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Policy Briefs

Illuminating Current Debates on Climate through Academic Insight: The Policy Brief Series

Drafted by economists who have shared their latest research in our Young Scholars’ webinar series, the Policy Briefs analyze key debates related to addressing climate change. The authors apply their expertise to elucidate the intricacies of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (“mitigation”) and adapting to current and expected climate impacts. By contextualizing recent scientific findings within policy conversations, the series illuminates evidence-based pathways for climate action. Both timely and thoughtful, the Policy Briefs aim to elevate discussions beyond rhetoric to the substantive domain of academic research.

Green Mortgages

João F. Cocco (LBS, CEPR), Bernardo Mendes (LBS) and S. Lakshmi Naaraayanan (LBS, CEPR) examine the true drivers of green financing programs such as green mortgages. Are they real drivers of energy efficiency or marketing instruments?

Temperature, Adaptation, and Local Industry Concentration

Jacopo Ponticelli (Nortwestern University), Qiping Xu (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Stefan Zeume (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Gies College of Business) show that extreme temperatures between 1980s and 2010s jointly increased energy costs and decreased productivity of small manufacturing plants in the U.S.

Agriculture, Trade, and Global Water Use

Levi Crews (UCLA) shows how global agricultural trade substantially reduces water extraction worldwide by concentrating water-intensive production in water-abundant regions. Yet because water markets are distorted and access is largely open, the water consequences of trade policy depend critically on where production moves, making blanket trade restrictions neither a reliable nor general solution to water scarcity.

Uncertainty, Tradeoffs, and Credible Climate Policy

Charles Manski (Northwestern University) discusses how credible climate policy requires honestly confronting deep uncertainty, about climate models, economic damages, and discount rates, rather than becoming entrenched in opposing ideologies. Welfare economics provides the rigorous framework needed to transparently quantify the tradeoffs between abatement costs and climate damages.

Climate Change, Adaptation, and Sovereign Risk

Co-Winner of the 2025 E-Axes Forum Research Prize
Sarah Duffy (University of Oxford) studies the implications of sovereign risk for adaptation and therefore the economic losses from natural disasters.

Biodiversity Protection Policy and Housing Markets: Supply, Demand, and Speculation

Maxwell Sacher (McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin) and Shikhar Singla (McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin) estimate the expected impact of biodiversity policy by exploiting an increase in policy risk from the Biden administration’s proposed “30x30” plan, which aimed to significantly increase the amount of protected land by 2030.

Rebuild or Relocate? Recovery after Natural Disasters

Co-Winner of the 2025 E-Axes Forum Research Prize
Shifrah Aron-Dine (UC Berkeley) analyzes how post‑disaster policies that prioritize rebuilding interact with household incentives, migration, and infrastructure investment, might not improve welfare and resilience.

Picking Up the PACE: Loans for Residential Climate-Proofing

Honorable Mention from the 2025 E-Axes Forum Research Committee
Aymeric Bellon (UNC Kenan Flager), Cameron LaPoint (Yale), Francesco Mazzola (ESCP) and Guosong Xu (Rotterdam School of Management) examine the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loan program

The Global Effects of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

Kim Clausing (UCLA), Jonathan Colmer (University of Virginia), Allan Hsiao (Stanford University), Catherine Wolfram (MIT Sloan) shed like on the implications of the introduction of EU's CBAM on low-income countries.

Power Decarbonization in a Global Energy Market: The Climate Effect of U.S. LNG Exports

Costanza Abuin (Princeton University) asks if the United States can influence global electricity decarbonization through its liquified natural gas (LNG) export policy?

Adjusting productivity for carbon emissions: A new perspective on the growth slowdown

Maarten de Ridder (LSE) proposes a method to embed carbon emissions efficiency gains into existing productivity measures.

The Limits of Insurance Demand and the Rising Protection Gap

Parinitha Sastry (Columbia Business School), Therese Scharlemann (Federal Reserve Board), Ishita Sen (Harvard Business School), Ana-Maria Tenekedjievia (Federal Reserve Board) use a unique dataset linking individual mortgage and insurance contracts with borrower, property, and climate risk data from 2013–2022,to quantify the extent of underinsurance of climate risk in the USA.

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