Robert Metcalfe
Professor of Energy Policy and International and Public Affairs
Personal Details
Focus Areas: Applied microeconomics; environmental & energy economics; behavioral & experimental economics; labor/personnel economics; public economics
Robert Metcalfe is Professor of Energy Policy and International and Public Affairs. He currently co-directs SIPA's Center on Environmental Economics and Policy (CEEP) with Professor Douglas Almond. Metcalfe has previously worked at the University of Chicago, University of Southern California, Boston University, and University of Oxford. He has also previously worked in the U.K. Government as an Economist, and had a short-term position as a Fellow at the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of the U.S. President. He completed his Ph.D. at Imperial College London, M.Sc. at the London School of Economics, and B.A. at the University of Wales, Swansea. He grew up in a working class neighborhood in Swansea, United Kingdom, and is a first-gen college graduate.
He is also co-founder of two companies, The Behavioralist and Signol.
News & Media
Nationwide field experiment co-led by SIPA’s Robert Metcalfe reveals climate data influences search, bidding, and purchasing behavior across the housing market
A study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that buyers who see flood risk data on listings are more likely to look for homes with lower risk. SIPA's Robert Metcalfe, who worked on the study, found that it "significantly impacted the tours they took, because they weren't looking at high flood risk homes, and it affected where they ultimately made an offer."
Professor Robert Metcalfe, chief economist at Centre for Net Zero and Professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, believes that we need to effectively manage that additional demand from EV charging, or risk putting further strain on the grid, which consumers would bear the brunt of.
"AI-managed EV charging can reshape electricity demand at scale, with considerable benefits for consumers and the grid," writes Robert Metcalfe.
Eight SIPA PhD graduates secure prestigious positions at top institutions including MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and in industry roles at Amazon and Rhizome.