Soheil Shayegh

RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment

Climate change impacts may drive affected populations to migrate. However, migration decisions in response to climate change could have broader effects on population dynamics in affected regions. Here, I model the effect of climate change on fertility rates, income inequality, and human capital accumulation in developing countries, focusing on the...

Significance Achieving universal health care access is a key development priority and a target of Sustainable Development Goal number 3. The COVID-19 pandemic has only reinforced this urge. A rapid expansion of public, affordable health care infrastructure is particularly crucial in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): communicable diseases are the first caus...

Green growth policies aim to address both climate change and economic growth and are now prevalent throughout many economies. While green growth is sufficiently assessed in qualitative, case-study-based literature, quantitative and cross-country analyses are still limited. In response to this research deficit, our aim is twofold: (1) to develop a c...

Objectives To propose a novel framework for COVID-19 vaccine allocation based on three components of Vulnerability, Vaccination, and Values (3Vs). Methods A combination of geospatial data analysis and artificial intelligence methods for evaluating vulnerability factors at the local level and allocate vaccines according to a dynamic mechanism for u...

Energy policies aim at securing energy supply through domestic production or imports have significant consequences for climate change and its long-term impacts on the economy. Recent European energy crisis as a result of extensive reliance on imported Russian natural gas has highlighted the European Union (EU) energy vulnerability and has challenge...

Heat stress affects the health of workers through physiological and behavioural responses, in turn, affecting the labour force through impacts on labour supply, labour productivity and labour capacity. In this Review, we explore the extent to which heat stress affects the labour force and discuss the corresponding occupational health and economic i...

Solar geoengineering (SGE) can combat climate change by directly reducing temperatures. Both SGE and the climate itself are surrounded by great uncertainties. Implementing SGE affects learning about these uncertainties. We model endogenous learning over two uncertainties: the sensitivity of temperatures to carbon concentrations (the climate sensiti...

Transitioning to a green economy is urgently needed to achieve the climate targets by the end of this century. Here we investigate alternative pathways for the transition of the global economy from one dominated by the fossil-fueled (brown) sector to one dominated by the low-emission (green) sector. We modify a well-known integrated assessment mode...

The historical diffusion of the potato in the Old World serves as an example of the contribution of technological innovations to socio-economic growth and development (Nunn and Qian in Q J Econ 126(2):593–650, 2011). Climate-related diseases, on the other hand, might offset some of these benefits. Here we examine the long-term impact of malaria on...

The impact of climate change on economic growth has been the subject of numerous studies in recent years, with macro-econometric analyses estimating the effect of rising temperatures on GDP growth rates at the country-level. However, the distributional impact of warming on inequality and poverty at the micro-level remains relatively unexplored. In...

Reparations in terms of direct payments are often used to redress injustices and compensate for historical inequalities. In some parts of the United States, restoring the deferred wealth of Black population through reparations has gained traction in recent years. However, there is no consensus on which reparative policies should be implemented and...

Transition to green economy is urgently needed in order to reach the climate targets by the end of this century. We investigate the optimal pathways for transitioning of the global economy from one dominated by the fossil-fueled (brown) sector to one dominated by the zero-emission (green) sector. We consider three transition regimes: a "Linear" reg...

When coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was spreading worldwide, many national and local governments started to impose socially restrictive measures to limit the spread of the virus. Such quarantine measures in different cities worldwide have brought a new trend in public safety improvement and crime reduction. Using daily crime reports in the U.S., th...

Women in developing countries are more exposed to the adverse effects of climate change. We develop a structural model to study the long-term impacts of climate and socioeconomic changes on labour supply and the pay gap between male/female and high-skilled/low-skilled labour. We calibrate our model with empirical evidence on the impacts of increasi...

International migration is closely tied to demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors and their interaction with migration policies. Using a combination of a gravity econometric model and an overlapping generations model, we estimate the probability of bilateral migration among 160 countries in the period of 1960 to 2000 and use these fi...

International migration is closely tied to demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors and their interaction with migration policies. Using a combination of a gravity econometric model and an overlapping generations model, we estimate the probability of bilateral migration among 160 countries in the period of 1960 to 2000 and use these fi...

We develop a novel structural economic model of overlapping generations to study wealth accumulation and distribution under the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). We consider skill-specific wages and intergenerational wealth transfers as determinants wealth. The model is calibrated to match the projections of human capital accumulation and econo...

What are the benefits and drawbacks, and for whom?.

