Economist - Market Monitoring

The electrical grid is the largest and most complicated machine ever built, on top of which exists a complex marketplace of buyers and sellers of electricity and related products. ISO’s Internal Market Monitoring (IMM) is responsible for protecting both consumers and market participants by identifying and reporting market design issues, market manipulation, and evaluating market performance. IMM uses large amounts of New England energy market and electrical grid data to assess market performance and design, identify anomalous behavior, investigate unexpected events, and guard against uncompetitive market outcomes – simply put, to solve real-world problems and make a difference.

How You Will Make an Impact
This role in the market monitoring group involves evaluating, explaining, and improving the performance of ISO New England’s $15 billion suite of auction-based electricity markets and conducting investigations into potential price manipulation or exercise of market power in those markets.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Identify market inefficiencies, problems, and their consequences through economically-sound qualitative assessments and in-depth quantitative analyses;
• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to develop comprehensive analysis and recommend solutions to challenging market issues;
• Design and execute empirical assessments of existing market issues and the impacts of potential market design changes by leveraging data analytics and visualization, and simulation techniques;
• Develop and articulate recommendations having substantial real-world impacts on New England’s electricity sector.
• Serve as author or co-author for white papers, reports, and FERC Expert Witness Testimony on analysis of market performance and proposed market design changes;
• Interpret and explain recommendations to Senior Management, ISO Board members, and key external constituencies as well as represent market monitoring as a subject matter expert at NEPOOL stakeholder meetings.

What We Are Looking For

• A Ph.D. in Economics with academic training in micro-economic related areas such as industrial organization, auction theory, mechanism design, energy or environmental economics, regulatory economics, or information economics.
• Ability to produce economically-sound and insightful assessments of market performance and market design issues.
• Strong quantitative skills with experience in conducting in-depth empirical analyses with complex datasets in statistical software (e.g. SAS, R, STATA) or performing optimization studies (e.g. Matlab, GAMS).
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including the ability to successfully communicate in plain language complex findings and ideas at an executive, board member, or regulator level.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively and collaboratively in a team environment.
• Candidates are not required to have knowledge of how competitive electricity markets work or to have previously conducted research in energy economics – though any such background is a plus.

Clarity of purpose is the starting point for all success. The ISO’s mission, vision, and values define our purpose—these values serve as the cultural cornerstones of the organization.

Mission: Through collaboration and innovation, ISO New England plans the transmission system, administers the region’s wholesale markets, and operates the power system to ensure reliable and competitively priced wholesale electricity.
Vision: To harness the power of competition and advanced technologies to reliably plan and operate the grid as the region transitions to clean energy.
Values: Expertise, Respect, Innovation, Dependability and Collaboration
What We Offer: Located in Holyoke, MA amid the picturesque Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, our employees get the best of both rural and urban living, enjoying day-to-day local community culture and conveniences with drivable access to big city amenities. Our competitive base salaries, performance-driven bonus incentive offering, as well as a variety of health, wellness, and professional development benefits underscore the value we place in our employees. Beyond our comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, we encourage continuous learning through our training and tuition reimbursement programs and support work-life balance with flex hours, hybrid work models for most roles, and paid vacation and holidays. Our benefits strive to fulfill the needs of our employees across life’s stages, with paid parental time off, health and wellness programs, 401k with company match, and a retirement plan. For the convenience of our employees, we offer complimentary access to our onsite fitness center and a cafeteria with free coffee.
COVID-19 Policy: Employee safety and well-being is a priority at ISO New England. To safeguard our teams and the important work they do, ISO New England has a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy.
Equal Opportunity: We are proud to be an EEO/AA employer. Applicants for employment are considered without regard to race, creed, color, citizenship, religion, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, age, disability, status as a veteran, Vietnam Era Veteran, or being a member of the Reserves or National Guard.

Drug Free Environment: We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testing.

Social Networking Notice: ISO New England reserves the right to review the candidate's postings on any social networking site accessible in the public domain as part of the candidate assessment process.