Full Professor

Acting Director of the Department of Applied Economics (since August 2025)

Contact

Email xavier@uvigo.gal

Information
Positions held in scientific societies

Member of the Policy Outreach Committee of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) since 2018, and Secretary General of the association in 2024-2025.

Positions held on scientific committees of other entities

Member of the Scientific Council of the Elcano Royal Institute. Member of the International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC) of the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) between 2010 and 2016. He was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): expert on the Special Committee defining the Fifth Assessment Report (2010), lead author of the Fifth Report (2011-2014) and review editor of the Sixth Report (2018-2022). Affiliated researcher at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). He chaired or was a member of numerous scientific committees of international conferences between 2020 and 2025 (EAERE Annual Conference in Bergen 2025, Leuven 2024, Limassol 2023, Rimini 2022, and Berlin 2021 and 2020; the 18th IAEE European Conference in Milan 2023; the AIEE Energy Symposium 2021; he chaired the committee of the 9th and 10th Atlantic Workshop on Energy and Environmental Economics in A Toxa, Pontevedra, in 2022 and 2024).

Journal editorial committees

He acts as a reviewer for close to 25 scientific journals since 1996, including Revista de Economía Aplicada (since 1996), Hacienda Pública Española (since 1998), Energy Journal (since 2000), Fiscal Studies (since 2002), Environmental Economics and Policy Studies (since 2002), Resource and Energy Economics (since 2005), Ecological Economics (since 2006), Energy Economics (since 2006), Journal of Environmental Management (since 2006), Economic Modelling (since 2007), Journal of Industrial Ecology (since 2008), Environmental and Resource Economics (since 2008), Energy Policy (since 2009), SERIEs (since 2010) and Climate Change Economics (since 2014), among others.

Recognitions obtained

Five six-year research terms (sexenios: 1993-1998, 1999-2004, 2005-2010, 2011-2016 and 2017-2022) and one six-year transfer term (2010-2015). h-index of 21 according to Scopus.

Research career medal from the Galician Academy of Sciences in economics and the social sciences, first edition (2019).

Alexandre Pedrós Award for the best article published in Hacienda Pública Española/Review of Public Economics during 2021.

AERNA (Spanish-Portuguese Association of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics) award for best publication in 2018/2019.

Xavier Labandeira Villot

Permanent Researchers
Academic and professional trajectory

Full Professor in the Department of Applied Economics, School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Vigo, and Acting Director of the same department since August 2025. He graduated in Economics from USC (1990), holds a Master of Science in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from University College London (1994), and a European PhD in Economics from the University of Vigo (1998; supervisors: Alberto Gago, José M. Labeaga and Stephen Smith; passed cum laude by unanimous decision, with the University of Vigo’s Extraordinary Prize). He is a permanent member of the interuniversity research centre ECOBAS, of which he was Director between 2023 and 2025, and since 2010 he has co-directed Economics for Energy, a private research centre specialising in energy economics. He is an affiliated researcher at MIT’s CEEPR and a member of the Scientific Council of the Elcano Royal Institute. He was part of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the preparation of its Fifth (2014, lead author) and Sixth (2018-2022, review editor) Assessment Reports. Between 2014 and 2017 he directed the Florence School of Regulation Climate, devoted to the study of European climate policy, at the European University Institute (Florence). He coordinated the Chairs on Climate Change Economics (FEDEA, 2007-2010) and on Energy and Sustainable Development (University of Vigo, 2011-2019). He has been a member of the Policy Outreach Committee of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) since 2018 (Secretary General in 2024-2025), and was a member of the panel of experts for the White Paper on the Reform of the Spanish Tax System (2021-2022). The Galician Academy of Sciences awarded him its medal for research career achievement in economics and the social sciences in its first edition (2019).

Research topics and main scientific contributions

His research and teaching sit at the intersection of energy, public and environmental economics. He publishes regularly in the leading academic journals in his field, with lines of work on energy and environmental taxation and green tax reforms, residential energy demand and energy efficiency, energy poverty, the design of emissions trading markets, transport taxation and demand, and the distributional impacts of climate and energy policies.

