Julius Andersson, affiliated researcher to the Misum Human Capital and Sustainable Development platform and assistant professor at Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), has received the AEJ Best Paper Award from the American Economic Association in Economic Policy. Marion Leroutier, postdoctoral fellow at Misum and affiliated to the same research platform, has also gained recognition for her work in the field of environmental economics. She has been awarded the EAERE Award for Best Doctoral Dissertations in Environmental and Resource Economics.

In his paper "Carbon Taxes and CO2 Emissions: Sweden as a Case Study," published in 2019 in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Julius examined Sweden's experience after it adopted a tax on carbon in the early 1990s. His research reveals that the tax worked: emissions in the transportation sector dropped 6.3 percent annually on average from 1990–2005 without indication of slowed economic growth. Policymakers have underestimated the benefit of implementing carbon pricing policies as previous research did not demonstrate such substantial effects.

“The carbon tax today could be even more efficient…There are many more substitutes available for switching from the most carbon-intensive sources to low-carbon alternatives”

Julius Andersson

Marion Leroutier’s prize has been awarded for her doctoral dissertation received in 2020 from the Paris School of Economics, CIRED. One of the chapters from this dissertation has been featured in an earlier news post; New research on carbon pricing: do carbon taxes reduce CO2 emissions? and has since become a published journal article in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

“Tackling power sector emissions is a low-hanging fruit for climate policy, given the availability of relatively cheap low-carbon substitutes to fossil fuels.“

- Marion Leroutier

The third and final chapter examines how much urban residents contribute to carbon and local pollutant emissions in their daily commutes based on detailed survey data from the Paris region. This chapter was turned into an article published in 2022 in the journal Energy Economics which you can read in full here.

As a relatively new area of economics, environmental economics is fast becoming one of the most relevant policy tools to combat the climate crisis. Recognition of academic achievements in this field spells promising implications for policy and development towards a tangible transition to a more sustainable society. Misum is proud to host these distinguished researchers and congratulates them on their contributions to the discipline.