As an example of an analysis which would fit within this project, consider household decarbonisation in the UK. Household decarbonisation will be expensive, with large upfront costs, but potentially with ongoing cost savings once investments have been made. The liability to make these investments is tied to ownership of expensive assets (residential property). These facts give rise to clear distributional concerns and policy prescriptions around household decarbonisation. Policy in this area must be assessed subject to distributional concerns. A policy evaluation framework could be proposed that seeks to maximise emissions reduction per unit of public expenditure, subject to also improving (reducing) measured inequality. Wider issues to be covered in such an analysis may include the lack of access to credit for poorer sections of society; the existence of social landlords who can alleviate credit constraints for poorer households; the enhanced access individuals have to credit when mortgaging property; and the trade-off between public expenditure crowding in investment from wealthy individuals against the distributional constraints of the suggested framework. Such an analysis could be tackled using a variety of methods, such as Computable General Equilibrium modelling for the analysis of distributional impacts..

Further information

The successful applicant will join the Energy and Environment research cluster in the Department of Economics in Strathclyde Business School, and will be part of a growing number of PhD students working on the transition to net zero. This project forms part of a collaborative relationship with the Institute of Economics within the Department of Business Science at Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, which is an International Strategic Partner of the University of Strathclyde. There will be an opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from TU Braunschweig, as well as spend some time there.