Northeastern University College of Business Administration (CBA) today announced that Professor Rosanna Garcia has received a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a large-scale software development project to help analysts craft greenhouse gas reduction policies in the transportation industry. Under the $1.9 million NSF grant, Professor Garcia will collaborate with the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Rochester Institute of Technology in a five-year study focusing on the transportation industry, where emissions reduction policies have significant and often unintended consequences on the national economy.

“To predict these unintended consequences, researchers must integrate models of market decisions and technological performance with life cycle assessment and materials flow analysis, a process that marries public policy, engineering, natural resources and behavioral research,” said Professor Garcia. “The project will culminate with the development of an analytical tool called the Computational Automotive Policy Analysis (CAPA) software program.”

CAPA may ultimately provide manufacturers and policy-makers with valuable forecasts before proposed policies have unintended and undesirable consequences on the function of the automotive market, on the industry’s life cycle environmental impact, or on the industry’s demand for materials.

Professor Garcia’s role in the project is to measure consumer acceptance of the impact that gas policies have on automobile development. This entails determining whether or not consumers will readily embrace the increased production of environmentally-friendly, alternative fuel cars. To this end, Garcia is developing an agent-based computer model to simulate consumer response.

“We can build quantitative models, but a project of this magnitude and duration needs input from policy experts, life cycle analysts and behavioral scientists to fully evaluate the effectiveness and side-effects of environmental regulations in the marketplace,” added Professor Garcia.

The premise for this research is the contention that significant greenhouse gas emissions in the United States will not decrease unless environmental costs are captured in the marketplace and new government policies are implemented. The research will consider the effectiveness of government policy and how it is constrained by manufacturer incentives, consumer preferences and technological limitations. The project is funded through the NSF Materials Use: Science, Engineering and Society program (MUSES), which supports incentives to study the sustainable use of materials and the mitigation of adverse human impact on the environment.

About Professor Rosanna Garcia

Rosanna Garcia is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration. She received a BS in Chemical Engineering and a BA in Business Economics from the University of California, an MBA from the University of Rochester, and a PHD in Marketing from Michigan State University. Professor Garcia’s research interests are in new product development, radical innovations, and complexity theory. She worked as a new product manager for several companies in the telecommunications industry before joining the Northeastern University College of Business Administration faculty in 2002.

About Northeastern University College of Business Administration

A private research institution located in the heart of Boston, Northeastern University is a leader in interdisciplinary research, urban engagement, and the integration of classroom learning with real-world experience. The College of Business Administration, established in 1922, provides its students – undergraduate, graduate, and executive – with the education, tools and experience necessary to launch and accelerate successful business careers.

The College of Business Administration (CBA) credits its success to expert faculty, close partnerships with industry, and its emphasis on rigorous academics combined with experiential learning. Among many external measures of success, BusinessWeek ranks CBA 37th in its “Best Undergraduate B-schools.” CBA’s bachelors program in International Business is ranked in the USA’s top 15 by U.S. News & World Report. Financial Times ranks the College’s Executive MBA program as one of the best in the world, and U.S. News & World Report ranks its part-time MBA program 20th in the nation. For more information about Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration, visit http://cba.neu.edu/.