James Hausman Tax Law & Policy Workshop: Zachary Liscow

THE JAMES HAUSMAN TAX LAW & POLICY WORKSHOP 

presents 

Zachary Liscow
Yale Law School 

Innovation and Climate Law 

Wednesday, February 8, 2017
12:30 - 1:45
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park 

A common view in environmental law is that the government should not pick certain technologies over others. Rather, in the context of climate policy, this view suggests that the government should impose a carbon tax and let that induce innovation in private sector through the patent system. We offer a qualified defense of the government “picking winners”: directly encouraging innovation in cleantech over dirtytech and even within cleantech. Our argument is largely based on recent research in economics showing “path dependence” in the development of energy technology, suggesting that a big push in cleantech innovation can lead to a permanent reorientation of the energy sector and lead to more emissions reductions at lower cost. This divergence from conventional economic thinking has far-reaching consequences for domestic and international environmental and innovation policy. 

Zachary Liscow is an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His teaching and research interests focus on tax law, tax policy, empirical legal studies, and law and economics. Liscow earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2012 and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 2005 with degrees in Economics and in Environmental Science and Public Policy. He has been a Staff Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers and worked for the World Bank's inspector general. Liscow clerked for the Honorable Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.