时间：12月8日（星期六）15:00-17:00

　　地点：主楼317

　　题目：New Frontiers in Infrastructure Economics: Climate Change and the Welfare Effects of Unmet Demand

　　报告内容摘要：

　　Climate change is a constant threat to the resilience of economic and social infrastructure, particularly in emerging markets. This research, funded by the UK Department for International Trade and the International Growth Centre, assesses the welfare effects on manufacturing firms of unmet demand for energy because of extreme weather events. Zambia is heavily reliant upon hydro-power for electricity. Catastrophic electrical outages in both Lusaka and the Copperbelt occurred in 2015 in the wake of unusually severe El Nino produced droughts. This caused significant economic losses to firms in both the primary and secondary sector with a net loss of twenty percent of manufacturing firms due to insolvencies in 2015-16. Firms that survived generally invested in diesel-powered back-up generators which are expensive to operate and leave considerable carbon footprints; some even established localised micro-grids. Although ZESCO obtained investment from the government to extend the electricity grid and diversify its energy sources, the results of these efforts have been mixed. We surveyed a stratified sample of 150 firms (using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews performed by enumerators in the field) in conjunction with quantitative methodologies to better understand how Zambia’s energy infrastructure can be made more resilient in the face of these extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent with climate change.

　　报告人简介：

　　D’Maris Coffman joined UCL in September 2014 as a Senior Lecturer in Economics and Finance of the Built Environment at CPM here at UCL Bartlett. In February 2017, she was appointed Interim Director (Head of Department) of BSCPM. In late January 2018, she was appointed to a professorial chair in Economics and Finance of the Built Environment with effect from March 2018. Before coming to UCL, she spent six years as a fellow of Newnham College where I variously held a junior research fellowship (Mary Bateson Research Fellowship), a post as a college lecturer and teaching fellow, and a Leverhulme ECF. In July 2009, she started the Centre for Financial History, which she directed through December 2014. It is still going strong, but has moved from Newnham College to Darwin College in line with the affiliation of its new director. She did her undergraduate training at the Wharton School in managerial and financial economics and her PhD in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, her doctoral research in the UK was funded in part by the Mellon Foundation under the guise of an IHR pre-doctoral fellowship and an SSRC international dissertation fellowship. Professor Coffman’s research interests span infrastructure, construction, real estate and climate change.

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