The climate needs bright minds. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) addresses crucial scientific questions in the fields of global change, climate impacts and sustainable development. It is one of the world's leading research institutions in its field and offers natural and social scientists from around the world an inspiring environment for excellent interdisciplinary research.

The candidate will be expected to contribute to projects aiming to optimize and ex-ante evaluate different components of an architecture for improving global public good provision that is sketched here. The architecture consists of two component, tax clubs and reward funds. Reward funds would incentivise governments (or in some cases directly private actors) to achieve outcomes (forest protection, low emissions, effective disease surveillance) with positive global externalities. Tax clubs would raise funding for the reward funds. Note that candidates are in no way expected to read this background material for the application. We provide the link here so that potential applicants can better assess whether they find the research agenda promising. In that spirit, here is a more detailed case for how the work could be useful.

The exact projects would be chosen in consultation with the candidates, considering their interests and skills. For example, candidates with expertise in machine learning could directly contribute to emission baseline prediction work whereas candidates with interest/expertise in economic theory could best contribute to the complementary mechanism design components. We particularly value applications by candidates that are potentially interested in pursuing a research career and in continuing to work on topics contributing to the research agenda.

You are a Bachelor or Master student, enrolled at a German university, and ideally meet the following requirements:

• Strong background in economics, mathematics, computer science, data science or related field with analytical and numerical methods
• Familiarity or interest in optimal taxation, tax competition, welfare economics, mechanism design, game theory, environmental economics, or machine learning is a plus
• Working knowledge of programming languages such as Mathematica or Python is a plus

• Working in a dedicated and motivated team with very supportive colleagues and a well-established international research network
• Access to high-performance cluster computers
• Opportunity to contribute to an ambitious research agenda that aims to optimize for expected positive impact for humanity
• Attractive working space at the EUREF-Campus in Berlin Schöneberg
• flexi-time and mobile working (up to 50% of your hours),
• a collective pay scheme and associated benefits as well as a subsidized travel card or Deutschland-Ticket Job.

Please apply by 20.05.2025 directly via our application form below this job advertisement on our website. Note that as long as the position has not been filled, this job ad will stay online and all applications will be considered, whenever they are submitted.

For further information or to discuss the position please contact Dr. Lennart Stern.