David Popp

Contact Information

Brief Biography

David Popp is associate professor of public administration. He is an economist with research interests in environmental policy and the economics of technological change.  Much of his research focuses on the links between environmental policy and innovation.  He is particularly interested in how environmental and energy policies shape the development of new technologies that may be relevant for combating climate change.  His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, and has been published in a variety of economics and policy journals, including American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.  Popp is a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an associate editor of Energy Economics.  He has served as a consultant for the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.  He received a B.A. in Political Economy from Williams College in 1992, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1997.

Environmental Research Areas

Research Projects

Environmental Courses

Selected Papers and Abstracts since 2000

• Information Disclosure Policy: Does States’ Data Processing Efforts Help More than the Information Disclosure Itself?, David Popp with H. Bae and P. Wilcoxen, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Winter 2010, 29(1), 163-182 DOI: 10.1002/pam.20483, 2010.
• Does Regulation Stimulate Productivity? The Effect of Air Quality Policies on the Efficiency of U.S. Power Plants, Rachel Fleishman, Rob Alexander, Stuart Bretschneider, David Popp, June 2009.
• Endogenizing Technological Change: Matching Empirical Evidence to Modeling Needs, David Popp with William A. Pizer, Energy Economics, November 2008, 30(6), 2754-2770, 2008.
• Policy vs. Consumer Pressure: Innovation and Diffusion of Alternative Bleaching Technologies in the Pulp Industry, David Popp with Tamara Hafner, Environmental Policy, Technological Innovation, and Patents, Nick Johnstone and Ivan Hascic eds., OECD, Paris, 107-138 (also appears as Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Environmental Directorate report #ENV/EPOC/WPNEP(2007)3) , 2008.
• International Technology Transfer for Climate Policy, David Popp, Center for Research Policy Brief 39/2008, 2008.
• Renewable Energy Policies and Technological Innovation: Evidence Based on Patent Counts, David Popp with Nick Johnstone and Ivan Hascic, October 2008.
• The Effects of Innovation Policies on Private R&D Investment: A Cross-national Empirical Study, David Popp with Yonghong Wu and Stuart Bretschneider, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 16(4), 237–253, 2007.
• ENTICE-BR: The Effects of Backstop Technology R&D on Climate Policy Models, David Popp, Energy Economics, Volume 28, Issue 2, March 2006, Pages 188-222 , 2006.
• Comparison of Climate Policies in the ENTICE-BR Model, David Popp, Energy Journal, Special Issue: Endogenous Technological Change and the Economics of Atmospheric Stablilisation, 2006, 163-174., 2006.
• Innovation in Climate Policy Models: Implementing Lessons from the Economics of R&D, David Popp, Energy Economics, 28(5-6), November 2006, 596-609., 2006.
• The Transition to Endogenous Technical Change in Climate-Economy Models: A Technical Overview to the Innovation Modeling Comparison Project, David Popp with Jonathan Köhler, Michael Grubb, and Ottmar Edenhofer, Energy Journal, Special Issue: Endogenous Technological Change and the Economics of Atmospheric Stabilization, 2006, 17-55 , 2006.
• Mitigation From a Cross-sectoral Perspective, David Popp, Contributing author, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Mitigation of Climate Change report, chapter 11., 2006.
• R&D Subsidies and Climate Policy: Is there a 'Free Lunch'?, David Popp, Climatic Change, 77(3-4), August 2006, 311-341., August 2006.
• Institutions and Intellectual Property: The Influence of Institutional Forces on University Patenting, David Popp with Yixin Dai and Stuart Bretschneider, Summer 2005, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 24(3), 579-598, 2005.
• Time In Purgatory: Determinants of the Grant Lag for U.S. Patent Applications, David Popp, Topics of Economic Analysis & Policy Vol. 4: No. 1, Article 29., 2005.
• Uncertain R&D and the Porter Hypothesis, David Popp, Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy, 4(1), Article 6, September 2005.
• Lessons From Patents: Using Patents To Measure Technological Change in Environmental Models, David Popp, Ecological Economics, 54(2-3), August 2005, 209-226., August 2005.
• They Don't Invent Them Like They Used To: An Examination of Energy Patent Citations Over Time, David Popp, NBER Working Paper #11415, forthcoming in Economics of Innovation and New Technology, June 2005.
• R&D Subsidies and Climate Policy: Is There A 'Free Lunch'?, David Popp, NBER Working Paper #10880, October 2004.
• International Innovation and Diffusion of Air Pollution Control Technologies: The Effects of NOx and SO2 Regulation in the US, Japan and Germany, David Popp, Forthcoming in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, July 2004.
• Pollution Control Innovations and the Clean Air Act of 1990, David Popp, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 22(4), pp. 641-660, October 2003.

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