About

Maximilian Auffhammer is the Avice M. Saint Distinguished Professor and Regional Associate Dean at the Rausser College of Natural Resources, within the Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in Environmental Science and his M.S. in Environmental and Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and earned his Ph.D. in Economics from UC San Diego. Since joining UC Berkeley in 2003, his research has focused on environmental and resource economics, energy economics, and applied econometrics. Auffhammer has contributed significantly to understanding the economic impacts of climate change, the effects of environmental policies, and the dynamics of energy consumption and emissions. His work has been published in numerous prestigious academic journals, and he has served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Energy and Environmental Economics group, a Humboldt Fellow, and has received multiple awards for his teaching and mentoring, including the Cheit Teaching Award and the Sarlo Distinguished Mentoring Award. His research aims to quantify economic damages from climate change, analyze the external costs of vehicles, and evaluate policy impacts on air quality and energy use, contributing to the understanding of how climate and environmental policies can be designed to make the world a better, more cost-effective place.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Natural resource economics
• Ecology
• Economics
• Business
• Aeronautics
• Environmental health
• Environmental planning
• Transport engineering
• Environmental protection
• Econometrics
• Geography

Selected publications

• Battery-Electric Trucks are Projected to Lower the Societal Cost of Long-haul Freight in the United States - Code for figures 2, 3, and 4

  Figshare · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Data for figures 2, 3, and 4. The dataset for figure 2 describes the mean private costs and standard deviations for diesel and battery electric long-haul heavy-duty vehicles generated through montecarlo simulation. Also included in figure 2 is the sensitivity of the difference in private costs to diesel and electricity prices. The dataset for figure 3 describes the mean external costs and standard deviations for diesel and battery electric long-haul heavy-duty vehicles generated through montecarlo simulation. The dataset for figure 3 describes the mean social costs and standard deviations for diesel and battery electric long-haul heavy-duty vehicles generated through montecarlo simulation.

  PublisherDOI

• Battery-Electric Trucks are Projected to Lower the Societal Cost of Long-haul Freight in the United States - Code for figures 2, 3, and 4

  Figshare · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Data for figures 2, 3, and 4. The dataset for figure 2 describes the mean private costs and standard deviations for diesel and battery electric long-haul heavy-duty vehicles generated through montecarlo simulation. Also included in figure 2 is the sensitivity of the difference in private costs to diesel and electricity prices. The dataset for figure 3 describes the mean external costs and standard deviations for diesel and battery electric long-haul heavy-duty vehicles generated through montecarlo simulation. The dataset for figure 3 describes the mean social costs and standard deviations for diesel and battery electric long-haul heavy-duty vehicles generated through montecarlo simulation.

  PublisherDOI

• Destructive Behaviour, Judgement and Economic Decision-making under Thermal Stress

  The Economic Journal · 2025-01-20 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Accumulating evidence indicates that environmental temperature substantially affects economic outcomes and violence, but the reasons for this linkage are only partially understood. We study whether temperature directly influences behaviour by evaluating the effect of thermal stress on multiple dimensions of economic decision-making, judgement and destructive behaviour with 2,000 participants in Kenya and the United States who were randomly assigned to different temperatures in a laboratory. The main finding is that most major dimensions of economic decision-making are unaffected by temperature. We also find that heat significantly increases willingness to voluntarily destroy other participants’ assets in the Kenyan sample.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Electrifying long-haul freight trucks reduces societal costs in the United States

  Nature Communications · 2025-12-12 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Electrifying long-haul heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) entails high private costs but offers substantial reductions in external costs by substituting diesel combustion with electricity generation. We combine technoeconomic analysis and life-cycle assessment of lithium-ion battery electric (BE) and diesel HDVs to estimate total private costs and monetized climate and health damages in the United States. In 2025, BE-HDVs are estimated to have 46% higher private costs ($0.71 mile⁻¹) than diesel trucks, decreasing to 33% ($0.52 mile⁻¹) by 2035. However, their external costs are 64-69% lower in 2025 and 70-80% lower in 2035. Overall, BE-HDVs yield positive net societal benefits by 2035, contingent on policies that accelerate their adoption.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Destructive Behaviour, Judgement and Economic Decision-making under Thermal Stress

