The Economics of Climate Change Lecture Series

Learn from four economists who are leading national and global discussions about the economic damages of climate change and the policies that can help us prepare for its effects.

Soloman Hsiang is Professor of Global Environmental Policy at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, a co-founder and co-director of the Climate Impact Lab, co-founder of mosaiks.org, research associate at the NBER, and a National Geographic Explorer. Hsiang was lead author of the first economics chapter in the Fifth National Climate Assessment (2023) and, from 2023–24, Hsiang served as the first Chief Environmental Economist at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he oversaw the inaugural year of the United States Natural Capital Accounting Program.

Empirical research has revolutionized how we understand the global economic impacts of climate change, and the credibility and replicability of these empirical results have played a critical role in guiding high-stakes climate policies. In this lecture, Dr. Hsiang will describe the landscape of empirical economic research on global impacts, explain key components of modern analyses, summarize recent findings on a range of topics, and point towards promising new areas of investigation. He will focus in particular on empirical perspectives for six “grand challenges'' in the field: understanding climate change's global impact on economic output, health, conflict, food security, disasters, and migration. Dr. Hsiang will discuss how interwoven empirical findings across outcomes are aligning to paint an increasingly coherent picture of a future global economy impacted by climate change. Taking the literature as a whole, he argues, the global consequences of unmitigated climate change are likely to be substantial, unequal, harmful in aggregate, and potentially destabilizing.

Sponsored by the Walter Krause Economics Lecture Fund, the Reed College Economics Department, and the Reed College Environmental Studies Program. Free and open to the public.