Charles Kolstad

Website: Bren School Profile

Charles Kolstad is an internationally known economist who once served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana and has taught at universities in the U.S, Russia, and Belgium. His research interests are in information, uncertainty and regulation; he does much of his applied work in the area of climate change and energy markets.  Currently he is a Convening Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize), an advisor to the California Air Resources Board and Editor of the journal Review of Environmental Economics & Policy.  He is a former president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE)  and has authored more than 100 publications, including the undergraduate text, Environmental Economics, which has been translated into Japanese, Spanish and Chinese; the second edition was published in Spring 2010.  At UC Santa Barbara, Prof. Kolstad is a Professor in the School of Environmental Science & Management and in the Department of Economics, where he is Chairperson.  He is also Co-Director of the newly established University of California Center for Energy & Environmental Economics, a joint undertaking of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara.  He is a University Fellow at Resources for the Future (Washington), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge) and a Fellow of CESifo (Munich).  In 2009 he was elected Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.  He received his PhD from Stanford in 1982.