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2025-01-18

  other
  Publisher

• Destructive Behaviour, Judgement and Economic Decision-making under Thermal Stress

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2025-01-18

  other
  Publisher

• Impact of truck electrification on air pollution disparities in the United States

  Nature Sustainability · 2025-02-11 · 25 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Electrifying heavy-duty trucks reduces on-road diesel emissions but shifts the burden of supplying energy to power-generation facilities. The combined effect of Inflation Reduction Act investments in grid decarbonization and truck electrification will alter the magnitude and distribution of air pollution burdens across the United States. These investments are intended to facilitate a just energy transition, with 40% of the benefits flowing to disadvantaged communities per the Justice40 Initiative. Here we evaluate the combined effects of Inflation Reduction Act grid decarbonization and truck electrification investments on a national scale to determine whether the air pollution benefits would meet this 40% goal for both disadvantaged communities and the most exposed racial–ethnic groups. We find that truck electrification and decarbonization reduce air-pollution-related premature mortality in disadvantaged communities. However, the relative disparity between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged communities increases, suggesting that a disproportionate share of benefits accrue to non-disadvantaged communities. Whereas absolute disparity in grid emissions decreases over time for all racial–ethnic groups, relative disparity remains largely unchanged, with Black populations being the most exposed. Electrifying drayage corridors would result in comparatively large health benefits for disadvantaged communities, suggesting that increasing targeted electrification investments in short-haul routes near urban areas (for example, ports) could be promising.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Cost of Species Protection: The Land Market Impacts of the Endangered Species Act

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access

  Protecting species’ habitats is the main policy tool employed across the globe to reduce biodiversity losses. These protections are hypothesized to conflict with private landowners’ interests. We study the economic consequences of the most extensive and controversial piece of such environmental legislation in US history—the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. We assemble the most comprehensive data on species conservation efforts, land transactions, and building permits to date. By comparing parcels with identical histories of protections we show that, on average, the ESA shifts transactions from inside to outside of the protected area and leads to a slight appreciation in residential and vacant land values outside of critical habitats. We also show that the federal regulator determines borders for areas with the most stringent protections to avoid large effects on land values, only where it is explicitly allowed to take economic criteria into account. These average findings mask significant heterogeneity at the species and location level, which we document. Furthermore, we find no evidence of the ESA affecting building activity as measured by construction permits. Overall, even taking into account species-level heterogeneity, the number of possibly negatively affected parcels is extremely small. This suggests that the capitalization of the economic impacts of the ESA through the land market channel are likely minor, despite potential delays to development through permitting, for which we provide suggestive evidence. Our findings do not rule out economically significant impacts in a few highly constrained land markets with ESA protections amplified by local regulatory action.

  PublisherDOI

• The Cost of Species Protection: The Land Market Impacts of the Endangered Species Act

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Cost of Species Protection: The Land Market Impacts of the Endangered Species Act

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Corinne D. Scown

  47 shared

• Ralf Steinhauser

  44 shared

• Joseph E. Aldy

  30 shared

• Maureen Cropper

  27 shared

• Hendrik Wolff

  Simon Fraser University

  25 shared

• Howard Chong

  24 shared

• Gerrit Hansen

  Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs

  23 shared

• Arthur G. Fraas

  22 shared

Labs

• Maximilian Auffhammer LabPI

Awards & honors

• Cozzarelli Prize awarded by the National Academies of Scienc…
• Sarlo Distinguished Mentoring Award (2007)
• Cheit Teaching Award in the Haas School of Business (2017)
• Cheit Teaching Award in the Haas School of Business (2021)
• Humboldt Fellow