David E. M. Sappington | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Economist, academic advisor, and author |
Awards | Inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society, 1976 Distinguished Service Award, Public Utility Research Center, University of Florida, 2003 Distinguished Member Award, Transportation and Public Utilities Group, 2015 The Energy Journal’s Campbell Watkins Best Paper Award, 2017 |
Academic background | |
Education | B.A. Economics, Haverford College 1976 M.A. Economics, Princeton University, 1978 Ph.D. Economics, Princeton University, 1980 |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Florida |
David E. M. Sappington is an American economist,academic advisor,and author. He is an Eminent Scholar in the Department of Economics,and the Director of Robert F. Lanzillotti Public Policy Research Center at the University of Florida. [1] His research focuses on the study of regulatory policy issues in the communications and energy sectors. [2]
Sappington has published nearly 200 articles in economic journals and co-authored four books. He is an associate editor of The RAND Journal of Economics , [3] and the Journal of Regulatory Economics . [4] He is also a co-editor of Journal of Economics and Management Strategy . [5]
Sappington received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Haverford College in 1976. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Princeton University in 1978 and 1980,respectively. [1]
Sappington began his academic career in 1980 as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. He joined the University of Florida as the Matherly Professor of Economics in 1989,and was awarded the title of Eminent Scholar in the Department of Economics in 1991. [1]
Sappington also serves as the director of the Robert F. Lanzillotti Public Policy Research Center,and as a member of the advisory committee of the Digital Markets Initiative at the University of Florida. [1]
Sappington was the Chief Economist for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2002. [6] He also served as the President of the International Industrial Organization Society from 2008 to 2009. [7]
Sappington has authored nearly 200 articles in economics journals. His work,some of which has been supported by the National Science Foundation,has been cited more than 20,000 times. His research spans many areas of microeconomic theory and public policy,with a particular focus on incentives and the design of regulatory policy in the communications and energy sectors. [8] He has been recognized as one of the top scientists in the field of Economics and Finance by Research.com. [9]
Sappington’s research focuses on the optimal design of reward structures in the presence of limited information. His early research focuses on the special complications that arise when economic actors have limited resources,and so cannot be held financially liable for poor performance. [10] [11] [12]
Sappington’s later research emphasizes the optimal design of regulatory policy when the regulator does not have ready access to all relevant information. Historically,economists typically analyzed the design of regulatory policy in settings where the regulator is well-informed about all relevant elements of the environment. [13] In practice,regulators (and policymakers more generally) seldom are perfectly informed about all relevant aspects of the environment in which they operate. Limited information complicates the design of the regulatory policy. Sappington’s research examines the optimal design of regulatory policy when the regulated firm is better informed about the environment in which it operates than the regulator. [14]
Sappington’s research demonstrates that the optimal regulatory policy varies with the details of the prevailing information asymmetry. The optimal policy varies according to whether the firm’s privileged information pertains to its fixed costs of production (which do not vary with the scale of its operation),to its variable costs (which vary with scale), [15] or to both. [16] Furthermore,the optimal policy can be quite distinct when the firm is better informed than the regulator about the demand for its products,rather than about its costs of producing these products. [17]
Some of Sappington’s research examines how well simple regulatory policies can replicate the performance of fully optimal policies. [18] [19] His research also examines the implications of advanced theoretical analysis for the practical implementation of regulatory policy, [20] and examines the impact of incentive regulation on industry performance. [21] Much of his early research focuses on the design of regulatory policy in the telecommunications industry. His more recent research examines policy design in the energy sector. This research includes analyses of the design of policies to promote energy conservation,distributed generation of electricity,energy storage to complement energy generation and transmission,and forward contracting to ensure the long-term supply of electricity at affordable prices. [22] [23] [24]
Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory,these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society,but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For example:
In economics,a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk. For example,when a corporation is insured,it may take on higher risk knowing that its insurance will pay the associated costs. A moral hazard may occur where the actions of the risk-taking party change to the detriment of the cost-bearing party after a financial transaction has taken place.
Energy economics is a broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to supply and use of energy in societies. Considering the cost of energy services and associated value gives economic meaning to the efficiency at which energy can be produced. Energy services can be defined as functions that generate and provide energy to the “desired end services or states”. The efficiency of energy services is dependent on the engineered technology used to produce and supply energy. The goal is to minimise energy input required to produce the energy service,such as lighting (lumens),heating (temperature) and fuel. The main sectors considered in energy economics are transportation and building,although it is relevant to a broad scale of human activities,including households and businesses at a microeconomic level and resource management and environmental impacts at a macroeconomic level.
In contract theory,mechanism design,and economics,an information asymmetry is a situation where one party has more or better information than the other.
The principal–agent problem refers to the conflict in interests and priorities that arises when one person or entity takes actions on behalf of another person or entity. The problem worsens when there is a greater discrepancy of interests and information between the principal and agent,as well as when the principal lacks the means to punish the agent. The deviation from the principal's interest by the agent is called "agency costs".
