good morning good afternoon good evening this is the first public lecture of the festival of economics we have the great pleasure and honor to have esther duflo with us she's not new to the festival she was with us in 2007 on uh with a lesson on human capital in developing countries and then in 2011 on the methods of field experiments to fight poverty for that she was awarded the nobel prize together with uh bajeet ramaji and michael cramer in 2019 and the nobel prize was one for using field experiments to the policies to mitigate poverty on a global scale since esther was already with us there is no need for us to go through her very rich biography and the very numerous awards that she has received once and again i would like to invite those who are following us to use the website of the festival we have an archive with the past lectures you'll have the opportunity to listen to the lectures that esther uh gave in 2007 and 2011 in introducing you i would like uh to limit my comments to your very brilliant career even though you are very young have always been very keen in practical issues and topics for the well-being of millions of people the key word of your research and your research activities is the focus on things that matter for everyday life and for millions of people i think that a very practical example of that is given uh in a book that you will partially introduce it's full of topics starting from migration to international trade technology change and the effects on employment global warming and the topics you'll talk of today in that book you tackle a very important issue i.e the uh dimensions of governments and uh taxes political of distribution that is very practical matters that are the very focus of decisions made by governments on a daily basis something on which we are all very very uh attentive top economists uh the same level of esther duflo tackling these subjects obviously is not something that is uh to be taken forgiven the second main feature of his work that i'd like to highlight and that i believe that top economists usually open up to new visions and i believe that you contributed in terms of methodology the methodology of failed experiments are that is experiments that are not carried out in labs and experiments that i should consider obviously the conditions under which the science scientific scientists um should randomize uh choosing samples of individuals that are administer a certain policies that measure a certain decision and on the other side usually these are controlled with a control group and you looking at the behaviors of different groups you may see the impact of a specific measure and this should be in implemented so that it is the researcher it is the field researcher that uh and that is the difference between field experiments and lab experiments so where it is the government the administration the public administration administering these uh tests usually the field experiment is managed directly by the researcher himself and this is something that has been widely used in the research projects carried out in developing countries that led to the understanding of many aspects of policy and other strategies to contrast poverty the second main feature of your research work and its mind-opening activity is that many researchers have been involved there have been many researchers involved in under development issues over the past few years are thanks to the contribution given to the discipline by essa duflo and she also paved the way to the way to organize this work she founded the poverty lab with jay pal which is a facility that as of today is managing over 1 000 experimental projects or field experiments in some 90 countries if you're not mistaken and this obviously allows to make assessment in different countries to see what the best practices are to oppose and conscious encounter poverty this is all on my side because i don't wish to take any more time away from the lecture by esther duflo let me just remind you that we are going to take a few questions from those who attend the lecture online and as they are certainly going to take some questions from the floor so over to you esther thank you very much uh it's a pleasure to be here virtually i must say it's a bit of a mixed feelings bittersweet because the last time i was in trento first of all it was in person and i really and loved being the street of trento and seeing all the people who had come to listen to economists and to enjoy economics in action which is not something very frequent in our profession because most people tend to mistrust you know us um and in many ways that's a very different feeling to do this to do this virtually and not to get that experience um that's a bigger loss than in most settings usually i'm quite fine to speak online and here i'm really like feeling a pain of nostalgia for the world before the other reason being that it was the same year as alan kroger also had been invited and this is actually uh three days that i spent hanging out with alan kroeger in trento and got to know him a little bit and of course he um he died uh not very long ago um and we all uh miss him and missing miss his wants and his insights and it made me it reminded me of that uh the fact that i was speaking here at uh hunter today nevertheless thank you very much for for inviting me again um the the book that uh tito uh i kindly refer to is called good economics for hard times so i just given that the topic of the of the conference this year the festivals is climate change and tackling climate change i decided to slightly change the title of the lecture to good economics for a warmer time and to focus it on the issue of tackling climate so in some sense you might think that the the the recent event in the u.s would give a new urgency to the question of climate change that should really be bipartisan this is the sky above san francisco which were tinted in this weird orange dye um in the in the morning from the morning because of all of the the fire that are burning in california