Eric A. Strobl

Climate Change, Hydro-dependency and the African Dam Boom

Variations in rainfall and the potential power outages that may result call into question Africa's increasing reliance on hydropower. Eric Strobl, together with Robert Elliott and Matthew Cole, use a continent wide riverflow material model and IPPC climate change scenarios to show that current plans for African dam building are fairly well matched with river-flow predictions so that fears that international donors and national governments are making a series of expensive and environmentally damaging invest-ments may be overstated. However, predictions of an increase in extreme events and reduced rainfall for certain countries means there are still viability concerns for certain planned hydropower investments.

While his earlier work focused on labour markets in developing countries and the impact of foreign direct investment, over the last few years Eric Strobl has primarily dealt with the interaction of climate and the economy. Specifically, he has studied various aspects of the economic impact of climatic extreme events. More recently he has also embarked on investigating the economics of biodiversity, species protection and wild life management. During his stay at CESifo he will be investigating the impact of tropical storms using relatively high frequency data

His works has appeared in the Review of Economics of Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Environmental and Economics Management, European Economic Review, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

Eric Strobl is currently Professor in Development and Climate Economics at the University of Aix-Marseille (since 2016). Previously he held positions at Ecole Polytechnique, Universite de Paris X, Universite Catholique de Louvain, University College Dublin, University of the West Indies, and Trinity College Dublin. Mr Strobl holds a BA in Economics from Penn State University, an MA in Economics from Georgetown University and a PhD from Trinity College Dublin.