Prof. Christian Gollier

Christian Gollier is an internationally renowned researcher in Decision Theory under Uncertainty and its applications to climate/environmental economics, finance, evaluation of public and private investments, insurance economics and cost-benefit analysis, with a special focus on societal and sustainability issues, including green finance, socially responsible investments and corporate social responsibility. He has published more than 100 scientific papers in international journals. He is also associate editor, editor or co-editor of scientific journals such the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, the Journal of Risk and Insurance, and Management Science. He has published several books on risk including “The Economics of Risk and Time”, MIT Press, winner of the 2001 Paul A. Samuelson Award, "Pricing the Planet's Future ", Princeton University Press (2012), ‘Ethical Asset Valuation and the Good Society”, Columbia University Press (2017), and “Le climat après la fin du mois”, PUF (2019).

In addition to outstanding scholarship, Christian has a rich international teaching experience. Prior to joining the University of Toulouse, he has lectured at University of Louvain and at UC San Diego (postdoc in 1988-89). He has also been associate professor at Ecole Polytechnique and at HEC-Paris (assistant then associate professor, 1989-1994). He was invited as a visiting scholar at the economics department of Harvard University during the Fall semester of 2012. He has been the Wesley Clair Mitchell Visiting Research Professor at the economics department of Columbia University during the academic year of 2015-2016.

Among many prizes and honors, he was awarded the fellowship of the Econometric Society, the membership of the Institut Universitaire de France, the Ernst Meyer prize, the Royal Belge Award, the Erik Kempe award (joint with M. Weitzman from Harvard) for the best paper in environmental economics (2008-2010) delivered by the EAERE, and the Prix Edouard Bonnefous of the French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, for example. He has also been President of the Risk Theory Society and of the European Group of Risk and Insurance Economists. He also received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.

With Jean Tirole, he created in 2007 the Toulouse School of Economics, the best economics department in continental Europe. He became deputy director (2007-2009) of TSE and then executive director of TSE from 2009 to today, with a 2-year interruption in 2015 and 2016. With Tirole and a TSE fund-raising team of 4 persons, he raised 100 million euros to establish an endowment for TSE through 2 fund-raising campaigns.

He is one of the Lead Authors of the fourth and fifth Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC, 2007 and 2013). He is also the president of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE, 1200 members). He plays an active role in the media to promote an efficient policy against climate change, in particular by imposing a uniform carbon pricing. He is the co-author of the chapter on climate change in the forthcoming Blanchard-Tirole report requested by President Macron. More recently, he did research and contributed to the public debate on the health policy to fight the covid-19 pandemic, to promote pool testing and age-specific lockdowns.