Energy Economics and Finance Seminar
Event Summary
The seminar series in Energy Economics & Finance (EEF) is jointly organized by Wharton’s Business Economics and Public Policy Department, the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, and Wharton’s Business, Climate and Environment Lab. The scope of the seminar includes regulation and policy papers. The scope of the seminar also includes environmental and transportation issues, as long as there is a connection with energy. Sessions are biweekly on Mondays from 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Snacks, beer, and wine will be served after the seminar!
For Fall 2025, the seminar will be held in-person in the Kleinman Center Classroom (Fisher Fine Arts Building Room 306).
Find and add a Google Calendar version of the schedule on the BEPP seminar page.
To sign up for the seminar, please send your name, email, and affiliation to Dhivya Kaushik: dhivya@wharton.upenn.edu
Talk Title: “Trade Policy and Food Security with Climate and Geopolitical Risk”
Abstract : This paper evaluates the effects of trade openness on reliable access to affordable food. We start by showing that the transmission of extreme heat shocks to domestic food prices is weaker in countries with greater trade integration, even conditional on level of development, because productivity shocks are not highly correlated across space. On the other hand, importing countries face vulnerability to weather and policy shocks in countries from which they source. We show that global wheat prices diverged in the aftermath of the disruption to Ukrainian exports in 2022, with price increases strongly concentrated in countries importing directly from Ukraine. More broadly, importers face similarly disproportionate exposure to extreme heat shocks in source countries, suggesting that global agricultural markets are segmented and countries face adjustment costs to establishing new import sources. We plan to calibrate a quantitative trade model that rationalizes the patterns observed in the data and use it to compare the stability of food prices under varying levels of trade openness, as well as in policy scenarios that specifically subsidize import source diversification.
Ishan Nath
Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy SchoolIshan Nath is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a Faculty Associate of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, and a Faculty Fellow of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.
Fall Seminar Dates:
- 9/29: Ishan Nath
- 10/20: Robert Metcalfe
- 11/3: Penny Liao
- 11/17: Shaoda Wang
- 12/1: Karen Palmer
