Room S5, Maison de la paix, Geneva
The Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar is the Economics department's weekly seminar, featuring external speakers in all areas of economics.
As part of the Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar series, the International Economics Department at the Geneva Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to a public talk given by Maria Alsina-Pujols.
She will present her work entitled Warming with Borders: Climate Refugees and Carbon Pricing.
Abstract: As climate changes and natural disasters intensify, the threat of large and sudden human displacement increases. This paper explores how carbon should be taxed in the presence of international displacement caused by climate change. It first provides empirical evidence on the migration response to natural disasters from developing to developed countries. Second, it introduces climate refugees into a climate-economy growth model and theoretically characterizes global and unilateral optimal carbon prices taking into account the economic and social impact of climate refugees. Third, it quantifies global and unilateral carbon prices in a North-South calibration. The main finding is that forced migration enhances the incentives of host regions to fight climate change—with a 26% increase in the unilateral carbon price, more so if political conflict is taken into account. This stands in contrast to the global carbon price, as well as the unilateral carbon price in origin regions, which barely change in magnitude after accounting for the presence of climate refugees.
Maria Lasina-Pujols is a macroeconomist working on environmental economics issues, innovation and economic growth. Her research combines theoretical modelling, empirical methods and quantitative tools to study the interactions between climate change, natural disasters and migration. She is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center of Economic Research, D-MTEC, ETH Zurich. She received her PhD from the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich.