Kyle Meng

Biography

Kyle Meng is an Associate Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Management and the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Climate and Energy Program Director at the Environmental Markets Solutions Lab. Professor Meng received his PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University and his Bachelor’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University. A first-generation immigrant, he was a recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

Research

An environmental and resource economist with training in engineering and atmospheric physics, Professor Meng studies the equity and efficiency consequences of environmental policies, with a focus on climate policies. His research explored relationships between past global climatic events and global spatial patterns of violence and food trade; developed new empirical tools for forecasting the cost of climate policy; provided new evidence on the net benefits of groundwater markets; and examined the drivers of long-term clean energy transitions. Professor Meng has published in leading science and economics journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Nature, Science, and PNAS. His research has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, among other media sources; and he has appeared before the US Congress.

Selected Publications

Ayres, Andrew B, Kyle C. Meng, and Andrew J. Plantinga. 2021. "Do Environmental Markets Improve on Open Access? Evidence from California Groundwater Rights," Journal of Political Economy, 129(10)

Carleton, Tamma, Jules Cornetet, Peter Huybers, Kyle C. Meng, and Jonathan Proctor. 2021. "Global Evidence for ultraviolet radiation decreasing COVID-19 growth rates," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 118(1)

Meng, Kyle C. and Ashwin Rode. 2019. “The Social Cost of Lobbying over Climate Policy,” Nature Climate Change, 9, 472-276.

McDermott, Grant R., Kyle C. Meng, Gavin G. McDonald, and Christopher J. Costello. 2018. “The Blue Paradox: Preemptive Overfishing in Marine Reserves,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Deschenes, Olivier and Kyle C. Meng. 2018. “Quasi-Experimental Methods in Environmental Economics: Opportunities and Challenges” Handbook of Environmental Economics, Vol. 4.

Zhang, Peng, Olivier Deschenes, Kyle C. Meng, and Junjie Zhang. 2018. “Temperature Effects on Productivity and Factor Reallocation: Evidence from a Half Million Chinese Manufacturing Plants,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 88(3), 1-17.

Meng, Kyle C. 2017. “Using a Free Permit Rule to Forecast the Marginal Abatement Cost of Proposed Climate Policy,” American Economic Review, 107(3), 748-84.

Meng, Kyle C., Kimberly L. Oremus and Steve Gaines. 2016. "New England Cod Collapse and the Climate." PLOS ONE, 11(7).

Fujiwara, Thomas, Kyle C. Meng, and Tom Vogl. 2016. “Habit Formation in Voting: Evidence from Rainy Elections.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 8(4), 160-88.

Burke et. al. 2016. “Opportunities for advances in climate change economics.” Science, 352(6283), 292-293.

Hsiang, Solomon M., Kyle C. Meng, and Mark A. Cane. 2011. “Civil Conflicts are Associated with the Global Climate.” Nature, 476(7361), 438–441.