Faculty
John Parsons is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also the CoDirector of MIT’s CANES Low Carbon Energy Center which explores new avenues for nuclear fission, and a Research Affiliate at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
Parsons is a financial economist specializing in risk management, corporate finance, and valuation. His research focuses on the problems of risk in energy and environment markets, the role of trading operations in energy companies, and the valuation and financing of investments in energy markets. For ten years Parsons worked in the finance practice at the economics consulting firm CRA International, where he was a vice president and principal. He worked with many major international oil companies, mining companies and commodity processors, electric utilities, and international pharmaceutical companies on a wide variety of risk management and valuation matters.
Parsons has taught on the finance faculty at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, the Zicklin School of Business at the City University of New York’s Baruch College, and the Columbia Business School.
He holds a BA in Economics from Princeton University and a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University.
Parsons, John, Working Paper. September 2009.
De Roo, Guillaume and John Parsons, Working Paper. September 2009.
Parsons, John. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance Vol. 21, No. 1 (2009): 79-86.
Xiaochun Zhang and John Parsons.
Miguel Herce, John Parsons, and Robert C. Ready.
Senior lecturer John Parsons said: "I personally welcome the renewed interest in nuclear, and I think it can serve the people of Virginia, as well as my region here in New England and elsewhere. I'm a little concerned about a mismatch between the time horizon on which some of these are being advertised, although I think that will take care of itself."
"The goal here is to produce electricity cheaper than coal and gas plants," senior lecturer John Parsons said. These fossil fuel plants are "extremely simple and cheap to operate — they're just dirty," he added.
John Parsons suggested that pinning hopes for a nuclear revival on individual states' willingness to shoulder the burden and risks of paying for another reactor ignores the necessity of state-driven funding and coordination.
"Life extensions on ageing nuclear plants are pretty quick on the list of no-brainer first things to do."
