Simon Dietz is an environmental economist with particular interests in climate change and sustainability. He has published research on a wide range of issues, including decision-making under uncertainty, equity within and between generations, the links between economic growth and the environment, and corporate sustainability. He also works with governments, businesses and NGOs on topics of shared interest, such as carbon pricing, institutional investment, and insurance.
Simon is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He was appointed to the faculty in 2006, as a Lecturer (nowadays called an Assistant Professor) in the Department of Geography and Environment. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in 2011, and full Professor in 2015. He is also Research Director of the LSE Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) Centre, co-editor of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, a CESifo Research Network Fellow, a Food System Economics Commissioner, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a former Vice President and Council Member of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. In 2018 he became the first recipient of the new European Award for Researchers in Environmental Economics under the Age of Forty, “a recognition given every year to the environmental economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to environmental economic thought and knowledge.”
In 2008, Simon and a small group of colleagues including Professor Dame Judith Rees and Lord Nicholas Stern founded the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. At the same time, they received funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. Simon directed the Grantham Research Institute from 2008 to 2017 and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy from 2008 to 2018.
Prior to joining the LSE faculty, Simon was a Policy Analyst at Her Majesty’s Treasury, where he worked on the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. His position was part-funded by ESRC. Among his primary responsibilities on the Stern Review was estimating the economic cost of climate change using an Integrated Assessment Model. During 2018/19 Simon held a Visiting Fellowship at the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University.
Simon graduated from the University of East Anglia in 2001 with a B.Sc. (Starred First Class Honours) in Environmental Science. He spent the academic year 1999-2000 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. He graduated from the LSE in 2002 with an M.Sc. (Distinction) in Human Geography Research, following the Environmental Regulation specialism, and from the LSE in 2006 with a Ph.D. in Geography and Environment, specialising in environmental economics.