Arvid Viaene

Climate Economics with Arvid Viaene

Education EN ↓ 30 episodes

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.

Author

Arvid Viaene

Episodes

#5 How Much Damage Are We Doing? Emissions, Carbon, and the Costs of Climate Change 12.08.2025 13:59

A plain-English tour of how economists put a price on climate harm—the Social Cost of Carbon—and a quick way to estimate damages with just a few numbers. We start from 2023 anchors (≈4.7 tCO₂ per person; ≈38 GtCO₂ worldwide), explain SCC and how U.S. administrations have used very different values, and compare with recent EU carbon-permit prices. Using a €100/ton example, we translate emissions...

#4 Dr. Ben Probst - Can We Trust Carbon Offsets? Evidence from 1 Billion Credits 29.07.2025 40:58

Carbon credit offsets sound great in theory. But how well do they actually work in practice? In this new episode of my podcast, I talk with Dr. Benedict Probst about one of the largest reviews ever done on the effectiveness of carbon credit offsets, which covers over 1 billion credits across dozens of studies. We discuss what his research says, why less than 16% of credits were found to be effecti...

#3 Dr. Christa Hasenkopf - Air Pollution: The Leading Health Threat - And How to Tackle It 15.07.2025 35:14

Air pollution is responsible for shortening global life expectancy by more than two years—making it the world’s leading threat to human health , ahead of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and even smoking. Yet it receives only a fraction of the funding and policy attention. In this episode, Dr. Christa Hasenkopf breaks down why air pollution is such a silent but devastating force—especially in the Global South—a...

#2 Dr. Ishan Nath - Trade and Adaptation in Agriculture in the Global South – Barriers and Opportunities 13.07.2025 37:30

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Ishan Nath , assistant professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, about his research on climate change, agriculture, and trade. His forthcoming paper in the Journal of Political Economy explores how warming could actually increase the share of workers in agriculture in many low-income countries, especially those with limited access to trade. We discuss why trade bar...

#1 Dr. Koen Deconinck - Measuring Farm Emissions: The Fast, the Furious, and the Fixable 12.07.2025 36:32

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Koen Deconinck, economist and policy analyst at the OECD, to explore a deeply technical but increasingly important piece of the climate puzzle: how we measure greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector. Direct and indirect emissions in Agriculture are responsible for up to 30% of global man-made emissions , yet it's often left out of the climate c...