and really all along the west coast of the united states and in fact if the fire and then the possibility that they are created by um a climate by the change in the climate uh where kind of top uh in the newspaper and you know president trump was trying to deny it and you know discussions were being held until uh you know unfortunately would but innsberg passed away and then this transition on time he went by the west side and and it seems that the only thing that matters is to uh to have a you know conservative judge on the supreme court and the whole even discussion about climate has been relegated to the second or third plan so that makes you a little bit concerned that even events as dramatic as this one aren't really going to change uh the economic positions of the united states very much on the question of climate and that's related to i think one of my first point which is um the it is it matters because this is really in the rich countries in the u.s in europe that we need to change our behavior uh to tackle climate change the emissions responsible for climate change are mainly due to behavior of rich country citizens that's true because a lot of the missions take place in the rich country themselves but that's true more broadly because even though china in technically speaking china produces a lot of uh of of co2 but it produces it uh on behalf of the rich countries because it produces it on uh to produce the things that people in a rich country are then consuming so if we want to be fair and describe the responsibility of climate change accurately we don't need to uh look just at where the emission are actually emitted physically but which where is the consumption that the emission that where is the consumption taking place and when you do it this way which is something that toma piketty and lucas chancellor has done you come up with and then you you look at like who is consuming the cars and the iphones and the electricity and the air conditioning that creates the co2 emission that uh threatened the climate and you see that it's uh um roughly you have a rule which you can remember as the 1050 rule which is ten percent of the world's highest polluters are responsible for for almost 50 percent of global emission so you can see here the top 10 percent of emitters uh many of them are in north america um and uh and these are people so the many of the millimeters are in north america very few are in are in africa and then in the bottom and they're together they emit 45 percent of world's emission and then you look at the bottom 50 of of emitters and a lot of them are in india and in in south africa and in china and together they emit 13 percent of world's emission so uh ten percent of the highest polluters are responsible for fifty percent of global emission therefore if we want to really change something about climate change a lot of the action will have to be in the richer countries not all of the action because there are still things that can be done in poorer countries but a lot will need to take place in the richer country the costs of climate change unfortunately are however not going to be felt in the rich world they are going to be felt in the poor world and this is for true reason the first reason is that the poor countries tend to be in warmer places so this is temperature today average temperature over the last few years and the rather it is the the hotter it is and you can see that uh of course a lot of the very hot countries are in africa in sub-saharan africa or in south asia or in the north of latin america and those happen to be the poorer country today because they are in hot places it means that it is in those places that for the same the warming of the planet we are going to see more of the extreme days are happening in particular if you look at the next 20 years all countries will add many more very warm days so days above 32 degrees so the us for example will have 12 such days but india will add some 37 such teams and then if you look at the next uh uh if you look by 2050 the number of very hard days that are going to be added compared to today you can see that it's even more skewed and in in france and in italy there is almost going to be no very few very hot day will be added but in the north of latin america in uh the in sub-saharan africa uh you're going to see in the horn of africa you're going to see this huge increase in the number of very very hot day by 2050. and those very very hot are the one that that caused uh economic damage and that good death so michael greenstone has led a group of many economists across several universities and scientists across several universities in the world to try and and estimate the best we can uh the what this uh two phenomenon combined the fact that there will be more so one more point i need to make before is that not only there will be many more day in hot very hot day in india than in the us but in addition the cost of this very hot day on mortality is likely to going to be much larger in those poor countries than in rich countries so this uh charts compared the excess mortality uh due to hot temperature compared to a moderate temperature of 70 to 74 degrees fahrenheit in india versus the u.s so 95 is about 32 degrees celsius so you can see that at 32 degrees celsius 95 in the us they are just barely a few more deaths are caused by this very hot temperature and that's because we have air conditioning very few people work outside so people are able to protect themselves in india however when it gets really hard many more people die than would otherwise be than would otherwise uh die on a moderate day so india and and africa and let the poor country in latin america really face a double warming where they are going to have very many more hot days as the temperature gets warmer and in addition they are less equipped to actually cope with the impact of those one days and a consequence uh so this is what the group led by michael crinston has done is to put these two facts together and try to estimate the best