About

Daniel Kaffine is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Colorado Boulder. His office is located in Econ 208C, and he can be reached via email at daniel.kaffine@colorado.edu or by phone at 303.492.6652. His academic background includes a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an MA from the same institution, and both a BS and BA from the University of Saint Thomas. His research fields encompass Environmental and Resource Economics, Energy Economics, and Urban Economics. Kaffine's current research interests focus on the impacts of renewable energy policies, the links between energy and environmental policy and transportation markets, and issues related to property rights and natural resource use. He is affiliated as a RASEI Fellow and actively contributes to the academic community through his research and teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Economics
• Political Science
• Medicine
• Microeconomics
• Business
• Environmental science
• Environmental health
• Transport engineering
• Macroeconomics
• Waste management
• Biology
• Physics
• Bioinformatics
• Geography
• Marketing
• Natural resource economics
• Demography
• Law

Selected publications

• Economic Methods for Balancing Capital and Operational Costs in Power System Capacity Expansion Modeling

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Do Economic Principles Explain Orbital Use in Space?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Do Competitive Markets Clean Up the US Electricity Sector?: Evidence From the Southwest Power Pool

  The Energy Journal · 2025-01-27 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In the US, there has been a movement toward competitive electricity markets with system-operator auctions. However, the impact of such market reforms on non-market outcomes like emission rates remains unclear. We decompose how competition in wholesale electricity markets can affect carbon emission rates of electricity generating units (EGUs) through process , reallocation , and selection effects. Using event-study and difference-indifference strategies, we quantify the Day-Ahead Market’s (DAM) environmental impact in the Southwest Power Pool and assess the importance of each channel, with Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland interconnection serving as the comparison group. We find DAM reduced average carbon emission rates of EGUs by 0.033 tons per MWh, a roughly 4 percent reduction. This reduction is primarily driven by the selection effect: emission-intensive and uneconomical EGUs retire after the DAM market reform. This corresponds to an annual avoidance of 7.66 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, worth approximately $383.4 million in avoided damages. JEL Classification: L51, L94, Q48, Q53

  PublisherDOI

• Decarbonization and electricity price vulnerability

  Nature Sustainability · 2025-01-07 · 12 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Travel Choices under Pandemic Federalism

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The importance of integrating energy justice into chemistry graduate student research and the associated pathways and barriers

  Nature Chemistry · 2024-11-25 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Development of Reference Scenarios and Supporting Inputs for Space Environment Modeling

  2024-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Sharing and expanding the co-benefits of conservation

  Ecological Economics · 2024-01-21 · 9 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Do Competitive Markets Clean Up the Us Electricity Sector? Evidence from the Southwest Power Pool

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• OPUS: An Integrated Assessment Model for Satellites and Orbital Debris

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2023-09-19 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access

  An increasingly salient public policy challenge is how to manage the growing number of satellites in orbit, including large constellations. Many policy initiatives have been proposed that attempt to address the problem from different angles, but there is a paucity of analytical tools to help policymakers evaluate the efficacy of these different proposals and any potential counterproductive outcomes. To help address this problem, this paper summarizes work done to develop an experimental integrated assessment model -- Orbital Debris Propagators Unified with Economic Systems (OPUS) -- that combines both astrodynamics of the orbital population and economic behavior of space actors. For a given set of parameters, the model first utilizes a given astrodynamic propagator to assess the state of objects in orbit. It then uses a set of user-defined economic and policy parameters -- e.g. launch prices, disposal regulations -- to model how actors will respond to the economic incentives created by a given scenario. For the purposes of testing, the MIT Orbital Capacity Tool (MOCAT) version 4S was used as the primary astrodynamics propagator to simulate the true expected target collision probability ($p_c$) for a given end-of-life (EOL) disposal plan. To demonstrate propagator-agnosticism, a Gaussian mixture probability hypothesis density (GMPHD) filter was also used to simulate $p_c$. We also explore economic policy instruments to improve both sustainability of and economic welfare from orbit use. In doing so, we demonstrate that this hybrid approach can serve as a useful tool for evaluating policy proposals for managing orbital congestion. We also discuss areas where this work can be made more robust and expanded to include additional policy considerations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Antonio M. Bento

  The University of Texas at Austin

  19 shared

• Harrison Fell

  North Carolina State University

  11 shared

• Christopher Costello

  University of British Columbia

  9 shared

• Sofia F. Franco

  Universidade Lusófona

  9 shared

• Jonathan E. Hughes

  World Conservation Monitoring Centre

  7 shared

• Edward J. Balistreri

  University of Nebraska–Lincoln

  6 shared

• Hidemichi Yonezawa

  Statistics Norway

  6 shared

• Peter Maniloff

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of California, Santa Barbara

• M.A.

  University of California, Santa Barbara

• B.S.

  University of Saint Thomas

• B.A.

  University of Saint Thomas

Awards & honors

• RASEI Fellow