About

Jonathan Colmer is an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy in the Department of Economics at the University of Virginia, and the Co-Founder and Director of the Environmental Inequality Lab. Jonathan works to understand how economic activity, policy, and the environment interact to affect social and environmental outcomes.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Environmental science
• Oceanography
• Geography
• Medicine
• Environmental health
• Geology
• Composite material
• Chemistry
• Materials science

Selected publications

• Environmental Citizen Complaints

  Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics · 2026-01-07

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• New frontiers in research on industrial decarbonization

  Science · 2025-10-23 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Research is needed to quantify impacts and understand interactions with the broader economy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Intergenerational Effects of Early-Life Pollution Exposure

  Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics · 2025-12-16

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Air Quality, Economic Opportunity, and Affordable Housing

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-03-18

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Environmental Citizen Complaints

  Harvard Dataverse · 2025-09-12

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is the replication package for "Environmental Citizen Complaints," accepted in 2025 by the Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics.

  PublisherDOI

• The Global Effects of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-04-01 · 6 citations

  reportOpen access

  We study carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) policies, as currently being implemented by the EU and UK.Policy discussions have cited three motivations and one concern.CBAMs can improve domestic competitiveness in regulated markets, reduce emissions leakage to unregulated markets, and encourage other countries to tax carbon.But CBAMs may particularly disadvantage lower-income trading partners.We evaluate these forces with a quantitative equilibrium model and plant-level data on aluminum and steel production worldwide.Our data cover the most emissions-intensive and heavily traded sectors targeted in the first phase of EU and UK implementation.We find that CBAMs can effectively boost competitiveness, curb leakage, and encourage regulation, while also avoiding disproportionate impacts on lower-income countries.

  PublisherDOI

• The Global Effects of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• We need to predict the people disasters will hit, not just the places

  Nature · 2025-06-24

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Air Quality, Economic Opportunity, and Affordable Housing

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-03-18

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Low-income families in the United States disproportionately reside in neighborhoods with limited opportunities for economic advancement and elevated exposure to environmental risk. This may reflect genuine preferences, but information frictions may also prevent families from identifying and relocating to higher-opportunity, lower-pollution neighborhoods. This experiment, conducted in partnership with AffordableHousing.com (AH), randomizes the provision of tract-level air quality and economic mobility information to platform users to isolate the role of informational barriers in shaping housing search and location decisions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Global Effects of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• John Voorheis

  United States Census Bureau

  9 shared

• Antoine Dechezleprêtre

  London School of Economics and Political Science

  6 shared

• Reed Walker

  5 shared

• Suvy Qin

  University of California, Berkeley

  5 shared

• Ralf Martin

  5 shared

• Jennifer L. Doleac

  Arnold Ventures

  5 shared

• Jay P. Shimshack

  University of Virginia

  5 shared

• Yonas Alem

  4 shared