March 30, 2021
Call for Papers: Conference on Carbon Pricing, July 30-31, Boston University
This conference will be a two-day sequence of virtual panels on the last Friday and Saturday in July, hosted by Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. We invite presentations from researchers in fields like Environmental Studies, Economics, and Political Science. New research and previously published work are equally welcome. Our goal is to map the current state of the debate on carbon pricing.
Our first day will concentrate on economic and technical research about pricing measures required to meet the Paris goals of a 1.5o to 2.0o C. rise in global temperatures, whether pricing alone can do this, and the economic costs of such pricing. The keynote speaker for the first day will be:
- Geoffrey M. Heal, Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia University Business School. Author of 18 books and over 200 articles, Professor Heal is Past President and Life Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, on the Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency, a Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Chair of the Board of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, on the Advisory Board of the Environmental Defense Fund, and a Member of the UN High Level Commission on Carbon Prices. A recent non-technical paper in the Review of Economic Literature, “The Economics of the Climate,” is on his website: geoffreyheal.com/
Our second day will focus on the social change and political conflict likely to arise from higher energy prices. Are there measures of redistribution or subsidy that can minimize these conflicts and help to ease the transition to a sustainable economy? Our keynote speaker for the second day will be:
- Matto Mildenberger, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California at Santa Barbara. Since his PhD from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2015, Professor Mildenberger has authored or co-authored 24 journal articles and 2 books and is Associate Deputy Editor at Climatic Change. His most recent book, Carbon Captured: How Labor and Business Control Climate Politics, is available from MIT Press. A recent non-technical article, “Prisoners of the wrong dilemma: Why distributive conflict, not collective action, characterizes the politics of climate change,” in Global Environmental Politics, is available on his website: www.mattomildenberger.com/
Though not an exclusive list, we invite individual papers or organized panels on topics that can include:
- Econometric Models/Forecasts of Carbon Pricing
- Post-Pricing Redistribution
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- Domestic – A Carbon Tax Alone is Regressive
- International – Rich Countries are Historic Free-Riders
- Income Effects of Compensation
- International Comparisons of Current Efforts
- The Nordhaus Climate Club Proposal
- International Migration and Conflict around Climate Change
- Are Carbon Prices Enough? Green Infrastructure and Technology, Geo-Engineering
- Effective Carbon-Pricing means Lower GDP: Macroeconomic Responses
- Options for the Biden Administration
- The Political Track Record for Carbon Pricing
- Evidence on an Environmental Kuznets Curve – For and Against
- Taxes vs. Auctions, Revisiting Weitzman
- The Discounting Problem: Inter-Generational Equity and Risk
Please forward this call to your colleagues and send expressions of interest to Jim Stodder at Boston University, jstodder@bu.edu. Organized panels with 3 to 4 related presentations are also encouraged. Please send an initial statement of interest ASAP. Abstracts should be submitted by May 1, 2021 and complete papers by July 1, 2021.