Frank Wolak

Frank Wolak is director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD); the Holbrook Working Professor in Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics; and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. His fields of specialization are industrial organization and econometric theory. Wolak’s recent work focuses on 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. From 1998-2001, he was chair of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He also is a visiting scholar at the University of California Energy Institute and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Wolak earned a BA from Rice University, and an MS and PhD from Harvard University.