Richard Tol
According to Richard S. J. Tol: “Climate policy does not need bureaucrats. A carbon tax would work just fine. ... Let’s hope that the fiscal problems elsewhere will force other countries to follow Ireland’s example and introduce a carbon tax too. It would be even better if austerity would cull the excessive numbers of climocrats.”
Richard Tol, CESifo guest researcher from 8 to 10 July, specialises in energy economics and environmental economics, with a particular interest in climate change and the economics of global warming. In 1998, he contributed with some 19 other academics to a joint project of the United Nations Environment Programme at his home university. He is actively involved in the European Climate Forum, the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment and the Energy Modeling Forum and has also collaborated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Richard Tol received an MSc in econometrics (1992) and a PhD in economics (1997) from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is professor at the Department of Economics, University of Sussex and Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is ranked among the top 100 economists in the world, and has over 200 publications in learned journals (with 100+ co-authors), 3 books, 5 major reports, 37 book chapters and many minor publications.