About

Professor David Rapson is an economist specializing in industrial organization, energy markets, and environmental economics. His research integrates economic theory and econometrics to study electricity pricing, transportation decarbonization, oil and gas markets, and sanctions. He employs field experiments and quasi-experimental methods to analyze how incentives and information influence consumer behavior and technology adoption. His work focuses on energy and environmental policy, with recent publications addressing topics such as the impact of oil embargoes, electric vehicle adoption, and transportation decarbonization. Professor Rapson holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Boston University, an M.A. from Queen's University, and an A.B. from Dartmouth College. He teaches Principles of Microeconomics, Energy Economics, and Industrial Organization. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, J-PAL, and Peninsula Clean Energy, among others.

Research topics

• Economics
• Computer Science
• Environmental economics
• Engineering
• Business
• Market economy
• Environmental science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Electrical engineering
• Econometrics
• Transport engineering
• Microeconomics
• Automotive engineering
• Labour economics
• Physics
• Mathematics
• Industrial organization
• Marketing
• Finance
• Statistics
• Agricultural economics
• Public economics

Selected publications

• If You Build It, They May Not Come: Willingness to Participate in Managed EV Charging

  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Papers · 2026-04-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• If You Build It, They May Not Come: Willingness to Participate in Managed EV Charging

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-04-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  Despite the importance of program participation for policy, treatment effects are often measured on self-selected samples.We study electric vehicle (EV) managed charging, intended to reduce electric grid strain by optimally allocating charging across EVs.Prior work finds large impacts of managed charging among households who volunteer for an RCT.In contrast, we test managed charging with an experiment including all EVs within a California utility.Enrollment is low even with high incentives, and we can reject even modest intent-to-treat effects on electricity consumption.Managed charging is less effective than previously thought, underscoring the value of population-wide experiments.

  PublisherDOI

• If You Build It, They May Not Come: Willingness to Participate in Managed EV Charging

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of the 2022 Oil Embargo and Price Cap on Russian Oil Prices

  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Papers · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The End of Neutrality? Fuel Standards, Technology Neutrality, and Stimulating the EV Market

  Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy · 2024-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Do Bill Shocks Induce Energy Efficiency Investments?

  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Papers · 2024-09-01

  article

  Inattention can lead to suboptimal investment in energy efficiency. We study whether electricity bill shocks draw attention to the benefits of home energy efficiency investments. Our novel identification strategy builds on the fact that prolonged extreme weather events (which raise electricity costs for many customers) fall within a single billing cycle for some customers but are split across cycles for others. We find that households exposed to average sized bill shocks are 22 percent more likely to invest in energy efficiency than households with normal bills. This result suggests that inattention is indeed a factor in residential energy decisions and utilities may be able to leverage bill shocks to promote efficiency investments.

  PublisherDOI

• Electric vehicle managed charging experiment

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2024-07-11

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Electric vehicle managed charging experiment

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2024-07-11

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Limits and Costs of Full Electrification

  Review of Environmental Economics and Policy · 2024-01-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Electrification is a centerpiece of global decarbonization efforts. Yet there are reasons to be skeptical of the inevitability, or at least the optimal pace, of the transition. We discuss several underappreciated costs of full, or even deep, electrification. Consumer preferences can operate in favor of and in opposition to electrification goals, and electrification is likely to encounter physical and economic obstacles when it reaches some as-yet-unknown level. Although we readily acknowledge the external benefits of decarbonization, we also explore several underappreciated external costs. The credibility and eventual success of decarbonization efforts will be enhanced by foreseeing and ideally avoiding predictable but nonobvious costs of promising abatement pathways. Thus, even with all of its promise, the degree of electrification may ultimately reach a limit.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of the 2022 Oil Embargo and Price Cap on Russian Oil Prices

  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Papers · 2024-03-01 · 4 citations

  article

  This paper documents the effect of the oil embargo and price cap on Russian oil exports in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. We show that the embargo forced Russia to accept a $32/bbl discount on its Urals crude in March 2023 relative to January 2022, nearly half of which is directly attributable to the higher cost of shipping crude oil over longer distances, as Russia diverted much of its crude oil exports to India. Based on a calibrated model of global oil supply and demand, the remainder ($17/bbl) can be explained by increased Indian bargaining power. We also provide a similar analysis for the ESPO price discount on exports to China. In contrast, the price cap deprived Russia of the financial resources it spent on assembling a “shadow” fleet of tankers, but its effect on the Russian oil export price was negligible once the adoption of the price cap had facilitated the use of Western services to transport Russian oil to Asia.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Erich Muehlegger

  University of California, Davis

  36 shared

• Christopher R. Knittel

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  30 shared

• Catherine Wolfram

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  21 shared

• Kenneth Gillingham

  20 shared

• Laurence J. Kotlikoff

  17 shared

• James Bushnell

  15 shared

• Fiona Burlig

  University of Chicago

  14 shared

• Katrina Jessoe

  University of California, Davis

  9 shared

Awards & honors

• National Science Foundation, 2021
• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL ), 2021
• Peninsula Clean Energy, 2021