John Parsons is a Senior Lecturer in Finance, and is the MBA Program Finance Track Head. He was formerly the Executive Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and was the Executive Director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change (2005-2012). Before returning to MIT, he was a vice president in the finance practice at the consulting firm CRA where for 10 years he worked with major international oil companies, mining companies and commodity processors, electric utilities, and international pharmaceutical companies, among others, on a wide variety of risk management and valuation matters. His research includes publications on theoretical and applied hedging and risk management problems as well as on specialized financial structures and security designs for large investments. John has developed the course 15.997 Advanced Corporate Risk Management.

General Expertise:
Corporate finance (capital budgeting, corporate diversification, dividend policy, finance, hurdle rates); corporate strategy and policy (risk management); energy; environment (climate policy, emissions trading, environmental regulation and policy); environmental economics; financial engineering; financial markets (derivatives, investment risk, valuation); gas; oil; public utilities