Conference on The Economics of Climate Change
On 15 - 16 March 2021, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin) hosted the virtual conference on "The Economics of Climate Change". This two day event brought together distinguished international speakers of various disciplines to discuss the manifold impacts of climate change on systems and society and the resulting roles of the economy, law and policy makers.
As a starting point, Prof. Thomas Hickler (Goethe University and Senckenberg BiK-F) kicked off this conference with an impressive overview of the status quo of our earth’s ecosystem, showing evidence such as rising sea levels due to melting glaciers that threaten our climate system and thus our lives.
Over the course of the two conference days, other insightful presentations by Lint Barrage, Rob Engle, Eugenie Dugoua, Stephie Fried, Solomon Hsiang, Larry Kotlikoff, Robert Pindyck, Anthony Smith and Silvana Tenreyro explained further correlations and systemic risks and demonstrated strategies to help cope with climate change. Several legal and regulatory interventions had been discussed to address the challenges of climate change.
In the concluding panel with experts Sarah Breeden (BoE), Ottmar Edenhofer (MCC and PIK) and Antonio Spilimbergo (IMF), a fruitful discussion evolved around the topic of regulatory intervention to meet the challenges of climate change. In this connection Spilimbergo pointed out that the COVID crisis teaches us a lot about the political economy of climate change and that “given the proper incentive, innovation can come much faster than expected”.
Francesco Caselli (London School of Economics), Rainer Haselmann (Goethe University Frankfurt and LawFin), Alexander Ludwig (Goethe University Frankfurt and SAFE), Loriana Pelizzon (Goethe University Frankfurt and SAFE), Rick van der Ploeg (University of Oxford) and Tobias Tröger (Goethe University Frankfurt and LawFin) chaired the organizing committee of this event.