Sectoral and Economy-Wide Effects of Domestic Energy Price Reforms in Saudi Arabia

Executive Director- Energy Macro & Microeconomics Olivier is a executive director in the Energy Systems and Macroeconomics program. Previously, he was an economist at the Organisation…

Olivier is a executive director in the Energy Systems and Macroeconomics program. Previously, he was an economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris where his activities covered macroeconomic policy analysis and applied general equilibrium modeling. He contributed to various modeling studies on the assessment of the macroeconomic, environmental and distributional consequences of energy and environmental policies. He also worked on the land-water-energy nexus and on the economic consequences of air pollution. Before he joined the OECD, Olivier worked at ENGIE, in Paris, where he developed an in-house modeling framework for quantifying global long-term energy-economy scenarios. While completing his Ph.D., he was a research assistant at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Expertise

• Macroeconomic consquences of energy policies

Principal Fellow- Energy Macro- & Microeconomics Dr. Hossa Almutairi was a Principal Fellow at KAPSARC, and her research focuses on energy economics, oil markets, and climate…

Dr. Hossa Almutairi was a Principal Fellow at KAPSARC, and her research focuses on energy economics, oil markets, and climate policies. During the Saudi G20 Presidency, she served as the Sherpa of Think20 (T20), which is the research and policy advice network for the G20. Additionally, she was the lead co-chair of the T20 task force, “Sustainable Energy, Water and Food Systems.” Prior to joining KAPSARC, Dr. Almutairi was a faculty member at the University of Wilfrid Laurier, Canada. Her research contributions have been featured in several reputable journals, and she was the co-recipient of the 2023 OPEC Award for the Best Energy Research Paper.

Senior Fellow- Energy Macro & Microeconomics Abdullah is a senior fellow in the Energy Macro & Microeconomics program with an interest in developing energy systems and…

Abdullah is a senior fellow in the Energy Macro & Microeconomics program with an interest in developing energy systems and energy-economic models. Before rejoining KAPSARC, he worked as an economic modeling expert in the telecommunications sector.

Abdullah holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Tennessee Technological University

Expertise

• Energy Systems Modeling
• Energy-Economic Modeling
• Economic Modeling
• Large-Scale Optimization
• Relaxation and Decomposition Methods
• Macroeconomics
• Global Models

Visiting Researcher Frederic is professor emeritus, Fox School of Business, Temple University, where he taught for 30 years. He was a visiting…

Frederic is professor emeritus, Fox School of Business, Temple University, where he taught for 30 years. He was a visiting researcher fellow at KAPSARC where he is participating in the development of energy models and writing policy analyses in a range of areas, including domestic energy use in Saudi Arabia, market power in world oil markets, designing and managing income stabilization funds, and China's and India's energy economies. He works mainly in the area of energy-market forecasting and energy policy analysis.

Prior to joining Temple, he was at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and its predecessor, the Federal Energy Administration, where he headed the group that did the economic impact analyses of the bills and laws passed during the Carter administration and developed and ran the forecasting models then used for policy analyses and the forecasts in the EIA Annual Report. He has authored over 100 refereed articles. In one study he was ranked in the 20 most published researchers in his field over a fifty-year span. He was the editor in chief of the journal Interfaces, an area editor for Operations Research, and the Informs Journal on computing, and the Vice President of Publications for INFORMS and its predecessor society, Operations Research Society of America. He has been involved in studying local economic policy issues, including advising the Tax Reform Commission of the City of Philadelphia, estimating the impact on jobs of building casinos in Philadelphia, and political redistricting. He also did a queueing study oil tank vessels on the Delaware River.

Shreekar was a senior research associate with an interest in evaluating energy policies in an integrated energy-economic model with a focus…

Shreekar was a senior research associate with an interest in evaluating energy policies in an integrated energy-economic model with a focus on international trade and environment. He was involved in developing integrated energy-economic models, and his research works employed economic modeling that encompassed general equilibrium and partial equilibrium models.

Vice President, Knowledge & Analysis Axel Pierru was appointed Vice President of Knowledge and Analysis by the Board of Trustees of KAPSARC in December 2023.…

Axel Pierru was appointed Vice President of Knowledge and Analysis by the Board of Trustees of KAPSARC in December 2023. In this role, he oversees and provides thought leadership to KAPSARC’s research and analysis activities.

He joined KAPSARC in 2011, after spending 15 years at IFP Energies Nouvelles in France where he led research and consulting projects and taught energy economics and finance to postgraduate students. He has served in various leadership roles at KAPSARC, including serving as interim Vice President for Research. From 2014 to 2023 he was a program director, leading the Energy Systems & Modeling, Energy & Macroeconomics, and Energy Macro & Micro-Economics research programs.

Dr. Pierru earned his Ph.D. in economics from University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (France). He also holds an HDR degree, which is a French accreditation to supervise research. In 2007, Dr. Pierru was awarded Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (knighthood award in the academic field) by the French Ministry for National Education. He is an editor of The Energy Journal, as well as the corecipient of the 2023 OPEC Award for the Best Energy Research Paper, a first-time honor from OPEC.

He leads the Knowledge & Analysis team in designing applied research that blends methodological innovation with practical significance for policymaking. His expertise covers energy economics, policy and finance, the oil market, energy transitions, and commodity-exporting economies.

Dr. Pierru has a proven track record of methodological innovations with over 50 journal papers to his name. He has been a key contributor to developing new research avenues, such as the role of OPEC in stabilizing the oil market, the economic modeling of price controls, or the evaluation of investment projects by international oil companies facing various tax systems.

He also coauthored with Denis Babusiaux the book Corporate Investment Decisions and Economic Analysis: Exercises and Case Studies (2005), a culmination of years of teaching, consulting, and research.

Expertise

• Energy modelling
• Energy economics
• Energy policy
• Oil pricing and finance