Michail Fragkias, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Internship Coordinator
michailfragkias@boisestate.edu • (208) 426-3308
Mail Stop: 1620
Office Number: MBEB 2258

Michail Fragkias, Ph.D., is an applied economist and interdisciplinary social scientist working broadly on issues of urbanization, land use, and the environment. He is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at Boise State University‘s College of Business and Economics (COBE). He is the recipient of the COBE Distinguished Research Professor Award and University Foundation Scholar Award for Research. He researches issues of urban and regional development, land-use change, urban spatial structure dynamics, and sustainability. He is the author and co-author of more than 30 journal articles and book chapters, as well as 2 edited books. His research has been featured in journals such as: PNAS, Science of the Total Environment, Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Global Environmental Change, Urban Climate, PLoS ONE, Environment and Planning B, among others.

He has been recognized as a highly influential researcher (demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.) He has served as a lead author in large scientific assessment reports including the UN-CBD Cities and Biodiversity Outlook and the 3rd National Climate Assessment of the US Global Change Research Program. He was also a Contributing Author for the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC. Between November of 2006 and August of 2012, he served as the executive officer of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) – an IHDP Core Project, hosted by the Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University. From September 2003 to September 2006, he was a Postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP), then housed at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Clark University.

Education

Ph.D. – Clark University

B.A. – National University of Athens

Teaching Areas

Microeconomics, Sustainability, Econometrics, Regional Economics

Featured Publications

Fragkias, M. and Boone, C.G., (2017), Modern political economy, global environmental change and urban sustainability transitions, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 22, 63–68

Güneralp, B., Zhou, Y., Ürge-Vorsatz, D., Gupta, M., Yu, S., Patel, P., Fragkias, M., Li, X. Seto, K.C. (2017), Global scenarios of urban density and its impacts on building energy use through 2050, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (34), 8945–8950.

Fragkias, M., Lobo, J., Seto, K.C., (2017), A comparison of nighttime lights data for urban energy research: Insights from scaling analysis in the US system of cities, Environment and Planning B, 44 (6), 1077–1096.

Fragkias, M. (2016) Urbanization, economic growth and sustainability, The Routledge Handbook of Urbanization and Global Environmental Change, Seto, K.C., Solecki, W. and Grifith, C.A. (Eds), RoutlegdeBoone, C. and Fragkias, M. (Eds), (2013), Urbanization and Sustainability: Linking urban ecology, environmental justice and global environmental change, Springer Verlag

Elmqvist, T., Fragkias, M., Goodness, J., Guneralp, B., Marcotullio, P., McDonald, R., Parnell, S., Schewenius, M., Sendstad, M., Seto, K.C., Wilkinson, K. (Eds.), (2013), Global urbanization, biodiversity and ecosystem services, Springer Verlag

Fragkias, M., Lobo, J., Strumsky, D., Seto, K.C., 2013, Does size matter? Scaling of CO2 emissions and U.S. urban areas, PLoS ONE

Heinrichs, D., Fragkias, M., K. Krellenberg, 2013 Urban responses to climate change: theories and governance practice in cities of the global South, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(6), 1865-78.

Seto, K.C., Sanchez-Rodriguez, R. and M. Fragkias, 2010, The new geography of contemporary urbanization and the environment, Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources, 35, 167-194