Jeroen van den Bergh Receives an ERC Advanced Grant

07/04/2017

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced today the awarding of its Advanced Grants to 231 top researchers in Europe. The funding is worth a total of €540 million and will give researchers the chance to realise their most creative ideas which can have a major impact on science, society and economy. The grants fall under the “Excellent Science” pillar of the EU's Horizon 2020 programme. 
Jeroen van den Bergh, ICREA researcher at the Institute for Enviornmental Science and Technology of the  UAB (ICTA-UAB), will receive one of these grants for his research project “Behavioral-evolutionary analysis of climate policy: Bounded rationality, markets and social interactions”.

The different existing climate policies are studied with incomparable approaches involving unique criteria and impact. The project led by Professor van den Bergh proposes uniting core features of such approaches within a behavioural-evolutionary framework, offering three advantages: evaluating the effectiveness of very different climate policy instruments in a consistent and comparative way; examining policy mixes by considering interaction between instruments from a behavioural as well as systemic perspective; and simultaneously assessing policy impacts mediated by markets and social interactions. The resulting models will be used to assess the performance of policy instruments – such as various carbon pricing and information provision instruments – in terms of employment, equity and CO2 emissions. The project will culminate in improved advice on climate policy.

Professor Van den Berg obtained a Masters degree in Econometrics and Operations Research from Tilburg University, and a PhD in Economics from VU University Amsterdam. He has published 16 books and more than 180 journal articles. He was awarded the Royal Shell Prize 2002 and the IEC Environmental Prize (Premi Sant Jordi de Medi Ambient) 2011, and has received awards for several publications. He is editor-in-chief of the Elsevier journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions.

With the results of this call, all 28 European Union countries include researchers who have been awarded ERC grants. According to data offered by the ERC, some 2,400 research proposals were submitted in 2016, out of which 9.6% have been selected for funding. These grants will not only allow top researchers make their most creative ideas at scientific frontiers become a reality, they will also lead to job creations as an estimated 2,000 postdocs, PhD students and other staff can be employed in the grantees' research teams.