FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.
Frank Wolak
Stanford University
Economics Department
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072
Website: https://fawolak.org/
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wolak@zia.stanford.edu
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
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.
Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
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PESD researcher Erik Woodhouse presents at MIGA/Georgetown symposium on international political risk management
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Private investment in electricity generation (so called "independent power producers" or IPPs) in developing countries grew dramatically during the 1990s, only to decline equally dramatically in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and other troubles in the late 1990s. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University undertook a detailed review of the IPP experience in developing countries to identify the principal factors explaining the wide variation in outcomes for IPP investors and hosts. Erik Woodhouse
presented lessons for the next wave in private investment in electricity generation at "International Political Risk Management: Meeting the Needs of the Present, Anticipating the Challenges of the Future," the fifth installment of an annual symposium sponsored by the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and Georgetown University's
School of Foreign Service.
Read his general report on Political Economy of International Infrastructure Contracting, Lessons from the IPP Experience and a more detailed analysis of his case selection in a following report titled IPP Study Case Selection and Project Outcomes: An Additional Note.
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Impacts of ENSO Events on Chinese Rice Production and the World Rice Market
Climate shocks leading to floods and droughts present high levels of uncertainty and difficulties in decision making for water district managers, agricultural producers, and policymakers throughout the world. This project focuses on the impacts of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on precipitation and temperature variability, and in turn on water management and crop production, in one of China's major rice bowls, Jiangxi Province. Jiangxi is also one of China's poorest provinces, where swings in crop production and prices can jeopardize rural incomes and food security.