Aaron D. Roth

My research agenda aims toward an international, intergenerational climate mitigation mechanism. Beyond efficiency, I consider implementation feasibility and justice as critical constraints.

My conception of feasibility is self-enforcement. Individuals, firms, countries, and generations act according to their private incentives rather than being asked to make sacrifices on the basis of morality. My conception of justice requires that any mechanism respect how the wealth that the people of the world’s developed nations enjoy was built on the burning of fossil fuels while climate change’s damages will likely be disproportionately suffered by the people of less developed nations. How policy can respect these constraints and the extent to which they bind optimality is at the heart of my agenda.

Towards this end, I explore topics in mechanism design for pollution markets and environmental services, Pareto-improving policy, intergenerational welfare, uncertainty in integrated assessment modeling, distributional consequences of climate policy, and climate justice. I favor methods across political economy, structural estimation, and macroeconomics.