Philippe Thalmann studied economics at the University of Lausanne and obtained a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1990. Since 1994, he is an associate professor with tenure at EPFL. His Laboratory of environmental and urban economics covers a large range of topics. In the area of the natural environment, he is working mainly on policy instruments to curb pollution, with special emphasis on climate change and energy. In the area of the built environment, he is working on issues of the housing and the real estate markets. His team is strong in modeling Swiss and international climate and energy policies with the help of computable general equilibrium models. He has also worked at a more microeconomic level on instrument design, distributional impacts, and acceptability of instruments.