About

Catherine Wolfram is the William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a professor of Applied Economics. She has previously served as the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and has held roles such as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Treasury. Wolfram has published extensively on the economics of energy markets, analyzing topics such as rural electrification programs in the developing world, energy efficiency programs in the US, environmental regulation impacts, and market restructuring effects in the US and UK. Her current projects focus on the intersection of climate, energy, and trade, including work on carbon border adjustment mechanisms and oil market sanctions. She received her PhD in economics from MIT in 1996 and an AB from Harvard in 1989. Wolfram was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2025.

Research topics

• Economics
• Engineering
• Business
• Public economics
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Economic growth
• Microeconomics
• Electrical engineering
• Geography
• Mathematics
• Environmental economics
• Econometrics
• Environmental science
• Finance
• Environmental health
• Development economics
• Statistics
• Physics
• Psychology
• Market economy
• Marketing
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• Screening with Cash Deposits in Digital Credit Markets

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-03-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We study a loan contract that requires borrowers to make a temporary cash deposit prior to disbursement, which is fully refunded and does not alter repayment incentives.In a randomized controlled trial with a digital lender, applicants are offered otherwise identical loans with or without a deposit.The deposit requirement reduces loan take-up but substantially improves repayment and lender profitability.The results indicate that deposits screen borrowers on both observable and unobservable characteristics.Higher-risk borrowers are less likely to take up deposit loans, and among borrowers with the same observable risk profile, those who accept deposit loans repay at higher rates, with the largest differences among low-risk borrowers.These findings show that simple contract features can complement data-driven credit models by adding an additional screening margin.

  PublisherDOI

• Screening with Cash Deposits in Digital Credit Markets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Screening with Cash Deposits in Digital Credit Markets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Global Effects of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Inflation Reduction Act: Origins, Policy Implications, and Research Gaps

  Review of Environmental Economics and Policy · 2025-06-01 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the largest federal climate legislation in the United States so far. The breadth and complexity of IRA’s energy and climate provisions raise new questions about its economic and environmental effects. This article summarizes IRA’s potential policy implications based on existing analysis and highlights research gaps. After providing an overview of the act and its political economy context, we summarize projected effects of IRA on emissions, energy system changes, and other economic outcomes. The article also discusses broader international responses and IRA’s interactions with alternate policy instruments.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy · 2025-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The multinomial dimer model

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2025-06-13

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  The dimer model is a classical statistical mechanics model which is exactly solvable in two dimensions, but about which little is known in higher dimensions. In analogy with large $N$ limits in lattice gauge theory, we study a large $N$ limit of the dimer model in any dimension $d$. The dependence on $N$ comes from the multinomial tiling model introduced by Kenyon and Pohoata, which gives a general framework for adding a dependence on $N$ to a tiling model. We study the behavior of this model on periodic bipartite graphs in ${\mathbb R}^d$, in the scaling limit as the multiplicity $N$ and then the size of the graph go to infinity. In this iterated limit, in any dimension $d$, we prove a variational principle and show that random configurations concentrate on a limit shape which is the unique solution to an associated system of Euler-Lagrange equations. The rate function of the variational principle is the integral of a surface tension function, which we can compute explicitly for lattices in any dimension $d$ as the Legendre dual of the free energy for the model on the torus. We give a unified methodology for computing the surface tension and Euler-Lagrange equations in any dimension $d$. A new structure called the critical gauge also emerges in the large $N$ limit. We show that the critical gauge functions converges in the scaling limit to a limiting gauge function which is the unique solution to a dual Euler-Lagrange equation. This limiting gauge function determines the limit shape and vice versa. We further use our techniques to compute explicit limit shapes in some two and three dimensional examples, such as the Aztec diamond and "Aztec cuboid". This is one of the first stat mech models in dimensions $d\ge3$ where limit shapes can be computed explicitly.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Economic Perspective on the EPA’s Clean Power Plan — Cross-State Coordination Key to Cost-Effective CO₂ Reductions

  WORLD SCIENTIFIC eBooks · 2025-05-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Global Climate Cooperation After 2024: A Proposal for a Heavy Industry Climate Coalition

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Epstein curves and holography of the Schwarzian action

  Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) · 2025-05-14

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Meredith Fowlie

  130 shared

• Michael Greenstone

  University of Chicago

  114 shared

• James Bushnell

  47 shared

• Edward Miguel

  39 shared

• Christopher R. Knittel

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  28 shared

• Nancy L. Rose

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  27 shared

• Don Fullerton

  22 shared

• Kenneth Lee

  Government of Canada

  22 shared

Awards & honors

• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2025)