Elias Lazarus

Bio: Eli Lazarus is an ecological economist focused on measuring, accounting for, and mitigating economic externalities. His recent work centres on Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling. As part of his PhD, Eli worked with his advisor, David Anthoff, to create MPSGE.jl, a package to facilitate free and open-source, succinct CGE model building in the scientific programming language, Julia. MPSGE.jl is founded on the MPSGE GAMS subsystem created by Thomas Rutherford. Eli’s other work includes calculating the Genuine Progress Indicator for California and the U.S., and development and applications of the Ecological Footprint. Eli was the Research Lead at the Global Footprint Network non-profit think tank, where he led production and development on both a material-flow and multi-region input-output EF model. Eli is graduating with a PhD in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley in 2023. He was an NSF Graduate Research and DS421 Fellow, and holds a MS from ERG at UCB, and a BA in Economics with the highest honors from SFSU.

Postdoctoral research project: Open-source CGE modeling for energy and climate questions.  Eli will be using the new, open-source Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model-building package, MPSGE.jl, from his PhD work to test multiple questions that are central to issues of energy production and use, climate change, and the interactions between them. CGE models are particularly useful for testing the impacts of policies, shocks, or structural shifts because they are able to track changes through the complex interactions and interdependencies in the economy, society, and the environment. MPSGE.jl offers free, faster, simpler, more comprehensible and transparent model development and results, making CGE modeling accessible to a broader range of researchers, and enabling more rapid and detailed analysis. Applications of the package will also facilitate its development, to add features such as additional error checks and data integration, while also testing and improving the package’s robustness.

Research focus:  Policy, Economics & Society - Economic/Environment/Energy modeling

Advisors:  Lawrence Goulder - Economics   |   Inês Azevedo - Energy Science & Engineering

Education

Ph.D., Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley (2023)B.A., Economics, San Francisco State University (2011)