Lynne Kiesling
Economist: electricity markets, regulatory institutions, and technological change
Lynne Kiesling is an economist specializing in electricity market design, regulatory institutions, and the economics of technological change in network industries. Drawing on the economics of knowledge and information, institutional and transaction cost analysis, mechanism design, and complexity theory, she analyzes how regulatory frameworks adapt—or fail to adapt—when technology changes faster than the institutions governing it. Her empirical and theoretical work spans wholesale power market design and performance, resource adequacy, transactive energy systems, distributed energy resources, and price-based automation at varying scales in power systems.
As Director of Northwestern’s Institute for Regulatory Law and Economics, she leads a translational research program connecting academic scholarship to the practice of state utility regulation. As External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, she applies complexity economics to the co-evolution of energy technology and regulatory institutions. Her policy work—including analysis for the American Enterprise Institute and, through 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee—bridges academic rigor and regulatory practice, engaging audiences from state commissions to FERC. She writes regularly at Knowledge Problem.
Current work
- Decentralized Coordination in a Dynamic Grid: A Complexity Economics Theory of Transactive EnergyUnder review
- Improving Market Prices and Adequacy for Competitive Transformation (IMPACT)
- Strengthening American Infrastructure: Integration of Electric Vehicles and the Electric Grid (eVibes)
- Integrating Academic Research into State Utility Regulatory Capacity
- Transactive Energy Services System (TESS) project
Current appointments
- Northwestern University Director, Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics (IRLE), Center on Law, Business, and Economics · June 2023–presentFaculty Affiliate, Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy · October 2023–presentAdjunct Professor, Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy · September 2020–present
- University of Colorado Denver Research Professor, College of Engineering, Design & Computing · June 2021–present
- Santa Fe Institute External Faculty; co-director, Electricity Working Group · August 2023–present
- American Enterprise Institute Nonresident Senior Fellow · February 2023–present
- Pacing Energy Co-Founder · July 2025–present
- Abundance Institute Fellow · February 2023–present
- Knowledge Problem LLC President · January 2019–present
Education
- Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University · 1993
- B.S., Economics, Miami University (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) · 1987