University of Gothenburg
  2. About the University
  3. Find staff
  4. Åsa Löfgren

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 Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, Visiting Professor at Luleå University of Technology, and University Fellow at Resources for the Future, Washington DC. She is an expert in climate economics, with a particular focus on the design and impact of climate regulation and green industrial policy. In 2025 she was appointed EAERE Fellow (European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists).


Löfgren has extensive experience of interdisciplinary collaboration, working closely with engineers and political scientists, and has led and coordinated several large research projects. She publishes regularly in international peer-reviewed journals and has also written book chapters, policy papers and reports. She contributes actively to policy development, including as a member of the Swedish Climate Policy Council (2018–2020) and the Advisory Council of the Swedish Energy Agency (2021–2026).


In recent years she has also worked with AI specialists to develop tools for sustainability assessment of text, including SustainSight, first used to analyse sustainability content in student theses.

Elsewhere online

Research areas

  • miljöekonomi, klimatekonomi, beteendeekonomi, collective action

Teaching areas

  • miljöekonomi, beteendeekonomi

Ongoing projects and recent working papers

  • Sterner, T., Burtraw, D., Delbeke, J.

Selected publications

Policy design and green industrial policy

  • Sterner, T., Burtraw, D., Delbeke, J., Johnsson, F., Löfgren, Å., & Zetterberg, L. 2026. “Happy Birthday: Twenty Years of the EU ETS”. Annual Review of Resource Economics, 18.

  • Löfgren, Å. & Söderholm, P. (2026). "Balansakt i behov av stöd – en ESO-rapport om grön industripolitik", ESO-rapport 2026:5, Expertgruppen för Studier i Offentlig ekonomi (Expert Group on Public Economics).

  • Gillingham, K., Barrage, L., Armitage, S., Burtraw, D., Colmer, J., de Preux, L., Hawkins-Pierot, J., Holt, C., Karplus, V.J., Löfgren, Å., Miller, N., Muûls, M., Osborne, M., Severnini, E., Shobe, W., Sileo, G., Smirnyagin, V., Stoerk, T., Tsyvinski, A., Wagner, K., Wagner, U., & Wu, X. 2025. “New frontiers in research on industrial decarbonization”. Science, 390(6771), 338-340. DOI:10.1126/science.ado2624

  • 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.

  • 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, 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

  • Löfgren, Å., Elliott, J., Yu, Y. & Scheidegger, S. 2026. ”Unpacking banks' response to societal expectations: an NLP analysis of European banks' discussion of climate change”, Research in International Business and Finance, Volume 82, February 2026, 103207.

  • Sundemo, M., Löfgren, Å., Yu, Y., Scheidegger, S. 2025. “Mapping sustainability in higher education: a natural language processing analysis of student theses”, Higher Education, 1-23.

  • 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