Carlo Carraro


Carlo Carraro is an Italian economist and academic specializing in environmental economics, climate policy, and sustainable development. He is Professor of Environmental Economics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where he also served as President/Rector from 2009 to 2014. In 2005 he founded the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change of which he is now a strategic advisor. He is a member of the Senior Advisory Group of the Green Growth Knowledge Platform, and President Emeritus of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He has played leading roles in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, serving as member of the Bureau and Vice-Chair of Working Group III from 2008 to 2023.
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Education

Carraro graduated with a Laurea in Economics from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 1981. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 1985, supported by a Fulbright Fellowship.

Academic career

Carraro began his academic career as an assistant professor at Ca’ Foscari University in 1983 and became a full professor of economics at the University of Udine in 1990 before going back to Ca’ Foscari in 1993 2. At Ca’ Foscari, he served as Vice-Rector for Research Policy, Director of the Department of Economics, and Rector. As Rector, he led internationalization initiatives, promoted research networks, and oversaw the university’s participation in European higher-education alliances. Under Carraro’s rectorship, Ca’ Foscari University launched a plan of structural renewal in administrative, teaching, and research functions to adapt to new national evaluation standards, which contributed to improved performance in national evaluations.
He has also taught at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, LUISS Guido Carli, the University of Udine, Aix-Marseille University, the University of Nice, Paris X Nanterre.

Fellowships and roles

Carraro is a research fellow of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, CESifo, and associate research fellow at CEPS. He has held leadership roles including President of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Scientific Director of FEEM from 2007 to 2017, Chair of the Executive Board of the European Institute on Economics and the Environment, Coordinator of the academic activities of H-Farm College, and President of the Italian National Committee on Climate Change Impacts on Infrastructures and Mobility. He has also served on EU–DG ECFIN’s High-Level Advisory Group.

Scientific activities

Carraro has been a member of the International Advisory Board of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and of the European Research Council Advanced Grants Evaluation Panel. He has also served on scientific committees including the Research Network on Sustainable Development in Paris, the Istituto di Economia e Politica dell'Energia e dell'Ambiente in Milan, the ENI Award for Research, and the Kyoto Project of the Fondazione Lombardia Ambiente.
He was elected a corresponding member of the Academy Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti in 2007. Carraro is a member of Academia Europaea and has been active in the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin, the Green Growth Knowledge Platform, Green Budget Europe, and the World Economic Forum Expert Network.
He has served on the advisory boards of institutions such as the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich, the BP Chair on Sustainable Development at the Pontifical University of Comillas in Madrid, and the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in Canberra. He has also been a member of the Executive Board of Venice Gateway for Science and Technologies and of the Steering Committees of the Ca’ Foscari–Harvard Summer School, the International Energy Workshop, and the Coalition Theory Network.
Carraro has played organizational roles in major conferences, chairing the Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and the First World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, both held in Venice.

Editorial Boards

Professor Carraro is member of the editorial board of the following journals: Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Environmental Modelling and Assessment, Energy Economics, Research in Economics, Integrated Assessment, International Environmental Agreements, International Yearbook of Environmental and Resource Economics, Economics Bulletin, E-conomics, Equilibri, Strategic Behavior and the Environment.

Research

Carraro’s research focuses on environmental and climate economics, coalition theory, and international environmental agreements. He has contributed to the development of integrated assessment models linking climate science and economics and has analyzed the economic impacts of mitigation and adaptation strategies.
He has published more than 300 journal articles and book chapters and is the author or editor of over 40 books, including works on sustainable development, energy economics, and international climate negotiations. His research has appeared in journals such as Environmental and Resource Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Energy Economics, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, and Nature Climate Change.

Publications

Carraro has written more than 200 papers and 30 books on the analysis of monetary and fiscal problems in open economies, monetary policy coordination in Europe, international negotiations and the formation of international economic coalitions, the effects of fiscal policies on oligopolistic markets, the econometric modelling of integrated economies, the econometric valuation of environmental policies to control global warming and further issues related to climate change policies, the dynamics of international environmental agreements, international locations industry and trade flows, global governance, coalition theory and research policies.

Honours and awards

Controversies

During his tenure as Rector of Ca’ Foscari University, several administrative decisions attracted criticism and debate:
  • In 2010, the invitation to Paolo Scaroni, then managing director of ENI, to speak at the academic year’s inauguration led to protests due to Scaroni’s past legal history.
  • In 2011, the invitation of Alessandro Profumo, former UniCredit managing director under tax fraud investigation, was also contested, even though Profumo was never indicted.
  • In 2013, a proposed exchange of university buildings, including historical palaces, for a modern office block generated concerns from faculty and students regarding transparency and governance. The proposal was met with petitions and demonstrations, and the proposed exchange was quickly dismissed.