Research Expertise and Interest
energy markets, environmental economics, applied microeconomics, public finance, industrial organization
Research Description
Lucas Davis is the Jeffrey A. Jacobs Distinguished Professor at Berkeley Haas. His research focuses on energy and environmental markets, and, in particular, on electricity and natural gas regulation, pricing in competitive and non-competitive markets, and the economic and business impacts of environmental policy. He serves as co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to moving to UC Berkeley in 2009, he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan.
Featured in the Media
Between 1992 and 2016, the compensation of oil company CEOs rose by 2 percent for every 10 percent increase in oil prices, according to a new study co-authored by business professor Lucas Davis, faculty director of Berkeley's Energy Institute at Haas. The statistical analysis looked at the compensation of 934 executives at 80 large exploration and production companies, finding a nearly one-for-one relationship between oil company valuation and the price of oil. The reporter writes: "Linking pay with share prices is widespread, of course, but more so in the oil business, where non-salary components accounted for more than 70 percent of compensation for the average executive in 2016; up from about 60 percent 20 years ago and higher than for virtually every other sector, according to the paper."