Paul Robert Milgrom is an American economist. He is the Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences,a position he has held since 1987. He is a professor in the Stanford School of Engineering as well and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Research. Milgrom is an expert in game theory,specifically auction theory and pricing strategies. He is the winner of the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences,together with Robert B. Wilson,"for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats".
Regulatory economics is the application of law by government or regulatory agencies for various economics-related purposes,including remedying market failure,protecting the environment and economic management.
Michael Robert Kremer is an American development economist currently serving as University Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and Director of the Development Innovation Lab at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. Kremer formerly served as the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University,a role he held from 2003 to 2020. In 2019,Kremer was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences,together with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee,"for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."
Roger Bruce Myerson is an American economist and professor at the University of Chicago. He holds the title of the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts in the Harris School of Public Policy,the Griffin Department of Economics,and the College of the University of Chicago. Previously,he held the title The Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics. In 2007,he was the winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Leonid Hurwicz and Eric Maskin for "having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory". He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
Ross Levine is an American economist who currently holds the Willis H. Booth Chair in Banking and Finance at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a senior fellow at the Milken Institute,a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,and an advisor to the World Economic Forum. As of 2018,he is the 12th most cited economist in the world.
Command and Control (CAC) regulation finds common usage in academic literature and beyond. The relationship between CAC and environmental policy is considered in this article,an area that demonstrates the application of this type of regulation. However,CAC is not limited to the environmental sector and encompasses a variety of different fields.
Ignacio J. Pérez Arriaga is a Spanish professor of Engineering,Economics and Regulation of the Electric Power Sector,currently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,the ICAI School of Engineering,Florence School of Regulation and African School of Regulation. He is a life member of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain. He has been a major contributor across the spectrum of electric power systems,from system dynamic analysis,monitoring and diagnosis at the start of his academic career,to economic and regulatory analysis.
David Zilberman is an Israeli-American agricultural economist,professor and Robinson Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California,Berkeley. Zilberman has been a professor in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at UC Berkeley since 1979. His research has covered a range of fields including the economics of production technology and risk in agriculture,agricultural and environmental policy,marketing and more recently the economics of climate change,biofuel and biotechnology. He won the 2019 Wolf Prize in Agriculture,he is a member of the US National Academy Science since 2019,was the President of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA),and is a Fellow of the AAEA,Association of Environmental and Resource Economics,and the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economics. David is an avid blogger on the Berkeley Blog and a life-long Golden State Warriors fan.
The economics of digitization is the field of economics that studies how digitization,digitalisation and digital transformation affects markets and how digital data can be used to study economics. Digitization is the process by which technology lowers the costs of storing,sharing,and analyzing data. This has changed how consumers behave,how industrial activity is organized,and how governments operate. The economics of digitization exists as a distinct field of economics for three reasons:it studies a world that is digital,exponential and combinatorial. First,new economic models are needed because digital goods have very low or even zero marginal costs unlike most traditional goods,thus many traditional assumptions no longer hold in a digitized world. Second,the rate of improvement of computers,networks and other engines of digitization,is exponential,as reflected by Moore's Law. Third,digital goods can easily be combined and recombined,increasing their value not only via networks and platforms,but also novel combinations. Each of these effects is important individually,but together they have synergies and constitute a distinct economic landscape.
Edward J. Kane was an American economist and writer. He was a long-time student of incentive conflict in financial regulation and in crisis-management policies. His writing contends that too-big-to-fail policies are rooted in the cultural norms of major central banks around the world.
Marina Halac is a professor of economics at Yale University. She is also an associate editor of Econometrica and a member of the editorial board of the American Economic Review. She was the 2016 recipient of the Elaine Bennett Research Prize,which is awarded biennially by the American Economic Association to recognize outstanding research by a woman. She received this award within the first seven years after completing her PhD in economics from the University of California,Berkeley. In 2017,she was named one of the "Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors" by Poets and Quants. She was a recipient of the George S. Eccles Research Award in 2017,which is awarded to the author of the best book or writings on economics that bridge theory and practice,as determined by top members of the Columbia Business School faculty and alumni.
Stefanie Stantcheva is a French economist who has served as the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University since 2021. She has been a member of the Conseil d’Analyse Économique since 2018. In 2018,she was described by The Economist as one of the best young economists of the decade.
David Martimort is a French economist and Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics. Martimort is one of the most highly cited researchers in the field of contract theory. His research has been awarded the Best Young French Economist Award in 2004.
Yeon-Koo Che (Korean: 최연구) is an American economist. He is the Kelvin J. Lancaster Professor of Economic Theory at Columbia University,a position he held since 2009. Prior to joining Columbia in 2005,he was a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sumit Agarwal is an Indian academic who is the Low Tuck Kwong Distinguished Professor of Finance and a professor of Economics and Real Estate at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also managing director of Sustainable and Green Finance Institute (SGFIN) at NUS,as well as President of Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research.