Catherine Wolfram
Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, UC Berkeley
From March 2021 to October 2022, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Treasury.
At UC Berkeley, she is the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration. From 2019 to 2021, she served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Haas School of Business.
Before leaving for government services, she was the Program Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Environment and Energy Economics Program, Faculty Director of The E2e Project, a research organization focused on energy efficiency and a research affiliate at the Energy Institute at Haas. She was also an affiliated faculty member of in the Agriculture and Resource Economics department and the Energy and Resources Group at Berkeley.
Wolfram has published extensively on the economics of energy markets. Her work has analyzed rural electrification programs in the developing world, energy efficiency programs in the US, the effects of environmental regulation on energy markets and the impact of privatization and restructuring in the US and UK. She is currently implementing several randomized controlled trials to evaluate energy programs in the U.S., Ghana, and Kenya.
She received a PhD in Economics from MIT in 1996 and an AB from Harvard in 1989. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard.
Featured work
Holding the line on the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism
Exempting fertilisers from CBAM would achieve little while risking climate progress
All work
First Glance
24 February 2026
Holding the line on the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism
Exempting fertilisers from CBAM would achieve little while risking climate progress
Event
20 November 2025
International decarbonisation through coalitions of the willing: carbon pricing, climate finance, trade and nature
Bruegel, CEPR and the Potsdam Institute present at COP30
Event
15 June 2023
Transatlantic cooperation on climate action: promise and pitfalls
How can transatlantic cooperation overcome climate action challenges and foster effective collaboration for innovative solutions?