Professor Elizabeth Baldwin

Elizabeth’s research follows two themes.

In the first, she studies consumer theory for indivisible goods: both the underlying geometry that preferences induce on price space, and the practical implications of this for auction design.  Her novel contribution has been to introduce the techniques of “tropical geometry” to economics, which has enabled her and her coauthors to gain new insights into how preference descriptions may be generalised, and to see clearly when and why competitive equilibrium exists and fails.  She is currently using these insights to design sealed bid auctions for multiple indivisible goods.

In the second, Elizabeth works on the economics of climate change.  She is particularly interested in theoretical question of how this topic should be approached, given our limited experience with the extent to which warming could damage human welfare.  And in more recent work, she is exploring the importance of “learning by doing” in technological progress, as well as recognising that investments in specific sectors are irreversible, in choosing the timing of policies to reduce emissions.