again the excess mortality due to a warming temperature in the next several years so if you look at the next 20 years then you know uh sweden and denmark and nowhere will actually do better the the reducing mortality will avoid very very cold uh days of winter and that will actually reduce martensite where you're going to find increase in mortality is again in sub-saharan africa and uh in um and in south asia so this is where we are going to see the cost in the next 20 years and even more by 2050 where you start seeing a potentially enormous cost in the the north of india and pakistan in sub-saharan africa and in the entire middle east and that's again the combination of the fact that these are places that are going to become hotter and that are going to experience more very hot day and the impact of warmth on mortality is not linear it takes place at this very hot days and the fact that they have less to to to cope and to alleviate the impact of climate change so that's the first two facts is one the uh the it's mainly the rich countries that are responsible for a mission and also they've been responsible for all the warming that has taken place to today so the responsibility lies with us second is the cost lie with the poor countries that's unfortunately not a very good situation because that really reduced the interest in of people in rich countries to do anything about the program so we need to know to act now to start preventing climate change and not to wait till there is a catastrophe for several reasons the first one is that the recent experience we've seen during the covet 19 crisis is the the oecd the g7 the world bank the imf you name it nobody has really been very generous in helping the poor countries of during the covet 19 crisis it is really remarkable that rich countries have spent colossal amount of money on their own citizens but despite the economic cost of the pandemic in poor countries there was very little increase in aid there there has been a little you know uh you know forgiving of debt or not even forgiving but pushing the interest and that's that's that's about it only in the pandemic evidence and i had called for martial plan but really nothing happened uh and this is really um disgraceful but it also tells us that we must act now before the panic sets because when you see larger costs from climate change they are going to be experienced also in the rich countries even if it's less you know deadly so you're going to see floods and very hot summers and and fires and so people are going to see that the worry is that we are going to have a covid19 type reaction where the rich countries feel that they really need to do something to protect themselves and will be even less willing to turn towards the poor countries that are the complete innocent victim of the situation so i think that's a reason why we need to act now before the panic sets another reason why we need to act now is we can't just hope that technology some technology magic one is going to to take us out of this problem we cannot rely on technological change alone in in climate change discussion there is a huge uh premium to engineers and to engineering solutions uh the when you discuss um for example um the possibility to buy carbon credit it generally goes towards financing uh technologies that have been uh that for which we have good engineering estimate that they would reduce the use of technology without necessarily having any any um proof that it works in the field more generally there is a big hope and that's happening here in economics is the key hope is that we should really invest massively in clean technology because if we do this one-time investment ultimately the solar battery solar panels wind panel etc that energy which is clean will end up being cheaper than the oil technology so it will replace the old technology and will be even richer than before and will be able to consume even more than before but in addition it will be clean so there is this big optimism for example in externs report uh and honestly it's a possibility that it happens this way but i don't think we can be completely sure and in in fact the impact of purely technological solution on combating climate change is often disappointing in real life so as tito pointed out my day job is to run randomized control trials or to read the work that other people other people do and there has there have been a small number of very useful studies of what happens when you deploy a technology that is supposed to really reduce energy consumption without changing uh people's uh otherwise people's behavior uh in the real in real life one example is some a program that took place during the obama administration for uh weatherization of homes so it's basically home improvement insulation windows etc and people were given basically vouchers the opportunity to get get to to buy vouchers to do it for free and the first thing is the demand for this program was very low so even people who got randomized into getting the program we are not so keen to get it and the second thing is that uh for those who did do it there was in fact very little improvement in their energy bill it didn't really reduce or even in how warm it was in the home so in fact the technologies in their home proved not to be as effective as what was planned in engineering estimate similarly there was another study done in india by nick ryan uh a former student of mine um who is now at hill who looked at for his mit dissertation looked at worked with terry the climate change consultancy that won the the nobel prize actually in in for peace a few years ago and they looked at uh subsidizing a program that helped firms get an energy audit and gave them some good tips to how to change the uh various things in their technology to improve uh to to reduce their energy consumption and what i found is that uh first of all without adding finance to it nobody did anything that was recommended to them and second of all when people were offered finance in addition they undertook