Stellio Del Campo, Postdoctoral Researcher within the University of Luxembourg’s Department of Economics and Management, together with David Anthoff, Associate Professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley and Ulrike Kornek, Professor at Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, have recently published an article “Inequality Aversion for Climate Policy” in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (Volume 17, Number 2 Summer 2023 Edition).
There, the researchers explore the concept of inequality aversion in the context of climate economics, which refers to the idea of a society sacrificing some benefits for greater equality. Since the literature on this topic is thin, Del Campo and his coauthors review and synthesize existing research on inequality aversion from normative articles and empirical studies.
The authors identify critical research gaps and conclude that there is no singular “best” value recommended for climate economic application but draw several recommendations. They emphasize the need for more evidence on inequality aversion in developing countries and understanding global society’s stance on inequality between individuals in different countries, particularly in the context of climate change policy.
The full article is available for open access in University of Chicago Press Journal .