GSI Seminar Series - Dr Jean-Francois Mercure, Rethinking climate policy: Economics of innovation and resource creation

A low-carbon transition is unfolding. Many zero-carbon technologies are on the verge of, or have already, crossed cost competitiveness with brown technologies, and are becoming disruptive for the brown economy globally. Their diffusion may follow tipping points and become self-propelling. The ‘mid-transition’ period, when economic transformation unfolds the fastest, could become a disorderly period of economic, financial, and social volatility and instability.

In this seminar, J-F will develop an assessment of economic impacts of the transition, going beyond costs and benefits to those that matter to people: economic stability risks, inflation, jobs, structural transformation and the not widely discussed risk of currency crises. He will develop a model of economic risk and resilience to guide climate policy-making and will argue that policy-makers must rethink climate policy much beyond tax/subsidy schemes, moving on from focusing on economic efficiency going towards creating economic capacity and resilience.

Dr Jean-Francois Mercure is Associate Professor in Climate Policy at the University of Exeter Business School (Finance & Accounting) and Assistant Director of Exeter's Global Systems Institute. During 2022-2024, he was Senior Climate Economist at the World Bank. He is also Principal Economist at Cambridge Econometrics and Chief Economist at the startup TREX, and remains part-time consultant for the World Bank. His work focuses on research, application and communication on the economics of low-carbon transitions. 

Please email infoGSI@exeter.ac.uk if you would like to attend in person.