Economics serving society

Podcast | Intergenerational equity and climate policy | Stéphane Zuber

In this episode, Stéphane Zuber explains how economists assess climate policies and introduce the notion of intergenerational equity. He develops this central notion to his work, in relation to the issue of climate change.

Stéphane Zuber is director of research at the CNRS, professor at the Paris School of Economics and researcher at the Centre d’économie de la Sorbonne.
His research focuses on intergenerational equity and long-term decision-making, with a particular interest in climate policies.

Learn More

Budolfson M., Dennig F., Errickson F., Feindt S., Ferranna M., Fleurbaey M., Klenert D., Kornek U., Kuruc K., Méjean A., Peng W., Scovronick N., Spears D., Wagner F., Zuber S., 2021, "Climate action with revenue recycling has benefits for poverty, inequality, and wellbeing”, Nature Climate Change.

Carleton T., Jina A., Delgado M., Greenstone M., Houser T., Hsiang S., Hultgren A., Kopp R.E., McCusker K.E., Nath I., Rising J., Rode A., Kwon Seo H., Viaene A., Yuan J., Tianbo Zhang A., 2022, "Valuing the Global Mortality Consequences of Climate Change Accounting for Adaptation Costs and Benefits”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 137, Issue 4, 2037–2105.

Emmerling J., Kornek U., Zuber S., 2023, “Multidimensional welfare indices and the IPCC 6th Assessment Report Scenarios”, mimeo.

Fleurbaey M., Ferranna M., Budolfson M., Dennig F., Mintz-Woo K., Socolow R., Spears D., Zuber S., 2019, “The social cost of carbon : Valuing inequality, risk, and population for climate policy”, The Monist, 102, 84–109.

Fleurbaey M., Méjean A., Pottier A., Zuber S., 2020, “The welfare implications of climate change-related mortality : Inequality and population ethics”, CES Working Paper.

Fleurbaey M., Zuber S., 2013, “Climate policies deserve a negative discount rate”, Chicago Journal of International Law, 13, 565-595.

Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, Lee H. and Romero J. (eds.)], IPCC, 2023, 35-115.

Scovronick N., Budolfson M., Dennig F., Errickson F., Fleurbaey M., Peng W., Socolow R.H., Spears D. & Wagner F., 2019, “The impact of human health co-benefits on evaluations of global climate policy”, Nature Communications.

Welsby D., Price J., Pye S., 2021, “Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world”. Nature 597, 230–234.

Zuber S., Asheim G.B., 2012, “Justifying social discounting : The rank-discounted utilitarian approach”, Journal of Economic Theory, 147, 1572-1601.

Find out more about the Economics for everybody’s thematic files.