Over the past five years, in my podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in conversations with outstanding economists, who have carried out important work relevant for environmental, energy, and resource policy, including by serving in important government positions. That inevitably brings with it the reality that many of the people with whom I’ve spoken have been senior leaders in the profession, with the emphasis on the word “senior” (exhibiting hair that’s grey like mine, if not absent).
I’m pleased to say that my most recent podcast is a distinct exception, because I converse with someone who is very young (and whom I predict will become a leader in the world of environmental economics), my Harvard colleague, Anna Russo, a Junior Fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows, who will be an Assistant Professor of Economics and Social Studies at Harvard, beginning in July, 2026. You can listen to our complete conversation here.
Anna characterizes her research fields as environmental economics, public finance, industrial organization, and market design, and so I ask her how she came to focus on such a diverse set of fields.
“It came about from taking field courses and figuring out the classes of questions that got me excited, which are typically settings in which we think there’s some kind of market that could provide a lot of value to society or to participants, but for some kind of nebulous, probably pointing to some sort of market or policy failure reason, is not functioning well,” she remarks. “That is exciting to me because I want to try to think about how I can fix it.”
Russo’s recent paper, co-authored with Karl Aspelund, who is now completing his PhD in economics at MIT, focuses on the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program’s auction mechanism for ecosystem services, using satellite-derived land use data to determine the impact of environmental incentive policies. I ask her what leverage they are able to achieve by combining auction data with satellite observations.
She responds that “when we’re trying to incentivize someone to do something good, for example, conserve their land, we care deeply whether they would have conserved that land anyways, in which case the finances spent on that are potentially wasted or could have been used elsewhere. That’s where linking the bids to the satellite data really come in handy because it allows me to learn about both individual participants’ costs and behavior in this auction mechanism because bids reveal a lot about the amount that an individual participant would be willing to accept to participate in the conservation reserve program. The satellite data… measures their behaviors on their land, both inside the program and outside the program.”
Looking forward, Anna Russo explains that she intends to continue studying vexing market design questions.
“Following the stream of the USDA paper, [I’m] thinking about conservation markets more globally and I also am generally very excited by questions related to climate change adaptation. And I think it’s a sad truth, but the truth is that climate change is already really affecting how we live our lives and imposing lots of risks, particularly related to natural disasters, and I’m interested in studying those further,” she remarks. “Most of my research relates to these high-level questions or themes about information economics, imperfect information, and how participants engage in these environments with imperfect or asymmetric information.”
Russo says that when she joins the Harvard faculty, she hopes to influence the next generation of environmental economics scholars by helping them understand how they can have an impact on climate policy and other urgent global challenges.
“What other field offers the combination of a hugely pressing societal problem that is fundamentally linked to economic incentives that we have a decent understanding of how to potentially solve, but much is still left unresolved both from a theoretical and an implementation standpoint?” she asks. “The data that’s available for studying environmental economics questions is expanding dramatically due to satellite data and improvements in remote sensing. And so, the combination just presents an incredibly exciting avenue to ask questions at the intersection of policy and economics.”
For this and much more, please listen to my complete podcast conversation with Anna Russo, the 69th episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month. You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Previous episodes have featured conversations with:
- Gina McCarthy, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Nick Stern of the London School of Economics discussing his career, British politics, and efforts to combat climate change
- Andrei Marcu, founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition
- Paul Watkinson, Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- Jos Delbeke, professor at the European University Institute in Florence and at the KU Leuven in Belgium, and formerly Director-General of the European Commission’s DG Climate Action
- David Keith, professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
- Joe Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
- Scott Barrett, professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
- Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
- Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
- Richard Schmalensee, the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Kelley Kizier, Associate Vice President for International Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
- David Hone, Chief Climate Change Adviser, Shell International.
- Vicky Bailey, 30 years of experience in corporate and government positions in the energy sector.
- David Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
- Lisa Friedman, reporter on the climate desk at the The New York Times.
- Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for The New York Times from Washington.
- Spencer Dale, BP Group Chief Economist.
- Richard Revesz, professor at the NYU School of Law.
- Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environment and Law at Yale University.
- William Hogan, Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard.
- Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
- John Graham, Dean Emeritus, Paul O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
- Gernot Wagner, Clinical Associate Professor at New York University.
- John Holdren, Research Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Larry Goulder, Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Stanford University.
- Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund.
- Sheila Olmstead, Professor of Public Affairs, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin.
- Robert Pindyck, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management.
- Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University.
- Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
- Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT.
- Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
- Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
- Jonathan Wiener, the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
- Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
- Daniel Yergin, founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
- Jeffrey Holmstead, who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
- Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
- Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.
- Billy Pizer, Vice President for Research & Policy Engagement, Resources for the Future.
- Daniel Bodansky, Regents’ Professor, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.
- Catherine Wolfram, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, currently on leave at the Harvard Kennedy School.
- James Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.
- Mary Nichols, long-time leader in California, U.S., and international climate change policy.
- Geoffrey Heal, Donald Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School.
- Kathleen Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut.
- Meredith Fowlie, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, U.C. Berkeley.
- Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
- Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
- Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
- Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University.
- Nathaniel Keohane, President, C2ES.
- Amy Harder, Executive Editor, Cypher News.
- Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Kimberly (Kim) Clausing, School of Law, University of California at Los Angeles
- Hunt Allcott, Professor of Global Environmental Policy, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
- Meghan O’Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
- Robert Lawrence, Albert Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Charles Taylor, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Wolfram Schlenker, Ray Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Karen Fisher-Vanden, Professor of Environmental & Resource Economics, Pennsylvania State University
- Max Bearak, climate and energy reporter, New York Times
- Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy and climate innovation editor, The Economist
- Joseph Aldy, Teresa & John Heinz Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
- Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School
- Elaine Buckberg, Senior Fellow, Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University
“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
