His professional activities focus on economic policy and analysis, particularly in energy, natural resources, and the environment. His research includes depletable and renewable resource use, electricity market analysis, environmental economics, global climate change policy, gasoline market dynamics, energy demand, energy price dynamics, automobile market analysis, and housing market dynamics. Along with Alan Kneese, he was editor of the three volume Handbook of Natural Resource and Energy Economics, part of the North Holland Handbooks in Economics series. He is the author of The California Electricity Crisis, an analytical history of the economic and policy issues associated with California’s electricity restructuring and the subsequent crisis.
At Stanford he has served as Director of the Energy Modeling Forum, Chairman of the Institute for Energy Studies, and Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research (now the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research). He currently is on the executive committee of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the faculty advisory committees of the Earth Systems Program and the Interdisciplinary Program on Environment and Resources.
He was a founding member of the International Association for Energy Economics, co-editor of the Journal Resource and Energy Economics, and vice-president for publications of the International Association for Energy Economics. In the early 1970's he was Director of the Office of Energy Systems Modeling and Forecasting of the U.S. Federal Energy Administration. He is a Senior Fellow of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics and a Council member of the California Council on Science and Technology. He has been or is a member of numerous committees of the National Research Council, including the Committee on Benefits of DOE R&D in Energy Efficiency and Fossil Energy, the Committee on Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, and the Committee on Alternatives and Strategies for Future Hydrogen Production and Use, the Committee on America’s Energy Future and is a lifetime National Associate of the National Academies. He is on the National Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a member of Governor Schwarzenegger’s Council of Economic Advisors.
He periodically serves as a consultant or advisor to corporations, governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, and law firms. He has served as expert witness in energy litigations in natural gas, oil, and electricity industries in the United States and in New Zealand.
He holds a B.S. degree from MIT in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Engineering Economic Systems. His articles have appeared in numerous books and journals, including Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Resources and Energy, Management Science, Journal of Urban Economics, The Energy Journal, and International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences.