Leslie A. Martin

I am an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne. My research lies at the intersection of environmental, energy, and industrial economics and international development. I am the lead investigator of the Melbourne Environmental Data Analytics Lab‬, MEDAL, that uses frontier data analytics and a network of industry and government partnerships to design effective economic policy for the decarbonization of energy, transportation, and manufacturing and protection of forest and water systems. 

I was the recipient of an ARC DECRA grant to study the environmental impact of clustering manufacturing into special economic zones in rapidly-industrializing countries (faculty interview). Much of my research focuses on interactions between regulation, firms, and environmental outcomes in industrializing countries. Recent work also includes using high-frequency data to analyze the distributional implications of different road use charges (ABC, SSRN). Previous grants have allowed me to run field experiments to study consumer responses to the availability of electricity smart meter data in markets with retail competition (The Age, ARC Linkage).

I am an associate editor at the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, a J-PAL invited researcher, and a CEPR affiliate.

I have a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA in applied math from MIT. I spent several years as a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis studying the impact of climate change-related disasters on developing countries, and as a consultant for the World Bank in Bolivia working on productivity and competitiveness, pension reform, and hydrocarbon taxes.