Frank Wolak

Frank Wolak portrait 2024

Frank Wolak, MS, PhD

  • Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in Economics
  • Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
  • Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development

Stanford University
Economics Department
579 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6072

(650) 724-1712 (voice)
(650) 724-1717 (fax)

Biography

Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.

publications

Working Papers
April 2022

Game-based investigation of standardized forward contracting for long-term resource adequacy

Author(s)
cover link Game-based investigation of standardized forward contracting for long-term resource adequacy
Working Papers
November 2021

Financing the Energy Transition in a Low-Cost Intermittent Renewables Environment

Author(s)
cover link Financing the Energy Transition in a Low-Cost Intermittent Renewables Environment
Working Papers
June 2021

Transformation of the Peruvian Wholesale Electricity Market

Author(s)
cover link Transformation of the Peruvian Wholesale Electricity Market

In The News

CPUC meeting
News

PESD/CPUC Impact Lab tackles resource adequacy in a high-renewables California

cover link PESD/CPUC Impact Lab tackles resource adequacy in a high-renewables California
Screen shot of MIT CEEPR's Nov 19, 2020 Fall 2020 Webinar Series discussion on grid reliability in a carbon-constrained world
News

Wolak addresses grid reliability in a carbon-constrained world

cover link Wolak addresses grid reliability in a carbon-constrained world
solar station
News

Wolak: Solving California’s Power Crisis

cover link Wolak: Solving California’s Power Crisis