In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Kelsey Jack, associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara; director of the Poverty Alleviation Group at UC Santa Barbara’s Environmental Market Solutions Lab; and codirector of the King Climate Action Initiative at the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jack works at the intersection of environmental economics and international development, studying how environmental issues shape economic development—and vice versa—in developing nations. She discusses some of the experiments she’s done on electricity payments and ecosystem service provision in different parts of the world, and she suggests how her research can inform policymaking on sustainable economic development.

References and recommendations:

“Good Economics for Hard Times” by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo; https://www.goodeconomicsforhardtimes.com/

“Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson; https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kim-stanley-robinson/the-ministry-for-the-future/9780316300162/