Climate Economics with Arvid Viaene | Podcast Guru

Details

A research-focused podcast on the economics of climate change and air pollution. Episodes are released every two weeks on Tuesday at 6 am CET. Episodes will be either expert interviews or solo explorations of key issues. Hosted by Dr. Arvid Viaene, a climate economist with a PhD from the University of Chicago. He has done research on the impacts of climate change on agriculture and mortality. His research on climate-related mortality has been published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and he has advised the European Commission on the impacts of climate policy on firm competitiveness.

Recent Episodes

#35 From Rejection to Nobel Prize: The Work of William Nordhaus

How did economists learn to put a price on climate change? In this solo episode, I tell the story of William Nordhaus and the development of the DICE model, one of the foundational models in climate economics. We trace the journey from Nordhaus’s early work on energy models, through his first attempts to connect the economy and the climate, to the breakthrough that eventually became DICE: the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy. Along the way, I discuss: why Nordhaus became in...

14 MIN

#34 Dr. Frank Venmans - The EU ETS Compliance Puzzle: High Compliance, Low Enforcement

What happens if firms simply do not comply with a carbon market? In this episode, I speak with Frank Venmans about his paper “Policing Carbon Markets”, which studies compliance and enforcement in the EU Emissions Trading System. The headline result is striking: compliance is extremely high, at around 99%. But the standard economic explanation — firms comply because they fear fines and enforcement — only explains a small part of what is happening. We discuss: how high compliance is in the EU E...

45 MIN

#33 Dr. Frances Moore – From $130 to $280 per Ton: Rethinking the Social Cost of Carbon

What is the social cost of carbon, and why do estimates vary so widely? In this episode, I speak with professor Frances Moore about her paper synthesizing nearly 150 studies on the social cost of carbon. We discuss how the literature has evolved, why the distribution of estimates has such a long right tail, and why experts often underestimate the average value found across published studies. Fran also explains how the paper combines a large literature review, an expert survey, and a machine-l...

40 MIN

#32 Dr. Gernot Wagner — Why Tipping Points Matter in Climate Economics

When economists model climate change, they often focus on how rising greenhouse gas emissions increase global temperatures and create economic damages. But the climate system is not always smooth or linear. Some systems may cross tipping points: thresholds beyond which change becomes abrupt, irreversible, or self-reinforcing. In this episode, I speak with Dr. Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School and faculty director of the Climate Knowledge Initiative. Gernot h...

41 MIN

#31 A Cautious Case for Climate Optimism: The Increase in Carbon Pricing

In this episode, I cover why you can likely be a bit more optimistic about climate change than you currently because of three reasons: increase in the coverage of emissions by carbon pricing, the increase in average carbon price, and developments like CBAM. This episode is based on the World Bank Report "State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2026", available at https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/state-and-trends-of-carbon-pricing For questions, comments or suggestions, you can contact me a...

14 MIN