Faculty Research Fellow Jim Stodder Gives Talk on Carbon Tax Forecasts at IAEE Annual Conference

Jim Stodder, a Visiting Professor in BU’s Metropolitan College and a Faculty Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for Study of the Longer-Range Future, recently presented his research on carbon tax forecasts at the 42nd International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) Annual Conference in Montréal, Canada.

At the conference, Stodder presented a paper titled “Carbon Tax Forecasts: Structural Models and VARs,” a draft of which was the subject of an all-day workshop he convened at the Pardee Center in February. The paper explores the use of Vector Auto Regressions (VARs) – a staple of macroeconomic forecasting but a little-used tool in the carbon tax debate – as a complement to Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to try to determine the most effective price on carbon to achieve dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

As a Faculty Research Fellow at the Pardee Center, Stodder is leading a project that aims to explore new approaches to modeling carbon prices, and to bring together scholars working on economic and climate models to look at energy markets, macroeconomic stability, climate projections, and geopolitics. During the first two years of the project, he will focus on publishing in academic journals, which will lay the groundwork for an international conference on carbon pricing in 2020.