davis and Boston University. At MIT he teaches Energy Economics and Policy to undergraduates, MBA students, and graduate students from outside of the Sloan School of Management. Professor Knittel received his B.A. in economics and political science from the California State University, Stanislaus in 1994 (summa cum laude), an M.A. in economics from UC Davis in 1996, and a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1999.

His research focuses on understanding how consumers and firms respond to changes in the energy environment, be it from prices or regulation, and what this means for the costs and benefits of policy. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Productivity, Industrial Organization, and Energy and Environmental Economics groups. He is the co-director of NBER’s Energy and Environmental Economics group. He is the former co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics, and an associate editor of the Journal of Transportation Economics and Policy, and Journal of Energy Markets, having previously served as an associate editor of The American Economic Journal — Economic Policy and The Journal of Industrial Economics. His research has appeared in The American Economic Review, The Journal of Political Economy, The American Economic Journal, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Industrial Economics, The Energy Journal and other academic journals.