Biography
Peter Christensen is an applied microeconomist who studies the intersection of energy/environmental and urban economics to understand how public policy and technological interventions can be used to improve social and environmental outcomes in cities around the world. He directs BDEEP, a research team that combines data science and economic methods at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He is affiliated with the Poverty Action Laboratory and E2e and has ongoing partnerships with research teams at Zillow, Uber Technologies, and Google. His work has been supported by the US EPA, National Science Foundation, Sloan Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He holds a PhD and a MESc from Yale University and a BA from UC Davis.
Research Interests
Economics Fields: Energy and Environmental Economics, Public Economics, Urban Economics
Methodological Interests: Data Science and Computational Methods, Digital Field Experiments, Machine Learning in Policy Evaluation
Education
- Ph.D. Environmental and Resource Economics, Yale University, 2015
- M.E.Sc. Yale F&ES, 2009
- B.A. UC Davis, 2004
Additional Campus Affiliations
Adjunct Associate Professor, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Recent Publications
Christensen, P., Francisco, P., Myers, E., Shao, H., & Souza, M. (2024). Energy efficiency can deliver for climate policy: Evidence from machine learning-based targeting. Journal of Public Economics, 234, Article 105098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105098
Christensen, P., Baylis, P., v, T., Li, S., McCord, G. C., Muehlegger, E., Myers, E., Noble Smith, E., & Rapson, D. S. (2024). How to spend one trillion dollars: the US decarbonization conundrum. Nature, 634(8036), 1050-1052. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03474-3
Christensen, P., Osman, A., & Stocker, A. (2024). Weathering the ride: Experimental evidence on transport pricing, climate extremes, and future travel demand. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 125, Article 102978. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2024.102978
Christensen, P., Francisco, P., Myers, E., & Souza, M. (2023). DECOMPOSING THE WEDGE BETWEEN PROJECTED AND REALIZED RETURNS IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY PROGRAMS. Review of Economics and Statistics, 105(4), 798-817. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01087
Christensen, P., Keiser, D. A., & Lade, G. E. (2023). Economic Effects of Environmental Crises: Evidence from Flint, Michigan. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 15(1), 196-232. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20190391