Research

Climate change is ongoing, which means that adaptation to climate change is increasingly important. Many individuals in the Global South will respond to climate change by attempting to migrate to the Global North. Government policies in response to this migration will have significant consequences for migrants, residents of sending countries, and residents of border regions. Currently, policy responses to climate change–induced migration frame it as a security problem to be solved using militarized force. This orients policymakers towards solutions administered by hierarchical, monocentric bureaucracies, which feature significant knowledge problems and incentive problems. We contrast this with a polycentric approach, in which local governments, private firms, and voluntary associations adapt to the changes caused by climate migration. We argue that such an approach would reduce the human costs of climate change. 

More and more citizens around the world do not believe that market liberal democracies are up to the challenge of climate change. Instead, they favour radical solutions. Important parts of the environmentalist literature build on this fertile ground, reject liberal democracy and markets, and openly flirt with authoritarian solutions to environmental challenges. In my paper I ask whether it is correct that liberalism is not up to environmental challenges.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-023-09406-z

Large parts of the literature agree that deliberative democracy is the right institutional arrangement to achieve ecological reflexivity. Our paper sheds doubt on this consensus. While we agree with the critique of centralized, technocratic planning within the literature on deliberative democracy and agree that ecologically reflexive institutions must take advantage of the environmental ‘wisdom of the crowd’, we doubt that deliberative democracy is the right institutional arrangement to achieve this.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su15086396 

Lokaler Widerstand gegen neue Bauvorhaben ignoriert ökologische und soziale Zielkonflikte. Ein liberaler Ordnungsrahmen aus marktwirtschaftlichem Urbanismus und hyperlokaler Beteiligung bietet die beste Möglichkeit, diesen Zielkonflikten kooperativ zu begegnen. 

Presentation Title: "Environmentalism, a Flirt with Eco-Radicalism, and the Robustness of Green Ordoliberalism"

Presentation Title: "Coping with Climate Migration: Polycentric Adaptation vs. Monocentric Militarization" (together with Nathan Goodman, NYU)