some of this investment but as a result what they did is that they produced more so they produced more they made more money but they they had just as many emissions so the impact for them is positive but for the world for for the planet is is is not at all positive there is if anything a worsening of the emission as a result so there's only two examples but it's certainly no two i think quite representative example of the danger there is to be too naive about the technique that means that if we want to really move the needle on climate change the bad news is we cannot without changing our behavior it's not going to be sufficient to drive you know more efficient cars we need to drive a car less often or maybe to not have a car at all so for some for many economists this is a message that's depressing because uh there is the idea that it's gonna be very costly to people and in fact this is something that uh you know maybe scares many americans in particular they are thinking of a particular way of life that they have and that they want to continue um but i think that we don't have to be pessimistic about that because while we overestimate the miracles of technology we underestimated the miracle of the human mind and in particular we underestimate the capacity of the human being for change and for changing behavior so our preferences are not set at birth and unmutable they are they are the product of our social environment they change uh quite rapidly depending on what our friends do and they are also very much affected by habit so there's a set of projects by han alcat from nyu that demonstrate it's very nice and in particular he did a several project with um a company called all power which delivers power and started sending energy audits to two people are energy reports so basically you got a little card in the mail similar to the panel that you see here on top of the slide where you see that people uh you compare your energy consumption to your efficient neighbors or to your other neighbors so this particular report the person was great because they were they were consuming below average and even below the best then what he did is that uh he they run a series of experiments uh where people got these letters and what they they found is um first of all when while people were getting the letters uh their their energy consumption declined and you can see the decline uh being larger and larger so this is the the bar that that goes down after the zeros is several one month two months three months four months six months seven months after the treatment began people consume less and less and less energy presumably as they get various equipment that allows them to reduce their energy consumption or slightly change their behavior in the second paper they looked at what happens when you discontinue some of the people from getting those from getting those reports so on the rights um where it says site two long run effect on the right side you see the continued group is the group that continued to get report for uh three years and the discontinued group stopped getting them after about two years so one group got them for five years in total and one group stopped after two years um and what you see is that the group that continued getting the report their energy consumption continued declining and declining and declining but the gold that stopped didn't go back up they stayed low so that's really the power of habits and the fact that when you get used to consuming differently uh you've done some some stuff maybe you've changed some of your appliances maybe you got you put the thermostat at the slightly uh cool the colder temperature in the winter and and slightly warmer temperature in the summer and now that's set forever but if we are creature of habits then it means that at the after we're used to a new behavior it's not costly anymore because our preferences have changed so it's not that people who adjusted to the all-power experiment are now a little just a little bit sadder because they consume a little less energy they they don't care because they're used to the way it is because if they didn't care now that they're not getting the reports anymore they could go back to where they were so if that so that's very good news because it shows that we can uh uh my first part of the talk is we must change our behavior but this is to say that we can and it might not be that high we have we can be optimistic about that however there is a caveat to that which is that we cannot hope that people will change their behavior to tackle climate change without tackling at the same time for distribution and trusting god so that is true both in rich countries and in poor countries so of course i'm you know in france and the yellow jacket movement which took place a few years ago was very much a response to the attempt to introduce a government tax which was done in isolation of any redistribution effort in fact on the back of redistribution from the pork to the rich since the government not long before that had increased the flat tax and gotten rid of the wealth tax so this government started by increase the flat tax get rid of the wealth tax and which is obviously a regressive policy and then introduced a cast attacks on gasoline for climate and people it got so upset that even removing it was not enough and you see this yellow jacket says the larger that means in english the money of uh for fighting climate change is not in fiscal paradise it is in fiscal power it's not in the pocket of the politics citizen upset uh citizen solidarity so the idea was very much that uh people understand where is the incident of this of the tax on gasoline and they realized that this is going to directly hit their butt that you know the people in so the way that it was often presented is people in paris are wondering are worried about the the end of the world but we are worried about the end of the month and uh without tackling the end of the month problem i don't think you can take tackle the end of the world problem