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Environmental Governance: Past News & Events

The Inefficiency of Current Environmental and Energy Policy

Lecture by Robert Hahn

19th October 2011

On Wednesday, October 19th, Professor Robert Hahn of Oxford and Georgetown Universities spoke to an audience of the UCL Environment Institute about inefficient energy and environmental policies.  Professor Hahn’s talk was designed to appeal to both staff and students, as he spent much of the time discussing simple economic solutions to environmental problems, such as taxes on polluting firms that are designed to reduce output, thereby also reducing pollution.  Professor Hahn went on to illustrate a number of examples of inefficient policies, such as subsidies for petrol which encourage people to drive.  Finally, in the question and answer period, Professor Hahn answered more questions about specific policies, as well as talked about his own time working for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in the United States.

Robert Hahn is director of economics at the Smith School at Oxford, a professor of economics at Manchester, and a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. From 1999 to 2008, Professor Hahn served as the director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center, a leader in policy research in law and economics, regulation, and antitrust.

Previously, he worked for the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers, where he helped design the market-based cap-and-trade system for limiting smokestack sulfur emissions at minimum cost to industry. He also has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Hahn is a frequent contributor to leading scholarly journals including the American Economic Review, Science, and the Yale Law Journal, as well as to general-interest periodicals including the New York Times and Forbes.com. He is also the co-founder of Regulation2point0.org.

Professor Hahn has served as a consultant to government and business on a variety of issues ranging from encouraging private investment in Mexico City, to designing more cost-effective alternative fuels policy in the U.S., to rethinking the way we regulate the Internet. In addition, he is co-founder of the Community Preparatory School, an inner-city middle school in Providence, Rhode Island, that provides opportunities for disadvantaged youth to achieve their full potential.