Eyal Frank

Eyal Frank is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. As an environmental economist, he works at the intersection of ecology and economics. His work addresses three broad questions: (i) how do natural inputs, namely animals, contribute to different production functions of interest, (ii) how do market dynamics reduce natural habitats and lead to declining wildlife population levels, and (iii) what are the costs, indirect ones in particular, of conservation policies.

These areas of research present a causal inference challenge as manipulating ecosystems and species at large scales is often infeasible. In his work, Frank draws natural experiments from ecology and policy, and uses econometric techniques to estimate different pieces of the puzzle regarding the social cost of biodiversity losses.

Prior to the University of Chicago, Frank was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from Columbia University, and earned his M.A. in Economics and B.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.