Over the last decades it has become more and more clear that economic activity at different (micro, social and macro) levels affect and are affected by environmental and health outcomes. Even the most skeptics have started recognizing the anthropogenic source of climate change, and the consequences of climate change on economic production capabilities have become more and more evident. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has convinced even the industrialized world that infectious diseases represent a non-negligible economic and social threat, and the role of economic activity in favoring the epidemic spread is undeniable. Air pollution and climate change have important consequences on morbidity and mortality, and health conditions stay at the heart of economic development. Such a strong interdependence between economic activities on the one hand and environment and health on the other hand requires to rethink the determinants and consequences of economic growth and development in order to effectively address the growing demand for a more sustainable future promoted by international institutions and social movements.
The goal of this conference consists of promoting a forum to discuss new approaches, methods and techniques to address the policy challenges induced by the feedback effects among economic, environmental and health outcomes. Such challenges involve the design of incentive mechanisms at the single individual level, understanding how individual decisions may tip in generating a cascade of social effects, devising mechanisms to prevent social processes to translate in undesirable aggregate outcomes, and understanding how public policy by affecting aggregate outcomes may induce individuals to undertake socially desirable actions. Addressing these challenges requires to adopt a variety of microeconomic and macroeconomic approaches to characterize the dynamic nature of the economy-environment-health relation, along with mixing traditional economic theory with recent development in other fields such as environmental and climate sciences, epidemiology, psychology and complexity.