Armon Rezai is full professor at WU, where he holds the endowed chair in socioeconomics of work, and senior researcher at IIASA. He has published widely in top field and general interest journals, such as American Economic Review and Nature Climate Change. His research topics are mostly macroeconomics (e.g. economic growth, distribution of income and wealth, or unemployment) and its application to environmental problems like climate change and economic policy.After earning his PhD in economics from The New School for Social Research, he has worked at the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics Research and provided consultations to the World Bank and the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Prior to his appointment, he has been director of policy at the WIIW. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and a Schrödinger Fellow of the Austrian Science Fund and held visiting appointments at LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, the University of California’s Berkeley and Santa Barbara campuses, and FGV Sao Paulo. He was an external research associate at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies and currently is a fellow of the CESifo network.

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D5.3.025
Welthandelsplatz 1/D5/level 3
1020 Vienna, Austria

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interest

• Macroeconomics

• Political economy

• Climate change economics

• Distribution and inequality

• Environmental policy

• Financialization

Recent Publications

2024

• Van der Ploeg, R., Rezai, A., and M. Tovar (2024). Third-best carbon taxation: Trading-off Emissions, Equity, and Efficiency, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics J, forthcoming

• Karp, L., Peri, A., and A. Rezai (2024). Selfish incentives for climate policy: Empower the young!, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics, forthcoming

• Yokomatsu, M., Schinko, T., Mochizuki, J. and A. Rezai (2024) Climate-related disaster impacts in the Global South: Heterogeneity and human capital investment, Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, forthcoming.

• Belfiori, E. and A. Rezai (2024). Implicit carbon prices – Making do with the taxes we have, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, forthcoming.

2022

• Van der Ploeg, R., Tovar, M. and A. Rezai (2022) Gathering Support for Green Tax Reform: Evidence from German Household Surveys, European Economic Review, 141, 103966.

• Ederer, S. and A. Rezai (2022) Labour markets in a Post-Keynesian growth model: the effects of endogenous productivity growth and working time reduction, Review of Keynesian Economics, 10, 355–381.

• Karp, L. and A. Rezai (2022) Trade and Resource Sustainability with Asset Markets, Dynamic Games and Applications, 12, 929–953.

• Strunk, B., Ederer, S., and A. Rezai (2022). The role of labor in a socio-ecological transition, European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies, 19, 103-118.

2021

• Semieniuk, G., Taylor, L., Rezai, A. and D. Foley (2021) Plausible energy demand patterns in a growing global economy with climate policy, Nature Climate Change, 11, 313-318.

• van der Ploeg, R. and A. Rezai (2021) Optimal carbon pricing in general equilibrium: Temperature caps and stranded assets in an extended annual DSGE model, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 110, 102522.

• Dietz, S., van der Ploeg, F., Rezai, A. and F. Venmans (2021) Are economists getting climate dynamics right and does it matter?, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics, 8, 895-921. (reviewed in Nature Climate Change by Tol, 2021)

2020

• Mattauch, L., Matthews, H. D., Millar, R., Rezai, A., Solomon, S. and F. Venmans (2020). Steering the Climate System: Comment, American Economic Review, 110, 1231-37.

• van der Ploeg, R. and A. Rezai (2020). Stranded Assets in the Transition to a Carbon-Free Economy, Annual Review of Resource Economics, 12, 281-298.

• van der Ploeg, R. and A. Rezai (2020). The risk of policy tipping and stranded carbon assets, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 200, 102258. (media coverage: Financial Times)

2019

• Rezai, A. and R. van der Ploeg (2019). The Agnostic's Response to Climate Deniers: Price Carbon!, European Economic Review, 111, 70–84.

• Taylor, L., Foley, D. and A. Rezai (2019). Demand drives growth all the way, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 43, 1333–1352.

• Rezai, A. (2019). Review of Worst-Case Economics: Extreme Events in Climate and Finance, Journal of Economic Literature, LVII, 185-187.

• van der Ploeg, R. and A. Rezai (2019). Simple rules for climate policy and integrated assessment, Environmental and Resource Economics, 72, 77–108.

2018

• Glötzl, F. and A. Rezai (2018). A net lending perspective on Europe, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 42, 3, 779-795.

• Taylor, L., Rezai, A. and D. Foley (2018) Economic Growth, Income Distribution, and Climate Change, Ecological Economics, 146, 164-172.