because it is really going to be seen as a just a luxury that people can afford this could have been done very differently this could have been done in a way that made very clear that the tax is going to be redistributed that it's not going to go to the general government but yet that it's not just another increase in taxes and in fact i think it should have been tackled in a way that's more than one for one but even when you do this uh and try to do it uh um try to do it in this way that is redistributive if there is no trust of the government to uh to follow up follow through on this promise it might not work so this is a headline from the hindustan time from today or yesterday so in india in in punjab the the policy is really um unbelievably bad for the environment which is that farmers get free electricity because they get free electricity they can run them their pump as much as they want and therefore they drain water out of the soil and there is a huge uh issue in india in punjab in particular of the water table receiving potentially creating an absolute catastrophe so the natural thing to do of course and that's the economist almost instinctive knee-jerk reaction is when you are in a situation like that you need to impose it you need to start paying farmers and to pay for electricity as long as you don't pay for electricity they are going to overuse it and therefore they are going to use too much water so the government once tried to do that and they got kicked out of power so now they are trying again by but they are trying to do it in a way that will leave farmers uh even that will will live from a hole where there is no incidence from farmer so they will replace it with direct benefit transfer of the substance so people instead of being you know subsidized in the form of free power will be subsidized in the form of a fixed amount of money that is not depending on their power so again from an economic point of view that's the perfect thing to do unfortunately there is no trust that it's going to be done uh so um people feel that uh so the farmers are completely against this policy even though on the face of it they will not lose from it but they don't trust that that something fishy is not going to happen and they are going to find themselves in the worst position so this highlight not only to link the uh climate or pollution policy anti-pollution policy to redistribution but also to do it in the context where people trust the government another reason why people need to trust the government is that the only way that we can really succeed in climate change to combine market solutions with increased regulation but if you have regulation and they are not enforced then they are really useless so this shows this let's show you one example of pollution of regulation not being enforced from india as well from godrat this is industrial pollution you can see a distribution of suspended particular matters so this is the how many what fraction of firms are found with the uh pollution of 100 110 150 etc the red line is the the regulation and you can see that in the back check data the the the power the panel below that farms are all over the place and many firms are polluting four times as much as the alloyed level but uh the enforcement of the regulation is very very poor in part because in the audits that they receive which are a private third-party farm audit many of the firm looks like they are perfectly compliant which is of course is a sign that the audits are all fine fancified so you can't have an effective fight against policy unless governments are able to enforce their own rules and that requires again trust in government and transparent governance so in conclusion i would like to highlight the the how much the kovid 19 crisis uh is a is a huge opportunity it's of course a huge disaster but for climate change it is also a huge importance there are several reasons for that the first one is that uh the kuwait 19 crisis has reminded us that sometimes nature is just stronger than us it's not that this this this um it was we had not been warned that there could be a big epidemics but in the western world it had never happened so i think we completely didn't believe it could happen again it could happen to us and one of the key reasons for the much more effective fight uh in against kobe 19 in in countries like korea and taiwan is that they have experienced similar names before and they were therefore much better the second one is that it shows us that sometimes dire warnings by experts do come to pass so it is sometimes it is so what so maybe what scientists tell us about the future state of the planet and the impact it will have will be understood a little more now that we saw that they were right in the epidemic third it shows us that uh sometimes we do need government to steer collective action so i was saying that the trust in government is really an essential part of an effective fight against climate change because we really need government to put regulation and we will need government to compensate the losers from any uh um you know carbon tax or other climate mitigation strategy and um if this government is not trusted then they can't do their work and i think the before the curvy 1980 epidemics we saw all over the oecd in italy in particular a huge decline in the trust in governments and i think the kovit 19 had made it so clear that we need governments we need governments to have masks we need government to impose a lockdown when it's necessary we need government to pay for the economic rescue package and to invest in the vaccine and all that and therefore it may one hope that i do have is that it will give people again some taste and interest in government as a you know as a project and not just that as a punching as something that we should all be interested in and invested in and finally uh it shows us that we can change our lifestyle without being so unhappy about it of course there is many aspects of the lockdown we hated but i live in paris now uh this year