Research Projects
My research zooms in on the political economy of climate change—including green central banking, green fiscal policies, green cost-benefit analysis, climate regulation, as well as renewable energy policies. Please contact me if you are interested in drafts, working papers, or general discussions of any of these research projects!
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Climate Politics and the Contested Greening of Economic Reason
Book Manuscript
From Green New Deals to the need to green central banking to the social cost of carbon: It is now commonplace for environmentalists, politicians, and economic experts to advance climate policies as a means to economic ends—such as jobs, growth, aggregate welfare, or financial stability. But as even the most casual observer of climate politics knows, this has not always been the case. In the 1980s and 1990s, politicians, academics, and interest groups that saw climate change through an economic lens argued that it is an overblown problem, or not a problem at all. Climate Politics and the Contested Greening of Economic Reason explains this transformation and its political consequences through comparative case studies of EU and US climate politics. It argues that our understanding of the economic threat posed by climate change is not an objective fact created through information and rational learning. Nor is it an ideological fact and part of some neoliberal or neoclassical distortion. Instead, I show that it is shaped and transformed by political conflicts between competing coalitions of experts and interest groups that have constructed rivaling economic visions of climate change that now vie for political dominance.
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Fiscal Climate Policy Dataset Project
Research Project
Since 2020, there has been a significant increase in fiscal and industrial policies aimed at decarbonization globally, with notable initiatives like Germany's Climate Fund, South Korea's Green New Deal, and the US's Inflation Reduction Act. This surge in climate spending raises questions about the reasons behind this trend, the role of industries and firms, and the varying levels of green policies across countries. To address these questions, this project aims to construct the Fiscal Climate Policy Database, which will track annual climate-related spending across OECD, and to leverage it to explain one of the most significant shifts in economic and climate policy in the last decades.
Green Central Banking
Research Project
Central bankers have undergone one of the most puzzling turnarounds in the recent history of climate politics. Once confidently oblivious to environmental issues, all major central banks are now in the process of greening. That means, they are integrating climate concerns into their policy tools from monetary policies to macroprudential regulation. What explains this turnaround? And why are some central banks moving much faster on the issue than others? This research project answers these questions based on the comparative analysis of the rise and politics of green central banking in the US, the EU, and the UK. It shows how green central banking was forged at the intersection of the new political challenges to central banks after the Great Recession of 2007-8, the new politics of climate change in the post-Paris world, as well as the surprising agency of central bankers to reinterpret their mandated objectives.
Economic Crises and Climate Politics
Research Project
The 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis and the 2020-1 Covid Crisis have forced governments into massive fiscal interventions to stabilize faltering economies. This infusion of money intensified existing debates over the greening of such fiscal interventions. In how far should governments intervene in their domestic economies not just to stabilize them in times of crisis—but also to steer economic growth into a greener direction? Based on a large dataset of climate-related spending throughout both crises as well as select case studies, this research project works to explain the variation in climate spending between countries. In particular, the project shows that even in times of crises, fiscal stimuli are shaped by countries' preexisting trends in climate policy. Thus, it questions the conventional notion of crises as critical junctures that can shift trajectories toward a "Green New Deal."
