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Professor Marie Young-Brun, PhD

Professor Marie Young-Brun, PhD
Current Position

since 11/23

Head of the Research Group Environmental Macroeconomics

Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association

since 12/23

Junior Professor

Leipzig University

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Research Interests
  • environmental economics
  • climate finance
  • economic growth

Marie Young-Brun is a member of the Department of Macroeconomics at IWH since November 2023 and a Junior Professor at Leipzig University since December 2023. Her research focuses on the growth, welfare and distributional effects of climate change and environmental policies.

Marie Young-Brun received her master's degree and her PhD from Paris School of Economics.

Your contact

Professor Marie Young-Brun, PhD
Professor Marie Young-Brun, PhD
- Department Macroeconomics
Send Message +49 345 7753-766 Personal page

Publications

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Within-Country Inequality and the Shaping of a Just Global Climate Policy

Marie Young-Brun Francis Dennig Frank Errickson Simon Feindt Aurélie Méjean Stéphane Zuber

in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Vol. 122 (39), 2025

Abstract

Climate policy design must balance emissions mitigation with concerns for fairness, particularly as climate change disproportionately affects the poorest households within and across countries. Integrated Assessment Models used for global climate policy evaluation have so far typically not considered inequality effects within countries. To fill this gap, we develop a global Integrated Assessment Model representing national economies and subnational income, mitigation cost, and climate damage distribution and assess a range of climate policy schemes with varying levels of effort sharing across countries and households. The schemes are consistent with limiting temperature increases to 2 °C and account for the possibility to use carbon tax revenues to address distributional effects within and between countries. We find that carbon taxation with redistribution improves global welfare and reduces inequality, with the most substantial gains achieved under uniform taxation paired with global per capita transfers. A Loss and Damage mechanism offers significant welfare improvements in vulnerable countries while requiring only a modest share of global carbon revenues in the medium term. The poorest households within all countries may benefit from the transfer scheme, in particular when some redistribution is made at the country level. Our findings underscore the potential for climate policy to advance both environmental and social goals, provided revenue recycling mechanisms are effectively implemented. In particular, they demonstrate the feasibility of a welfare improving global climate policy involving limited international redistribution.

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A Multi-Model Assessment of Inequality and Climate Change

Marie Young-Brun et al.

in: Nature Climate Change, Vol. 14 (October), 2024

Abstract

Climate change and inequality are critical and interrelated defining issues for this century. Despite growing empirical evidence on the economic incidence of climate policies and impacts, mainstream model-based assessments are often silent on the interplay between climate change and economic inequality. For example, all the major model comparisons reviewed in IPCC neglect within-country inequalities. Here we fill this gap by presenting a model ensemble of eight large-scale Integrated Assessment Models belonging to different model paradigms and featuring economic heterogeneity. We study the distributional implications of Paris-aligned climate target of 1.5 degree and include different carbon revenue redistribution schemes. Moreover, we account for the economic inequalities resulting from residual and avoided climate impacts. We find that price-based climate policies without compensatory measures increase economic inequality in most countries and across models. However, revenue redistribution through equal per-capita transfers can offset this effect, leading to on average decrease in the Gini index by almost two points. When climate benefits are included, inequality is further reduced, but only in the long term. Around mid-century, the combination of dried-up carbon revenues and yet limited climate benefits leads to higher inequality under the Paris target than in the Reference scenario, indicating the need for further policy measures in the medium term.

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Working Papers

A Multi-Model Assessment of Inequality and Climate Change

Marie Young-Brun et al.

in: Research Square, 2024

Abstract

Climate change and inequality are critical and interrelated defining issues for this century. Despite growing empirical evidence on the economic incidence of climate policies and impacts, mainstream model-based assessments are often silent on the interplay between climate change and economic inequality. For example, all the major model comparisons reviewed in IPCC neglect within-country inequalities. Here we fill this gap by presenting a model ensemble of eight large-scale Integrated Assessment Models belonging to different model paradigms and featuring economic heterogeneity. We study the distributional implications of Paris-aligned climate target of 1.5 degree and include different carbon revenue redistribution schemes. Moreover, we account for the economic inequalities resulting from residual and avoided climate impacts. We find that price-based climate policies without compensatory measures increase economic inequality in most countries and across models. However, revenue redistribution through equal per-capita transfers can offset this effect, leading to on average decrease in the Gini index by almost two points. When climate benefits are included, inequality is further reduced, but only in the long term. Around mid-century, the combination of dried-up carbon revenues and yet limited climate benefits leads to higher inequality under the Paris target than in the Reference scenario, indicating the need for further policy measures in the medium term.

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Browse all working papers
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