Kelsey Jack

B. Kelsey Jack is the Sheth Sustainable Business Chancellor’s Chair and an associate professor in the Business and Public Policy group at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, where she joined the Business & Economics faculty in 2024. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental and development economics, investigating energy access, environmental sustainability, and behavioral economics in low-income settings. She focuses on how individuals, households, and communities decide to use natural resources and provide public goods, employing field experiments to test economic theory and policy innovations. Best known for studies on energy use, pricing, and incentives, her work reveals how behavioral and institutional factors influence the adoption of sustainable technologies. Conducted across numerous countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with ongoing projects in South Africa, Ghana, Malawi, and Niger, it integrates development economics, environmental economics, and policy design to balance economic growth with environmental goals. This research has informed energy and climate policy in Africa and South Asia.

Jack holds a bachelor’s degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University. Before graduate school, she spent two years working for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Lao PDR. Her career history includes faculty appointments at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and at Tufts University, as well as a postdoctoral position at MIT with the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She co-chairs the Environment and Energy sector at J-PAL, serves on its board, and is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). An associate editor at the American Economic Review and Econometrica, her articles have appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and other leading journals. At Berkeley Haas, she teaches microeconomics to MBA students and sustainable business to undergraduates.

Professional Email: kelseyjack@berkeley.edu