I am very delighted to announce that my article entitled “Suggestions for a Covid-19 post-pandemic research agenda in environmental economics“, co-authored with Robert Elliott from the University of Birmingham, and Cees Withagen from the University of Amsterdam, is forthcoming in the Special Issue Economics of the Environment in the Shadow of Coronavirus of Environmental & Resource Economics.

In this article we draw upon early lessons from the 2020 Covid-19 crisis and discuss how these may relate to a future research agenda in environmental economics. In particular, we describe how the events surrounding the Covid-19 crisis may inform environmental research related to globalization and cooperation, the green transition, pricing carbon externalities, as well as the role of uncertainty and timing of policy inventions. We also discuss the implications for future empirical research in this area.

In this article you will find a wealth of information about potential research questions, open issues, and new paths that we highlight based on lessons from the Covid-19 crisis. We hope that this article is useful for PhD students but also for established researchers alike, as we combine theoretical and empirical literature and point at gaps in our existing knowledge. Clearly, the topics presented here provide a selection, albeit a large one, of the authors, and there is certainly much more to be done in adjacent research topics.

Information on my co-authors: Professor Robert Elliott from the University of Birmingham is an applied economist who works at the intersection of international economics, development economics, environmental and energy economics and international business. He has a particular interest in the Chinese economy, firm behaviour, natural disasters and the impact of globalisation on the environment. He is an editor for the Sustainable Future Policy Lab, a Director of the Trade, Environment, Development and Energy (TEDE) research group, a Co-I on ReLIB as part of the Faraday Institute, a member of Water Challenges in a Changing World IGI and an Affiliate of the Lloyds Bank Centre for Responsible Business.

Cees Withagen is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Economics at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Department of Spatial Economics in the School of Business and Economics. He holds a master’s degree from Tilburg University in econometrics with a specialization in mathematical economics as well as a PhD also from Tilburg University. He is currently a Fellow of Tinbergen Institute and CentER (Tilburg University), a CESifo Research Network Fellow and a Research Professor at the ifo Center for Energy, Climate and Exhaustible Resources. He is associate editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and of the Scientific Advisory Board of Environmental and Resource Economics.