Irene Monasterolo is an Assistant Professor of Climate Economics and Finance at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and visiting research fellow at Boston University.
Irene’s research is contributing to understand under which conditions finance could be a driver or a barrier to the achievement of the climate targets in both high income and developing countries. She has co-developed the climate stress-test of the financial system, which embeds climate scenarios in asset pricing and investors’ risk assessment and introduces a classification of economic activities’ exposure to climate risk - the Climate Policy Relevant Sectors - used by several financial authorities.
She has co-developed the EIRIN macrofinancial model to analyse the implications of climate policies (fiscal, monetary, prudential) on green investments, financial stability and inequality. Currently, Irene is supporting the World Bank in the analysis of compounding COVID-19 and climate risk and is collaborating with the European Central Bank team at the analysis of the double materiality of climate risks.
Her research has been published on leading academic journals, such as Science and Nature Climate Change, as well as on non-academic journals (e.g. the Financial Times, Le Monde). She has co-authored the G20’s T-20 chapter on Sustainable Finance, and climate finance chapters of the Financial Stability Review of the European Insurance and Occupational Pension Authority (EIOPA) and of the Austrian National Bank (OeNB).
Irene is co-founder and senior partner at Climate Finance Alpha.