Lopamudra received a PhD from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland College Park in 2008. Her training at Maryland was especially strong in applied econometrics. Her research interests are applied microeconomics, econometric modeling, and environmental and resource economics—economics of regulation and non-market valuation techniques. Lopa’s primary interest is in studying the inter-linkages between public policies and the actions of private agents. The work on Clean Water Act investigates whether regulation induces certain best practice responses from the agents involved in pollution generation and its control. She investigates the responses of both public (the state permit writers and sewage treatment plants) and private (industrial facilities) agents given the provisions laid out in the water pollution regulation. This has implications for economic efficiency of regulation because costs of pollution control drive abatement decisions while choices of regulators such as limits on pollution discharge are driven by local benefits of pollution abatement e.g. ambient water quality.