Rohini Pande, Yale University
Title: Inequality, externalities, and climate
Abstract: The climate emergency is inextricably linked to economic inequality, and each amplifies the other. Higher-income countries, groups, and individuals use more fossil-fuel-generated energy than the less affluent. Conversely, lower-income countries, groups, and individuals are less able to protect themselves against the costs and shocks of climate breakdown - the negative externalities of fossil fuel use - than the rich. Continued carbon-intensive, unequal, economic growth, far from raising all boats, threatens to sink some entirely. This talk will take learnings from recent research on reducing economic inequality, and from research on reducing the negative externalities that communities suffer from air pollution, and ask what they tell us about taking effective action to prevent climate breakdown.
Date: September 15, 2023
Time: 3:00 to 4:30 PM
Location: Federation Hall, University of Waterloo
About Rohini Pande
Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics, Director of the Economic Growth Center, and Director of Inclusion Economics at Yale University. She is a co-editor of American Economic Review: Insights. Pande’s research is largely focused on how formal and informal institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic and political advantage in society, particularly in developing countries. She is interested in the role of public policy in providing the poor and disadvantaged political and economic power, and how notions of economic justice and human rights can help justify and enable such change.
The Faculty of Arts gratefully acknowledges our Economics alumni for their generous support* of the Distinguished Lecture Series. This year's lecture is sponsored by:
*gifts of $1,000 or more