Professor David Newbery

Emeritus Professor of Economics at Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Photo of David Newbery
Share
Emeritus Professor of Economics, and Director of Research, Energy Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge

Professor David M. G. Newbery, PhD., ScD., CBE, FBA, is the Director of the Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) and Emeritus Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge. Educated at Cambridge with degrees in Mathematics and Economics, and a PhD in Economics, he has also held appointments and visiting professorships at the World Bank, the IMF, Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley. David Newbery has been President of the European Economic Association in 1996 and President of the International Association for Energy Economics in 2013. He is the co-author of eight books, over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals and numerous other contributions. His honours include the Frisch Medal of the Econometric Society, the special issue of The Energy Journal in Honor of David Newbery in 2008 and his official recognition as the world’s leading energy economist in 2009. He was awarded honorary degrees from the University of Antwerp (2004) Paris Dauphine (2022).

His early interests in development economics culminated in a major book on risk and commodity markets with Joe Stiglitz that highlighted the role of missing markets. He spent two years at the World Bank working on energy transitions and transport economics, resulting in studies of congestion charges and road pricing. As Director of the Cambridge Department of Applied Economics in 1988, his interests turned first to UK privatizations and to extensive collaborations in Central Europe on the transition from central planned to market economies, examining tax reform and impacts on households. After studying Telecoms and Gas privatisations, his subsequent scientific contributions are intrinsically linked with his pivotal role in the conceptualisation and critical investigation of energy market liberalisation. He has been an advisor to British governments and regulators in the electricity, gas, coal, rail, water and postal sectors. He remains active in discussions about energy market design building on lessons of three decades of deregulation. He has recently ended 10 years on the Single Electricity Market Committee of the island of Ireland and of Ofgem’s Network Innovation Competitions, but continues various advisory roles on infrastructure and innovation. His work on financing capital-intensive low carbon technologies at the heart of the energy transition receives widespread attention.