POLENSKE, KAREN R.    krp@mit.edu    

Professor of Regional Political Economy and Planning

Department of Urban Planning and Studies

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Karen R. Polenske, Professor of Regional Political Economy and Planning, Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) is director of the multiregional planning (MRP) research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Professor Polenske, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, is a leading political economy researcher of regional economic, energy, and environmental issues. 

Her current research includes (1) a comparison of industrial technology options in Brazil and the People’s Republic of China (China) concerning energy use, pollution generation, employment, and investments; (2) examination of land-recycling in China to determine physical and socioeconomic effects of regional restructuring, and (3) implications of fuel use on U.S. food security.

Since 1966, she has worked on air-pollution, energy, transportation, and environmental-assessment projects in many U.S. regions, including Appalachia, New Orleans, and Los Angeles and in China, Brazil, Iran, and other countries abroad.  By the 1990s, she broadened her innovative research agenda and group of important colleagues to include anthropologists, chemical engineers, economic planners, lawyers, physicists, political scientists, and public-health scholars.  Professor Polenske is well-known not only in the western world, but also in countries under transition, such as China, as one of the most prominent input-output economists in the world.

She is a Fellow of the International Input-Output Association and of the Regional Science Association International, the highest honor in each association.  She is past President of the International Input-Output Association (1995-2000) and past Head of the International Development and Regional Planning Group in DUSP (1995-2006).  Her publications include eight books, the latest two of which are The Technology-Energy-Environment-Health (TEEH) Chain in China and The Economic Geography of Innovation.  The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation recently awarded her the 2008 Sloan Industry Studies Best Book Award for the TEEH book.  She has numerous articles in key economic, energy, environmental, and planning journals.