Åsa Löfgren

Senior Lecturer

Department of Economics

Telephone

+46 31-786 13 75

Mail

asa.lofgren@economics.gu.se

Visiting address

Vasagatan 1

41124 Göteborg

Postal address

Box 640

40530 Göteborg

About Åsa Löfgren

Åsa Löfgren is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg. She is an expert in climate economics, with a particular focus on the design and impact of climate regulation and green industrial policy. Her research spans several sectors, including the basic materials industry, banking, and transportation. Additionally, Löfgren often utilizes behavioral economics to analyse behavior and attitudes toward decarbonization. Recently, she has ventured into artificial intelligence (AI), working on projects applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Löfgren has extensive experience collaborating across disciplines, frequently working with engineers and social scientists, particularly political scientists. She has led and coordinated several large research projects. Her broad expertise in sustainability and interest in educational issues have led her to examine the role of sustainability in higher education. In collaboration with AI experts, she has developed an 'inference engine' named SustainSight that uses NLP techniques to assess sustainability in written works, such as student theses. Löfgren has published numerous papers in international peer-reviewed journals, authored book chapters, policy papers, and reports, and actively contributes to policy development as a member of various advisory committees and councils.

On other websites

Research areas

environmental economics; economics of climate change; behavioural economics; industrial investment behaviour.

Teaching areas

environmental economics; applied micro economics; behavioural economics

Selected publications by topic

Policy design and green industrial policy

Å. Löfgren, L. Ahlvik, I. van den Bijgaart, J. Coria, J. Jaraitė, F. Johnsson, J. Rootzén. 2024. “Green industrial policy for climate action in the basic materials industry”, forthcoming in Climatic Change.
van den Bijgaart, I. Lindman, Å, Löfgren, Å., P. Söderholm (2024). ”Green industrial policy: Key challenges and policy design in decarbonizing the basic materials industries” in Encyclopedia of Energy, Natural Resource, and Environmental Economics, 2e https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-91013-2.00014-9
Fischer Carolyn, Leonie Reins, Dallas Burtraw, David Langlet, Åsa Löfgren, Michael Mehling, Harro van Asselt, Stefan Weishaar, Lars Zetterberg, & Kati Kulovesi. 2020. “The Legal and Economic Case for an Auction Reserve Price in the EU Emissions Trading System”. 26 Colum. J. Eur. L. 1. Columbia Journal of European Law Spring, 2020.
Löfgren Å., Burtraw D, Keyes A. 2020. Decarbonizing the Industrial Sector - The Potential for Ambitious EU Member States to Use Flexible Performance Standards to Strengthen Carbon Price Signals, Resources for the Future Report 20-03.
Löfgren, Å, Burtraw D, Wråke M, and Malinovskaya, A. 2018. “Distribution of Allowance Asset Values and the Use of Auction Revenues in the EU Emissions Trading System”, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Volume 12, Issue 2, pp. 284–303.
Sterner, T, E. B. Barbier, ..., Å. Löfgren et al. 2019. “Policy Design for the Anthropocene”, Nature Sustainability, Volume 2, pp.14-21.

Behavior

Löfgren, Å., K. Nordblom. 2024. “Reconciling sustainability preferences and behavior -- the case of mutual fund investments”, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 41, 100880.
Löfgren, Å., K. Nordblom. 2020. “A theoretical framework of decision making explaining the mechanisms of nudging”. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 174, 1-12.
Carlsson, F., Å. Löfgren, and K. Nordblom. 2020. Grön nudge som miljöpolitiskt styrmedel. SNS Analys nr.69, December 2020.

AI and NLP

Yu, Y., Scheidegger, S., Elliott, J., & Löfgren, Å. 2024. “climateBUG: A data-driven framework for analyzing bank reporting through a climate lens”, Expert Systems with Applications, 239, 122162.

Large scale collective action

Harring, N., Jagers, S.C., & Löfgren, Å. 2021. “COVID-19: Large-scale collective action, government intervention, and the importance of trust”, World Development, Vol. 138, February 2021, 105236.
Jagers, S.C., Harring, N., Löfgren, Å. et al. 2020. “On the preconditions for large-scale collective action”. Ambio 49, 1282–1296 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01284-w