Thomas Sterner is Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), where he heads the Environmental Economics Research Unit he founded over 20 years ago. In 2012-2013, he was Chief Economist of theEnvironmental Defense Fund (EDF). He has been appointed Visiting Professor of the Sustainable development - Environment, energy and society chair at the Collège de France for the 2015-2016 academic year.

Thomas Sterner has published over 100 articles in leading journals (including Nature and Science). He is also the author or editor of a dozen books and a large number of contributions to collective works, official reports and general press articles.

His main field of research is the design of environmental policy instruments and their application to climate, energy, industry, transport and natural resource management in developing countries. Within the framework of his research unit in Göteborg, he has supervised, directly or indirectly, more than 50 PhD students, half of them from developing countries.