Curriculum Vitae, PETER BIRCH SØRENSEN
Born 1955, Danish citizen. Education: Ph.D. in Economics (1985), University of Copenhagen.
Career
1981-82: Visiting Fulbright Scholar, Economics Department, University of Illinois, USA.
1983-85: Assistant Professor of Economics, Royal Agricultural University, Copenhagen.
1985-91: Associate Professor of Economics, University of Copenhagen.
1991-95: Professor of Economics, Copenhagen Business School.
1995-2010: Professor of Economics, University of Copenhagen.
2010-2011: Assistant Governor and Chief Economist, Danmarks Nationalbank (on leave from the university).
From 2011: Professor of Economics, University of Copenhagen.
Honours
Fulbright Fellowship, 1981-82.
First Prize of the Lundbeck Foundation 1990 for an essay on “Financing Public Expenditure in Denmark in the 1990s”.
Winner of the 1995 Daeyang Prize in Economics for the best article in Journal of Economic Integration.
Winner of the award of the Finnish Society for Economic Research for the best article in the Finnish Economic Papers in 2005-2006.
Winner of the Ellen and Hans Hermer award 2020 for general education on climate change and the Green Transition.
Selected scientific activities
Research areas: Environmental and Climate Economics, Public Economics, Macroeconomics.
Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Co-Director of the Danish environmental-economic modelling project THE GREEN REFORM MODEL.
Research Fellow in the CESifo Research Network and former scientific coordinator of the network's activities in the area of Public Sector Economics.
International Research Fellow of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
Co-founder and Director 1998-2005 of the Economic Policy Research Unit, supported by a grant from the Danish National Research Foundation.
2006-2008: Member of the Mirrlees Review group preparing a report on “Reforming the Tax System for the 21st Century” for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London.
Member of the Board of Management of the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF); Executive Vice President of that same organization 1997-99, Vice President of the IIPF 2005-2008.
Chairman of the Scientific Committee for the 1995 Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance. 1999-2007: Member of the Board of Management of the Danish Economic Association.
2000-2005: Leader of EPRU team in the RTN research network on "The Analysis of International Capital Markets: Understanding Europe's Role in the Global Economy", funded by the European Commission.
1993-95: Leader of the Copenhagen team within the Human Capital and Mobility research network on "Fiscal Implications of European Integration", funded by the European Commission.
1990-93: Scientific coordinator of an inter-Nordic research project on "Tax Policy in Small Open Economies", sponsored by the Nordic Economic Research Council.
1996-98: Head of International Committee, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen.
Former Co-editor of International Tax and Public Finance (1997-99) and Public Finance Analysis (2000-2004).
Associate Editor of the European Economic Review 1994-2000. Member of the Economic Policy Panel 1998-2000.
International public service (selected activities)
Former consultant on economic policy and tax policy to the OECD, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund and to the governments of Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden. Member of the Norwegian government’s Committee for Review of the Norwegian Tax System 2021-2022.
Danish public service (selected activities)
1997-99: Co-chairman of the Danish Economic Council.
2004-2009: Head Chairman of the Danish Economic Council
2007-2009: Head Chairman of the Danish Environmental Economic Council
2010-2011: Assistant Governor and Chief Economist, Danish Central Bank (Danmarks Nationalbank)
2012-2014: Chairman of the Danish Productivity Committee, established by the Danish government.
December 2014-December 2018: Chairman of the Danish Council on Climate Change.
From February 2021 to March 2024: Member of the Danish government’s Expert Committee for a Green Tax Reform.
Publications
Google Scholar statistics, November 13, 2025: 5788 citations, h-index: 35, i10-index: 78.
Recent publications in English in the field of Environmental Economics:
The effects of unilateral climate policy towards agriculture: A case study of Denmark (with Ulrik Beck, Asbjørn Kehlet Berg, Simon Christiansen, Cecilie Løchte Jørgensen, Jens Sand Kirk, Louis Birk Stewart and Peter Philip Stephensen). Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2025.
Optimal unilateral climate policy with carbon leakage at the extensive and the intensive margins (with Peter Kjær Kruse-Andersen). Scandinavian Journal of Economics , 2024.
National climate targets under ambitious EU climate policy (with Frederik Silbye). Nordic Economic Policy Review 2023 .
Optimal climate policy in EU frontrunner countries: coordinating with the EU ETS and addressing leakage (with Peter Kjær Kruse-Andersen). Climate Policy, November 2022.
Optimal energy taxes and subsidies under a cost-effective unilateral climate policy: Addressing carbon leakage (with Peter Kjær Kruse-Andersen). Energy Economics 109 (2022) 105928.
Barriers and opportunities in developing and implementing a Green GDP (with Jens Hoff and Martin Rasmussen). Ecological Economics 181 (2021) 106905.
Danish climate policy: Past achievements and future challenges. Ch. 15 in F. Caselli, A. Ludwig, and R. van der Ploeg (eds.), No-Brainers and Low-Hanging Fruit in National Climate Policy, CEPR Press, 2021.
Environment, energy, and climate policy: From energy supply to climate gases. Ch. 39 in P. Munk Christiansen, J. Elklit & P. Nedergaard (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Danish Politics, Oxford University Press, 2020.
National climate policies and the European Emissions Trading System (with Frederik Silbye). Nordic Economic Policy Review 2019, 63-101.
From the linear to the circular economy: A basic model. Public Finance Analysis 74 (2018), 71-87.
Book volume: Editor of and main contributor to a book on Green National Accounting in Theory and Practice – From GDP to Green GDP published by Routledge in 2025.
Selected other publications since 2000:
“The interaction of actual and fundamental house prices: A general model with an application to Sweden” (with U. Michael Bergman). Journal of Housing Economics 54, 101792, 2021.
“Taxation and the optimal constraint on debt finance: why a comprehensive business income tax is suboptimal". International Tax and Public Finance 24, 731-753, 2017.
"Measuring the deadweight loss from taxation in a small open economy: A general method with an application to Sweden". Journal of Public Economics 117, 115-124, 2014.
"Efficient redistribution of lifetime income through welfare accounts". Fiscal Studies 33, 1-37, 2012 (with A. Lans Bovenberg and Martin Ino Hansen).
"Optimal social insurance with linear income taxation". Scandinavian Journal of Economics 111, 251-275, 2009 (with A. Lans Bovenberg).
"The effects of tax competition when politicians create rents to buy political support". Journal of Public Economics 92, 1142-1163, 2008 (with Wolfgang Eggert).
"Neutral taxation of shareholder income". International Tax and Public Finance, 12, 2005.
"International tax coordination - regionalism versus globalism". Journal of Public Economics, 88, 2004.
"Improving the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off: Mandatory Savings Accounts for Social Insurance". International Tax and Public Finance, 11, 2004 (with A. Lans Bovenberg).
"Labour tax reform, the good jobs and the bad jobs". Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 106, 2004 (with Henrik Kleven).
"Optimal taxation with household production", Oxford Economic Papers, 52, 2000 (with Henrik Jacobsen and Wolfram F. Richter).
"The case for international tax coordination reconsidered", Economic Policy, no. 31, October 2000.
Textbook
Co-author (with Hans Jørgen Whitta-Jacobsen) of the international textbook Introducing Advanced Macroeconomics – Growth and Business Cycles, Third edition. Oxford University Press, 2022.
Curriculum Vitae, PETER BIRCH SØRENSEN, November 2025.
Address: Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, 1353 K, Copenhagen K, Denmark
Telephone: +45 35 32 30 15. Mobile: 28 14 63 39. E-mail: pbs@econ.ku.dk