About

Arthur van Benthem is a Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton. His research specializes in environmental and energy economics. His recent work studies the unintended consequences of environmental legislation and the economic efficiency of energy policies. His current research focuses on markets for transportation, renewable energy, carbon markets, and policies to protect biodiversity. Arthur is one of the Faculty Co-Directors of the Wharton Climate Center, and a faculty adviser of the MBA major and undergraduate concentration in Business, Environment, Energy and Sustainability. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 2012, a masters degree in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford, and his undergraduate degree from the University of Amsterdam. Before pursuing his doctoral studies at Stanford, he worked in corporate strategy at Royal Dutch Shell as an energy economist in the Long-Term Energy Scenarios Team. During his undergraduate studies, Arthur enjoyed working as an evening stock trader at IMC Trading in Amsterdam.

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Political Science
• Engineering
• Natural resource economics
• Finance
• Microeconomics
• Market economy
• Economy
• Economic growth
• Macroeconomics
• Economic policy
• Statistics
• Industrial organization
• Public economics
• Econometrics
• Environmental economics
• Mathematics
• Management
• Ecology
• Development economics

Selected publications

• Firm Ownership and Pollution

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Designing More Cost-effective Trading Markets for Renewable Energy

  The Energy Journal · 2025-04-22 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  In this paper we study the design of renewable energy portfolio standards (RPSs). We focus on solar energy and analyze two common RPS rules: cross-state trading restrictions and state-specific interim annual targets. Using historically observed RPSs and an empirically calibrated model of state-level solar supply curves, we find that allowing for cross-state trading reduces cost by one-fifth and significantly changes the geographic distribution of new solar installations. Removing interim annual targets over the 2015 to 2019 period reduces cost by one-third by back-loading installations to later years. These cost reductions become much larger when considering more ambitious RPS targets. Our results suggest that more flexible program design such as allowing for cross-state trading, back-loading interim targets, or banking and borrowing renewable energy credits can avoid escalating costs and preserve the political feasibility of renewable energy standards, although such cost savings must be balanced against the social damages from delayed climate action and other economic and political considerations. JEL Classification: H23, Q41, Q42, Q48

  PublisherDOI

• Firm Ownership and Pollution

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Overlapping Climate Policies

  The Economic Journal · 2025-04-11 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Countries around the world are enacting climate policies such as coal phase-outs, aviation taxes and renewable energy support. These policies often overlap with a wider multi-jurisdictional carbon-pricing system like the EU’s Emissions Trading System. We develop a general framework to study how effectively such ‘overlapping climate policies’ can help combat climate change—depending on their design, location and timing. We find that some policies are truly complementary, while others backfire by raising aggregate emissions. At a conceptual level, our model encompasses the market design of most carbon-pricing systems used in practice and a wide range of popular unilateral climate policies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Firm Ownership and Pollution

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A view of the sustainable computing landscape

  Patterns · 2025-06-25 · 6 citations

  reviewOpen access

  This article presents a holistic research agenda to address the significant environmental impact of information and communication technology (ICT), which accounts for 2.1%-3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It proposes several research thrusts to achieve sustainable computing: accurate carbon accounting models, life cycle design strategies for hardware, efficient use of renewable energy, and integrated design and management strategies for next-generation hardware and software systems. If successful, the research would flatten and reverse growth trajectories for computing power and carbon, especially for rapidly growing applications like artificial intelligence. The research takes a holistic approach because strategies that reduce operational carbon may increase embodied carbon, and vice versa. Achieving these goals will require interdisciplinary collaboration between computer scientists, electrical engineers, environmental scientists, and economists.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Firm ownership and pollution

  Journal of Environmental Economics and Management · 2025-11-22

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  We provide a theoretical micro foundation for how much pollution (negative externalities) a firm will internalize based on the ownership distribution of its shareholders. Small shareholders, compared to large ones, want the firm to spend more on avoiding pollution since they suffer less profit loss for the same environmental benefit. In particular, if a shareholder holds a share of 1 / N , where N is the population in society, that shareholder’s preferences align with a social planner’s. Three theoretical predictions arise. First, small shareholders will systematically vote for a greener corporate profile. Second, firms with a smaller weighted-median shareholder will pollute less. Third, countries with concentrated corporate wealth holdings and/or more individualized firm ownership will pollute more. This implies that standard models of externalities in environmental economics and macroeconomics containing representative agents are either internally inconsistent or not fully specified.

  PublisherDOI

• Firm Ownership and Pollution

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-09-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We provide a theoretical micro foundation for how much pollution (negative externalities) a firm will internalize based on the ownership distribution of its shareholders.Small shareholders, compared to large ones, want the firm to spend more on avoiding pollution since they suffer less profit loss for the same environmental benefit.In particular, if a shareholder holds a share of 1/N, where N is the population in society, that shareholder's preferences align with a social planner's.Three theoretical predictions arise.First, small shareholders will systematically vote for a greener corporate profile.Second, firms with a smaller weighted median shareholder will pollute less.Third, countries with concentrated corporate wealth holdings and/or more individualized firm ownership pollute more.This implies that standard models of externalities in environmental economics and macroeconomics containing representative agents are either internally inconsistent or not fully specified.

  PublisherDOI

• The Efficiency of Dynamic Electricity Prices

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Efficiency of Dynamic Electricity Prices

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mark R. Jacobsen

  98 shared

• Christopher R. Knittel

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  83 shared

• James Sallee

  82 shared

• Kenneth Gillingham

  16 shared

• Johannes Stroebel

  14 shared

• Mathias Reynaert

  Toulouse School of Economics

  12 shared

• Daniel Spiro

  11 shared

• Joseph Shapiro

  University of California, Berkeley

  10 shared