Jeffrey Sun, whose research focuses on the economic consequences of climate change, joined the Department of Economics on July 1, 2024. The new Assistant Professor recently completed his PhD at Princeton. His job market paper explored the implications of exposure to environmental events on the financial health of families whose assets are concentrated in their homes. During his assistantship in instruction, Sun gained experience in teaching introductory and intermediate macroeconomics, as well as undergraduate corporate finance.
“The University of Toronto has become an exciting place to do climate research. There is a huge department here with fantastic researchers studying all aspects of the economy,” Professor Sun said. “And many have become interested in applying those tools to pressing questions of how climate change will affect the specific slice of the economy that they understand well. You can almost see a new kind of structural climate economics taking shape here, and I could not be more excited to be a part of it.”
In Sun’s courses, future students can look forward to an instructional style rooted in purpose-driven learning communities.
“It’s important to me to create an environment where we have some sense of shared purpose,” Sun explained. “”Hopefully it helps that we’re working on some of the most important and striking issues of our time. In my experience, climate economics tends to attract people who are good at taking on a collaborative attitude.”
In his first year with the University of Toronto, Sun will be teaching two high-level classes on climate economics.
“I’m aiming to prepare my students to do real, cutting-edge climate economics research,” he said. “I’ll be putting a lot of time into trying to make this developing field comprehensible and accessible to new researchers.”
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