We study international cooperation regarding climate policy when solar geoengineering is a policy option available to nations. Employing an analytical theoretical model, we show how the equilibrium levels of emissions abatement and geoengineering are affected by the level of cooperation between countries, with more cooperation leading to lower emis...

Direct air capture (DAC) technologies are promising but speculative. Their prospect as an affordable negative emissions option that can be deployed in large scale is particularly uncertain. Here, we report the results of an expert elicitation about the evolution of techno-economic factors characterizing DAC over time and across climate scenarios. T...

Climate change has a major impact on productivity of different economic sectors as well as different labour groups. Here we study the crucial linkage between gradual climate change and availability of low-skilled labour in rural areas of South Africa. Using a nationally representative panel of micro-survey data, we derive marginal impacts of rising...

We report the results of an international survey of 856 respondents from 55 countries which was conducted between late March and mid-April 2020, on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social protection policies on people's lives and livelihood, their perception of the effectiveness of such policies, and their concerns in the context of oth...

A renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is a policy instrument designed to increase production of clean energy technologies by mandating a minimum market share for these technologies. However, the cost-effectiveness of RPS in achieving its goal depends on the market structure, which impacts the level of competition in the market. Here, we analyze the...

The entire agricultural supply chain, from crop production to food consumption, is expected to suffer significant damages from climate change. This paper empirically investigates the effects of warming on agricultural labor supply through variation in dietary intake in rural Uganda. We examine labor supply, food consumption, and overall social welf...

The literature on environmental regulatory-induced innovation is extensive and finds equivocal results. Yet most research explores domestic regulatory effects on domestic firm innovations. We conceive of a global cleantech paradigm whereby domestic firms are induced by foreign country environmental regulations, under the condition that institutiona...

We examine the potential for climate change to impact fertility via adaptations in human behavior. We start by discussing a wide range of economic channels through which climate change might impact fertility, including sectoral reallocation, the gender wage gap, longevity, and child mortality. Then, we build a quantitative model that combines stand...

Climate change presents the international community with a unique challenge that we argue is comparable in scope and breadth to challenges posed by global public health threats. In this discussion paper we examine the respective global roles of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Despite imp...

On October 9th, 2018, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report that forecasts global temperature to increase by 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels between 2030 and 2052, at the rate of +0.2 °C per decade. Such increase will result in significant additional environmental damage that can be mitigated only by heavily...

Clean energy technologies that cost more than fossil fuel technologies require support through research and development (R&D). Learning-by-doing relates historical cost decreases to accumulation of experience. A learning investment is the amount of subsidy that is required to reach cost parity between a new technology and a conventional technology....

The Paris Agreement has set stringent temperature targets to limit global warming to 2°C above preindustrial level, with efforts to stay well below 2°C. At the same time, its bottom-up approach with voluntary national contributions makes the implementation of these ambitious targets particularly challenging. Climate engineering –both through carbon...

Adaptation is the process of adjusting to climate change in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities associated with it. Most adaptation strategies are designed to adjust to a new climate state. However, despite our best efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, climate is likely to continue changing far into the future. Here,...

Unprecedented uncertainty in the price of asphalt cement over the last decade has been a source of major concern for state departments of transportation (state DOTs) and highway contractors. This uncertainty may lead to price speculation and inflated bid prices by highway contractors, in order to secure their financial positions against possible ri...

We study optimal climate policy in the presence of climate tipping points and solar geoengineering. Solar geoengineering reduces temperatures without reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Climate tipping points are irreversible and uncertain events that can alter the dynamics of the climate system. We analyze three different rules related to the avail...

We consider the socially optimal use of solar geoengineering to manage climate change. Solar geoengineering can reduce damages from atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, potentially more cheaply than reducing emissions. If so, optimal policy includes less abatement than recommended by models that ignore solar geoengineering, and the price of c...

Significant growth in the costs of commodity inputs is one of the major drivers of construction cost in highway construction projects and asphalt cement is one of the most critical materials in those projects. Although asphalt cement price index shows an upward trend, it is subject to considerable fluctuations and sometimes sudden and sharp changes...

We develop a method for finding optimal greenhouse gas reduction rates under ongoing uncertainty and re-evaluation of climate parameters over future decades. Uncertainty about climate change includes both overall climate sensitivity and the risk of extreme tipping point events. We incorporate both types of uncertainty into a stochastic model of cli...

Volatility in price of critical materials used in transportation projects, such as asphalt cement, leads to considerable uncertainty about project cost. This uncertainty can lead to price speculation and inflated bid prices submitted by highway contractors to protect against possible price increases. One of the most common risk sharing strategies w...