Faculty
Catherine Wolfram is the William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
She previously served as the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
From March 2021 to October 2022, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Treasury, while on leave from UC Berkeley. Since March 2025, Wolfram has served on the COP30 Ad Hoc Council of Economists and chaired a working group on climate coalitions.
Before leaving for government service, she was the Program Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Environment and Energy Economics Program and a Research Affiliate at the Energy Institute at Haas. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard.
Wolfram has published extensively on the economics of energy markets. Her work has analyzed rural electrification programs in the developing world, energy efficiency programs in the US, the effects of environmental regulation on energy markets and the impact of privatization and market restructuring in the US and UK. She is currently working on projects at the intersection of climate, energy, and trade, including work on carbon border adjustment mechanisms and oil market sanctions.
She received a PhD in economics from MIT in 1996 and an AB from Harvard in 1989.
Featured Publication
"Strengthening Enforcement of the Russian Oil Price Cap."Johnson, Simon and Catherine Wolfram. Brookings Institution Working Paper (2024). Appendix.
Featured Publication
"Carbon Border Adjustments, Climate Clubs, and Subsidy Races When Climate Policies Vary."Clausing, Kimberly and Catherine Wolfram. Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol. 37, No. 3 (2023): 137-162. Download Working Paper.
Clausing, Kimberly A., Christopher R. Knittel, and Catherine Wolfram. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Forthcoming.
Clausing, Kimberly A., Jonathan M. Colmer, Allan Hsiao, and Catherine Wolfram, Working Paper. September 2025. NBER Working Paper No. 33723.
Johnson, Simon, Lukasz Rachel, and Catherine Wolfram, Working Paper. August 2025. NBER Working Paper No. 31347.
Global Climate Policy Project Working Group on Climate Coalitions. Cambridge, MA: Global Climate Policy Project at Harvard and MIT. (2025).
The Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets, announced by leaders from 10 countries and the European Union, draws from a proposal from the Global Climate Policy Project at Harvard and MIT.
In new report, an international group of researchers propose a path for countries willing to align carbon pricing, avert trade frictions, and unlock $200 billion in annual revenues
Professor Catherine Wolfram said: "The coalition will be important as a vehicle for building trust, so that countries understand what each other's carbon policies are, but there's also technical work to be done. For example, we need to think about how to compare countries that have carbon pricing implemented for a carbon market and those that have a pricing policy implemented only with a tax or fee."
Studies of the economic impacts of climate change often look at long-term, national costs. A new BPEA study by professors Christopher Knittel and Catherine Wolfram takes a different approach, focusing on the current household level costs attributable to changing weather. Professor Wolfram joined the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity to discuss the research.
Professor Catherine Wolfram said: "Carbon pricing is a central tool for stimulating decarbonization. It helps businesses, consumers, and investors make decisions that reflect the cost of emissions, rewarding lower-carbon choices."
"China has pretty clearly decided that that's where the world is going and has invested heavily in electric vehicles," said professor Catherine Wolfram. "Outright competition might not be in the best interest of the U.S., because we are so far behind. Maybe some kind of joint ventures or more cooperative approaches will make sense in the future."
