Thomas Sterner

Professor

Environmental Economics

Address: P.O. Box 640, SE 405 30 Gothenburg
Visiting address: Vasagatan 1, House E
Room: E-609
Tel: 46 (0)31 786 1377
Fax: 46 (0)31 786 1043
Email: thomas.sterner@economics.gu.se

Currently on sabbatical working as Visiting Chief Economist at EFD, Environmental Defense Fund in New York. Can be reached there at tsterner@edf.org.

As professor of environmental economics in Gothenburg, Thomas Sterner has during the last 18 years built up a unit for environmental economics with three professors, a dozen PhDs and about two dozen graduate students. The unit gives a unique PhD program in environmental economics, funded by Sida, a master program and runs a large number of other research and teaching activities.

Thomas Sterner's main research interests lie in the design of policy instruments. He has studied a number of different applications ranging from energy and climate, through natural resource management such as fisheries to issues relating to industrial and transport pollution. He has published three books and a large number of articles on policy instruments lately.

Thomas Sterner is the editor of the new book Fuel Taxes and the Poor, The Distributional Effects of Gasoline Taxation and Their Implications for Climate Policy, authored by 35 renowned researchers. Reporting on examples of over two dozen countries this book challenges the conventional wisdom that petrol taxation, an important and much-debated instrument of climate policy, has a disproportionately detrimental effect on poor people. This book provides strong arguments for the proponents of environmental taxation. It has immediate policy implications at the intersection of multiple subject areas, including transport, environmental regulation, development studies, and climate change. Published Dec 2011 by RFF Press with Environment for Development initiative. Read the press release about the book.
>> Link to a web page devoted to Environmental Policy Instruments

Thomas Sterner teaches PhD and undergraduate courses in environmental and resource economics. He is also teaching Environmental Policy Instruments at Chalmers