Steven Davis

About

Steven Davis is a highly-cited researcher and expert in earth system science, emissions and energy scenarios, climate impacts and solutions, and corporate climate strategy. He is a Professor of Earth System Science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and leads the Sustainable Solutions Lab, a research group dedicated to quantifying how different human activities are affecting climate and air quality, how those environmental changes in turn jeopardize human wellbeing, and the relative priority of solutions. Steve has contributed as a Contributing Author of two Working Group III chapters in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), serves on the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Carbon Project, was the Lead Author of the Mitigation chapter in the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, and is a member of the Technical Council of the Science Based Targets Initiative. Prior to his science career, he worked as a lawyer to venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley. He holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Virginia School of Law, and the University of Florida, where he double-majored in Political Science and Philosophy.

Research topics

• Geography
• Medicine
• Economics
• Financial economics
• Virology
• Business
• Monetary economics
• Finance

Selected publications

• The Unprecedented Stock Market Impact of COVID-19

  2020 · 905 citations

  No previous infectious disease outbreak, including the Spanish Flu, has impacted the stock market as forcefully as the COVID-19 pandemic.In fact, previous pandemics left only mild traces on the U.S. stock market.We use text-based methods to develop these points with respect to large daily stock market moves back to 1900 and with respect to overall stock market volatility back to 1985.We also evaluate potential explanations for the unprecedented stock market reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.The…

  DOI

• Why Does Working from Home Vary Across Countries and People?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-04-01 · 19 citations

  reportOpen access

  We use two surveys to assess why work from home (WFH) varies so much across countries and people.A measure of cultural individualism accounts for about one-third of the cross-country variation in WFH rates.Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US score highly on individualism and WFH rates, whereas Asian countries score low on both.Other factors such as cumulative lockdown stringency, population density, industry mix, and GDP per capita also matter, but they account for less of the variation.When l…

  PublisherDOI

• The global persistence of work from home

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-07-03 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  Work from home (WFH) surged worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, then partially receded as the pandemic subsided. Using our Global Survey of Working Arrangements covering dozens of countries, we find that average WFH rates among college-educated employees stabilized after 2022. The average number of WFH days per week is steady at roughly 1 d per week globally from 2023 through early 2025. Cross-country variation persists: WFH is about twice as common in advanced English-speaking economies as…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The (Heterogeneous) Economic Effects of Private Equity Buyouts

  Management Science · 2025-03-25 · 8 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The effects of private equity buyouts on employment, productivity, and job reallocation vary tremendously with macroeconomic and credit conditions, across private equity groups, and by type of buyout. We reach this conclusion by examining the most extensive database of U.S. buyouts ever compiled, encompassing thousands of buyout targets from 1980 to 2013 and millions of control firms. Employment shrinks 12% over two years after buyouts of publicly listed firms—on average, and relative to control…

  PublisherDOI

• Sticky Wages on the Layoff Margin

  American Economic Review · 2025-01-30 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We design and field an innovative survey of unemployment insurance (UI) recipients that yields new insights about wage stickiness on the layoff margin. A majority of UI recipients would accept pay cuts of 5–10 percent to save their jobs, and one-third would accept a 25 percent cut. Yet worker-employer discussions about cuts in pay, benefits, or hours in lieu of layoffs are exceedingly rare. Roughly one-quarter of the layoffs in our sample violate the theoretical condition for bilaterally efficie…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nicholas Bloom

  Stanford University

  501 shared

• John Haltiwanger

  410 shared

• Jose Maria Barrero

  223 shared

• David Altig

  University of Chicago

  121 shared

• Scott Baker

  117 shared

• Javier Miranda

  91 shared

• R. Jason Faberman

  Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

  87 shared

• Cevat Giray Aksoy

  University College London

  84 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI

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