Research Dossiers
Deep explorations at the intersection of artificial intelligence, environmental economics, and organizational strategy. Each dossier answers a central research question with evidence, analysis, and implications.
Much of this material comes from my earlier research (ZEW years) and my PhD thesis — and will serve as the starting ground for future research here.
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New to research dossiers? Follow this curated path from foundational concepts to frontier research.
Where do energy efficiency improvements really come from?
How has collaboration changed economics?
Can standard economics handle catastrophe?
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Showing 9 of 9 dossiers
How substitutable are inputs across sectors?
Using the WIOD database, we estimate substitution elasticities for a three-level nested CES (KLEM) production structure. The estimates reject Cobb–Douglas and Leontief assumptions for most sectors, and suggest limited variation across time and regions.
Can standard economics handle catastrophe?
No. When catastrophic risks meet unbounded utility functions, expected utility theory breaks down — leading to policy paralysis or the "tyranny" of tail risks.
How has collaboration changed economics?
Economics has industrialized. Average author count per paper tripled since 1974, geographic distance no longer impedes collaboration, and female economists collaborate more frequently.
Does trade hurt or help the environment?
It depends on income and institutions. Trade liberalization shows a weak positive effect on environmental quality in high-income countries, but the relationship is complex and endogenous.
Can a feed-in tariff steer the geography of wind investment?
Yes. Location-aware incentives reshape where projects get built, not just how many. But shifting grid upgrade costs to operators can erase scarcity signals and push deployment ahead of integration.
Where do energy efficiency improvements really come from?
Structural change dominates. Two-thirds of EU energy intensity improvements come from shifting away from heavy industry — not from within-sector efficiency gains.
Where do energy efficiency improvements really come from?
Technological change is not manna from heaven. The shift from exogenous to endogenous modeling reveals that innovation responds to prices, policies, and expectations — fundamentally reshaping optimal climate policy.
Can pure social discounting be ethically justified?
Partly — but not via market rates or “impatience.” The strongest arguments arise from impossibility results on infinite horizons and from explicit ethical constraints like protecting the present and coherent egalitarian evaluation.
Can the global economy grow while using fewer materials?
No global dematerialization. The 56% surge in material use from 1995 to 2008 was driven by economic growth and the relocation of production to material-intensive emerging economies — outweighing all efficiency gains.