Clare Balboni

Economics of Environment and Energy Programme Director and Assistant Professor of Economics

Expertise: environmental economics, trade, development economics

Email:

c.a.balboni@lse.ac.uk

Room:

SAL 3.18

Connect:

Website

Links:

Economics of Environment and Energy
Department of Economics

Biography

Clare Balboni is Director of the Economics of Environment and Energy programme at STICERD and Assistant Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. She has a PhD in Economics from LSE and was previously 3M Career Development Assistant Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.

Latest

Journal Articles

Using Markets to Adapt to Climate Change

12 February 2026

Clare Balboni, Lint Barrage, Ian W. Bolliger, Judson Boomhower, Delavane Diaz, Hannah Druckenmiller, Teevrat Garg, Simon Greenhill, Miyuki Hino, Harrison Hong, Solomon Hsiang, Carolyn Kousky, Jeremy Martinich, Ishan Nath, Kimberly L. Oremus, R. Jisung Park, Toan Phan, Jonathan Proctor, Will Rafey, Marcus C. Sarofim, Wolfram Schlenker and Benjamin Simon

This Science paper (2026) argues that climate adaptation needs to complement emissions reduction, as climate impacts will persist even under ambitious mitigation scenarios. The authors-including Clare Balboni (LSE)-highl... Read more...

Journal Articles

The Origins and Control of Forest Fires in the Tropics

06 October 2025

Clare Balboni, Robin Burgess and Benjamin Olken

Environmental externalities-uncompensated damages imposed on others-lie at the root of climate change, pollution, deforestation and biodiversity loss. Empirical evidence is limited, however, as to how externalities drive... Read more...

Journal Articles

Spatial environmental economics

01 August 2025

Clare Balboni and Joseph S. Shapiro

This chapter examines the role of spatial sorting in shaping economic inequality in the United States. We first document the evolution of firm and worker sorting by skill level between 1980 and 2017. We highlight a shift... Read more...

Journal Articles

In Harm's Way? Infrastructure Investments and the Persistence of Coastal Cities

01 January 2025

Clare Balboni

Coasts contain a disproportionate share of the world's population, reflecting historical advantages, but environmental change threatens a reversal of coastal fortune in the coming decades as natural disasters intensify a... Read more...

Journal Articles

The Economics of Tropical Deforestation

01 September 2023

Clare Balboni, Aaron Berman, Robin Burgess and Benjamin Olken

Two factors have elevated recent academic and policy interest in tropical deforestation: first, the realization that it is a major contributor to climate change; and second, a revolution in satellite-based measurement th... Read more...

Capabilities, Competition and Innovation Seminars

Firm adaptation in production networks: Evidence from extreme weather events in Pakistan

25 May 2023

Clare Balboni (STICERD, LSE)

Journal Articles

Why Do People Stay Poor?

01 May 2022

Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak and Anton Heil

There are two broad views as to why people stay poor. One emphasizes differences in fundamentals, such as ability, talent, or motivation. The poverty traps view emphasizes differences in opportunities that stem from acce... Read more...

Journal Articles

Could Gentrification Stop the Poor from Benefiting from Urban Improvements?

01 May 2021

Clare Balboni, Gharad Bryan, Melanie Morton and Bilal Siddiqi

When policymakers invest in urban infrastructure, there are concerns that poor residents living near the infrastructure will be displaced. This paper investigates mechanisms that may lead to such infrastructure-induced g... Read more...

Journal Articles

Cycles of Fire? Politics and Forest Burning in Indonesia

01 May 2021

Clare Balboni, Robin Burgess, Anton Heil, Jonathan Old and Benjamin Olken

This paper examines the link between electoral incentives and environmental degradation by exploiting a satellite dataset on 107,000 forest fires and 879 asynchronous district elections in Indonesia. Fires represent a ch... Read more...

EEE Working Papers

The Origins and Control of Forest Fires in the Tropics

19 March 2021

Clare Balboni, Robin Burgess and Benjamin Olken

Pigou (1920) pointed to "uncompensated damage done to surrounding woods by sparks from railway engines" as the canonical example of an environmental externality. We study a modern corollary - tropical forest fires used f... Read more...

Development Discussion Papers

Why Do People Stay Poor?

09 March 2020

Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak and Anton Heil

There are two views as to why people stay poor. The equal opportunity view emphasizes that differences in individual traits like talent or motivation make the poor choose low productivity jobs. The poverty traps view e... Read more...

International Economics Workshops

Living on the edge: infrastructure investments and the persistence of coastal cities

02 November 2016

Clare Balboni (STICERD, LSE)