next to bassey and you can see like a typical scene for a busy morning with strong bicycles and people going to work and it's so different from uh what it was uh even a couple of years ago and people i think are getting used to travel by bicycle instead of traveling by car and they see i don't think they are unhappier for it so we're getting used to to to new behavior and i think this shows us first first of all we might stick with those so gonna fall it shows us that you know we can do it it's not that bad so i think this these four points leave me hopeful uh i conclude by thanking you for your attention and hoping for the best and now i will be open for question thank you thank you very much i think that also the global and the virtual audience has joined the hands to clap you for this brilliant lecture thank you very much for this very exhaustive picture at the beginning it you look like a bit pessimistic but you gave us some hopes in the end thank you very much uh for uh reminding us of alberto alessina to whom this festival is devoted you mentioned the issue of training preferences collective actions social norms we had a very important contribution by alberto and we miss him very much we have two questions which i i turn to you the first concerns social inequalities and climate change with increasing uh social inequalities because of the climate change how can economists answer to the demands for climate justice do you think that the economists are there to study a green and just transition knowing that not always workers will accept new opportunities in the green economy this is the first question the second concerns and equalities as well apparently global and inequalities and climate change are connected in a vicious circle many studies demonstrate that the climate change worsens inequalities what is the other side of that can we say that global inequalities causes and worsens climate change and how so i would like to start from these two questions let's see whether we receive others all questions are selected indeed we receive many and they are being uh selected you have the floor uh yes so on the on the first on the second question first um yes both statements are true but i think on the but they act on two on different sides so i don't think uh climate and makes the rich richer but it makes the poor poorer in the sense that the impact of climate change on the livelihood of the poor is uh much worse than the incline impact of climate change unlikely would on livelihood of the reach in particular if we look at it globally so for example uh people in two countries are much more likely to be uh displaced by floods or by catastrophic uh climate events when it's hot since many of the poor are involved in farming when it's hot they lose they lose their livelihood um and then people who live in rich countries who are working like you know like me behind the screens aren't really affected by in their day-to-day work by how uh how warm it is so uh so climate change because it affects the puma will increase inequality in this way now inequality also increase climate change but this time it's the top income the the increase in the income of the riches of the top one percent uh on two percent or three percent that increase in equality simply because their consumption uh increase and their their their consumption is compared to the poor they are just gulping um emissions like uh um you know like there is no tomorrow so they have they buy as inequality increases more people buy bigger bigger you know cars and more cars and jets and stuff like that which has a huge impact on on on climate change whereas if inequality reduced and most of the income gains were experienced at the very bottom of the of the income distribution like we've seen uh in the last uh decades as well we've seen an um an improvement of the situation of the very poorest the the increasing emission that is linked to that is very very small because they don't they just don't consume that much so it's not in the same margin but both of these things are true i don't think create a vicious circle per se because these are different mechanism but both of this relationship now if i understand the first question well is the question of how do we do um you know how do we do a green new deal that is acceptable and convincing and i think it will take some work because people uh poor people are not going it was in the in the rich countries and in the poor countries are not going to take the government at face value they're not going to just say yes okay i'm going to let you increase the carbon tax because you're going to create some employment uh but they so they are uh they are going to uh they are going to be someone mistrustful but um if those opportunities are created and they are convincing then people will i think accept the jobs give me one second at all please these are things my children were drying their hair there is another question giovanni di martino to limit the energy consumption that depends on personal behavior we need to invest more to make awareness campaigns for citizens and to promote virtuous policies convincing people that sparing energy is convenient that's a comment more than a question let me comment on that maybe the covet crisis gives us or gives government more opportunities to intervene because people trust governments more we need governments and also uh people are more aware of externalities the damages that we can the hurt we do to others and the damages you do to the environment by not collecting waste or not being individually responsible in your behaviors because you think that it's up to others to be concerned but with covid you know that if you don't wear a mask you can be contaminated and can contaminate others so now we have a higher perception of the externalities this is more or because of carving than of climate change so that might be a tool in the hands of governments to promote correct behaviors and respect to the environment what do you think yeah i think so first of all i think