Kiran Chawla

Climate change is expected to exacerbate existing inequalities by disproportionately impacting economically disadvantaged populations across as well as within countries. My research focuses on understanding how an expanded notion of economic welfare that includes preferences for uncertainty and economic equity (intergenerational, intra-regional, and inter-regional) alongside efficiency can be incorporated into climate policy design to mitigate adverse distributional consequences of climate change. I draw on insights from economics, psychology, philosophy, and law to understand how to formalize people's risk and fairness preferences systematically for policy-relevant insights and analyze potential legal and institutional barriers for designing distribution-sensitive climate change policy responses globally.