• van der Ploeg, R. and A. Rezai (2018). The Simple Arithmetic of Carbon Pricing and Stranded Assets, Energy Efficiency, 11, 627-639.

2017

• Rezai, A. and R. van der Ploeg (2017). Climate policies under climate model uncertainty: max-min and min-max regret, Energy Economics, 68, 4-16.

• Rezai, A. and R. van der Ploeg (2017). Second-best climate policies to decarbonize the economy: commitment and the Green Paradox, Environmental and Resource Economics, 66, 409-434.

• Crawford, B. and A. Rezai (2017). The Gold Standard, the Euro, and Leadership: A Cautionary Tale, German Society and Politics, 35, 77-104. preprint




• Rezai, A. and R. van der Ploeg (2017). Abandoning Fossil Fuel: How much and how fast? Manchester School, 85, e16-e44.

• van der Ploeg, R. and A. Rezai (2017). Cumulative emissions, untapped tapped fossil fuel and the optimal carbon tax, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 116, 216-222.

• Taylor, L., Rezai, A., Kumar, R., Barbosa, N. and L. Carvalho (2017). Wage Increases, Transfers, and the Socially Determined Income Distribution in the USA, Review of Keynesian Economics, 2, 259-275.

2016

• Rezai, A. and R. van der Ploeg (2016). Intergenerational inequality aversion, growth and the role of damages: Occam’s rule for the global carbon tax, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics, 3, 493-522.

• Rezai, A. and S. Stagl (2016). Ecological Macroeconomics: Introduction and Review, Ecological Economics, 121, 181-185.

• Carvalho, L., Rezai, A. (2016). Personal income inequality and aggregate demand, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 40, 491-505.

• Taylor, L. Rezai, A. and D. K. Foley (2016). An Integrated Approach to Climate Change, Income Distribution, Employment, and Economic Growth, Ecological Economics, 196-205.

2015

• Rezai, A. and R. van der Ploeg (2015). Robustness of a simple rule for the social cost of carbon, Economics Letters, 132, 48-55.

• Rezai, A. (2015). Demand and Distribution in Integrated Economies, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39:5, 1399-1414.

2014

• Karp. L. and Rezai, A. (2014). The Political Economy of Environmental Policy with Overlapping Generations, International Economic Review, 55(3), 711-733.

• Glötzl, F., Marterbauer, M., Rehm, M., Rezai, A (2014). Finanzierungssalden und die Krise in Europa, in Dullien, S., Hein, E. and A. Truger (eds.): Makroökonomik, Entwicklung und Wirtschaftspolitik. Festschrift für Jan Priewe,Metropolis, Marburg, 263-277.

• Stagl, S., Schulz, N., Kratena, K., Mechler, R., Pirgmaier, E., Radunsky, K., Rezai, A., Köppl, A. (2014). Transformationspfade. In: Österreichischer Sachstandsbericht Klimawandel 2014 (AAR14). Austrian Panel on Climate Change (APCC), Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien.

2013

• Foley, D.K., Rezai, A., Taylor, L. (2013). The social cost of carbon emissions, Economics Letters, 121, 90-97.

• Rezai, A. (2013). Cycles of demand and distribution and monetary policy in the US economy, Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, 36, 231-250.

• Scrieciu, S., Rezai, A., Mechler, R. (2013). On the Economic Foundations of Green Growth Discourses: The Case of Climate Change Mitigation and Macroeconomic Dynamics in Economic Modelling, WIREs: Energy and Environment, 2, 251–268.

• Rezai, A., Taylor, L., Mechler, R. (2013). Ecological Macroeconomics: An application to climate change, Ecological Economics, 85, 69-76.

2012

• Rezai, A. (2012). Goodwin Cycles, Distributional Conflict, and Productivity Growth, Metroeconomica, 63 (1), 29-39.

• Rezai, A., Foley, D.K., Taylor, L. (2012). Global Warming and Economic Externalities, Economic Theory, 49, 329–351.

2011

• Rezai, A. (2011). The Opportunity Cost of Climate Policy: A Question of Reference, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 113 (4), 885–903.

• Semmler, W., Greiner, A., Diallo, B., Rajaram, A., Rezai, A. (2011). Fiscal Policy, Public Expenditure Composition, and Growth: Theory and Empirics, Aestimatio - the IEB International Journal of Finance, 2, 48-89 (also published as World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4405).

2010

• Rezai, A. (2010). Recast the DICE and its Policy Implications, Macroeconomic Dynamics, 14 (S2) 275-289.

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