Chirag Lala
Researcher (he/him)
Chirag Lala is a Researcher at the Applied Economics Clinic. He works on projects involving policy and administrative analysis, qualitative research, and methodological development. In his time at AEC, he has worked on greenhouse gas emissions inventories, researched the planning and development of zero-emission generation and decarbonization technologies, and provided comments to the federal government calling for updates to the U.S. federal social costs of greenhouse gases. He also has extensive experience in grid interconnection issues of renewable and storage resources, financing of energy projects and investment, embodied carbon analysis, and calculating the land-use emissions effects of solar development.
Prior to joining the Applied Economics Clinic, Mr. Lala worked as an Economic Fellow for the Office of Senator Michael F. Bennet of Colorado. He was also affiliated with the Berggruen Institute, where he developed proposals to institutionalize industrial policy and investment, studied proposed and existing public financial institutions: green banks, infrastructure banks, postal banks, a National Investment Authority, and Industrial Finance Corporation. He also researched policies to tackle shortages, bottlenecks, and capacity constraints that could emerge under rapid decarbonization. Finally, Mr. Lala also works at UMass Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute as a research assistant. As part of this work, he conducts input-output modeling to study the labor market impact of green growth programs. He has also researched the macroeconomic impacts of paid leave, home care, and childcare. He has also written on stock repurchases by publicly-traded corporations, and the labor market impact of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Mr. Lala is a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and specializes in macroeconomics, finance, political economy, and energy. His dissertation studies the financing tools used to facilitate private clean energy investment, the resource- and grid-level barriers to decarbonizing electricity systems, and the macroeconomic impacts of decarbonization in Michigan using input-output analysis. He holds a Master of Arts in Economics from UMass Amherst and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematical Economics and International Relations from Hendrix College.