the the comment is absolutely appropriate that we need to use all of the tools in the trade and economies have been you know often maybe too dismissive of tools that are not just prices and i think convincing in a convincing campaign in particular convincing campaign by credible people can really make a difference and in the case of kovid i've done some work on uh convincing people to to adopt protective behavior like social distancing both in india and the us and um people are willing to be convinced exactly as as tito said uh you know you can make people people understand that by wearing a mask they're protecting themselves but also others and by spreading those messages uh that you actually changed people's behavior we we have a project in india where we found really significant impact on people's behavior from receiving video message by a credible person in this case my collaborator abhijit banerjee who was the credible person for india and so that suggests that people are willing to be convinced and we therefore we should uh we should try to convince them and also i think the movement is such that people might be you know for example the the the whole lesson about mask was all new and people understood it and now people have have adjusted to that behavior everybody wears a mask and understand that it's important at least in europe and we can remind people of them say in the same way that you're wearing a mask even though it's inconvenient because you're protecting others you know take your bicycle to go to work because you're protecting future generations and people in the world ecological change is going to require investment well shall we find the resources for that second question by massimo martika what do you think about general lincoln there's actually a chapter of the book by esther on that but this is something that hasn't got to do with the environment anyway as esther dufloz said the redistribution policy are all important also when it comes to the environment so basically it takes us away from the environment but not so much esther over to you investments uh bad day they will have to come from the from the budget of some investment of course will be undertaken by by private funds simply because they make sense so these are the parts of the climate change transition that just required to be forward-looking that eventually it would be something that would be beneficial some investment will be undertaken by firms if we make it mandatory so the cost is not directly going to be burned by citizens it's going to be born by firm and therefore by the combination of shareholders and stakeholders by for example changing the mandate so california just announced that they were going to make it forbidden to sell any gasoline car by by 2050 or something like that so that would require an enormous investment from farms um we are not directly paying for it even though we are implicitly paying for it then there could be also some direct investment by by countries today is of course what yesterday pre-covered was a very good time to do so so because the the interest rates are so low that is the exact right time to to borrow to invest in the future and to invest in a clean future so even a very conservative government free skilled conservative government like holland did that and now in a sense it's even better because there is a lot of money that needs to be spent to recover from covet and that money can be spent in a way that preserves the the future not just of the economy but of the planet by having premium and pre-investment and italy is going to be one of the country that spends most of this that receive a lot of this money and there is a great chance to do this in a way that's psychologically responsible i also think there is a great demand for it politically so i have high hopes that that that this is going to happen the last question was your radio on universal's salary so in uh it is absolutely right that the two questions are connected because uh you can't think about climate without thinking about redistribution uh in my opinion um a universal basic income is too uh indiscriminate for the rich countries that in rich countries that have sophisticated statistical abilities that that we are able to know who needs money more than other people and therefore we can give more money and devote more resources to some people who need it who in fact need it other than give everyone a flat sum that is very small so i think giving everyone a flat sum and then tax it away is inefficient compared to concentrated resources on those who really need it for things that you really want to happen and when you can do it so in rich countries so that's what we recommend in the book is for the rich country to focus more on minimum income guarantee for example which ensure that people are not to make at least some amount of money and uh um you know creating subsidies to create good jobs in sectors like the green economy or early childhood or take care of older people and in very very poor countries where this statistical apparatus is not there there uh we recommend a universal very basic income so a very small amount of money that people are guaranteed they can get anytime they need it so in the case of developing countries and minimum income for a well-off countries an income could be given so that those who actually need it thank you very much thank you very much for your wonderful lecture for your contribution thank you for taking all the questions as a matter of fact there are many more questions that are um coming but unfortunately uh we don't have any more time at 8 30 we're going to have the lecture by professor north house who's going to talk about carbon tax that triggered actually um led to the demonstrations of in france so we're going to tackle the very same subject this afternoon later on today and uh how can we join these measures with redistribution measures thank you very much the professor do flow and uh see you all again with uh robert schiller at the next lecture thank you you