Most relevant directed projects

He has been or is principal investigator on several competitive projects: “Evaluación de Políticas para la Transición Energética” (PID2022-136376OB-I00, Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities / AEI / FEDER; September 2023-September 2027); “Transporte y Políticas para la Transición Energética a una Economía Baja en Carbono en España” (RTI2018-093692-B-100, Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities; January 2019-September 2022); “Economía de la Eficiencia Energética en los Sectores Residencial y de Transporte en España” (ECO2013-41183-P, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; November 2014-December 2016); and “Pobreza Energética en España: Precios de la Electricidad y Medidas Paliativas” (Fundación Iberdrola; January-December 2015, as Director). He was also responsible for the University of Vigo’s part of the European consortium “4I-TRACTION” (Innovation, Investment, Infrastructure and sector Integration, H2020; June 2021-May 2024) and Director of the European University Institute’s project “Supporting the Implementation and Development of the EU ETS” (LIFE15 GIC/IT/000051, European Commission LIFE; September 2016-May 2018), as well as principal investigator of the EUI team on “Innovation Pathways, Strategies and Policies for the Low-Carbon Transition in Europe” (ID730403, H2020; December 2016-November 2020).

Reference to main publications
  1. Bernardo, V.; Fageda, X.; Teixidó, J.; Labandeira, X. Aligning the Aviation Industry with Global Climate Goals: The Role of Pricing Mechanisms. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (próxima publicación).
  2. Labandeira, X.; Teixidó, J.; Palencia, F. J.; Labeaga, J. M. (2024). Carbon Leakage from Fuel Taxes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment. Environmental and Resource Economics, 87, 3235-3270.
  3. Labandeira, X.; Hanemann, M.; Labeaga, J. M.; Vásquez-Lavín, F. (2024). Discrete-continuous Models of Residential Energy Demand: A Comprehensive Review. Resource and Energy Economics, 77, 101426.
  4. Labandeira, X.; Labeaga, J. M.; Teixidó, J. (2022). Major Reforms in Electricity Pricing: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment. The Economic Journal, 132, 1517-1541.
  5. Gago, A.; Labandeira, X.; Labeaga, J. M.; López-Otero, X. (2021). Transport Taxes and Decarbonization in Spain: Distributional Impacts and Compensation. Hacienda Pública Española/Review of Public Economics, 236, 101-136. (Premio Alexandre Pedrós ao mellor artigo publicado en HPE/RPE en 2021)
  6. Labandeira, X.; Labeaga, J. M.; López-Otero, X. (2021). Energy Taxation, Subsidy Removal and Poverty in Mexico. Environment and Development Economics, 26, 239-260.
  7. Labandeira, X.; Labeaga, J. M.; Linares, P.; López-Otero, X. (2020). The Impacts of Energy Efficiency Policies: Meta-analysis. Energy Policy, 147, 111790.
  8. Labandeira, X.; Loureiro, M. (2019). Exploring Energy Use in Retail Stores: A Field Experiment. Energy Economics, 84, 104570. (Premio AERNA á mellor publicación en 2018/2019)
  9. Labandeira, X.; Verde, S.; Teixidó, J.; Marcantonini, C. (2019). Free Allocation Rules in the EU Emissions Trading System: What does the Empirical Literature Show? Climate Policy, 19, 439-452.
  10. Labandeira, X.; Labeaga, J. M.; López-Otero, X. (2017). A Meta-analysis on the Price Elasticity of Energy Demand. Energy Policy, 102, 549-568.
  11. Labandeira, X.; Ramos, A.; Löschel, A. (2016). Pro-environmental Households and Energy Efficiency in Spain. Environmental and Resource Economics, 62, 367-393.
  12. Labandeira, X.; Würzburg, K.; Linares, P. (2013). Renewable Generation and Electricity Prices: Taking Stock and New Evidence for Germany and Austria. Energy Economics, 40, 159-171.
  13. Labandeira, X.; Linares, P. (2010). Energy Efficiency: Economics and Policy. Journal of Economic Surveys, 24, 573-592.
  14. Labandeira, X.; Labeaga, J. M.; Rodríguez, M. (2006). A Residential Energy Demand System for Spain. Energy Journal, 27, 87-112.
  15. Labandeira, X.; Labeaga, J. M. (2002). Estimation and Control of Spanish Energy-Related CO2 Emissions: An Input-Output Approach. Energy Policy, 30, 597-611.
Transfer activities

He has collaborated with companies and institutions such as Statkraft (2022), Ferrovial (2018), Iberdrola’s Environmental Forums external expert committee (2008-2011), and Fundación RACC (2009). He took part as a member of the expert team on the España 2050 report (2020-2021) and on the panel of experts for the White Paper on the Reform of the Spanish Tax System (2021-2022). He appeared before the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) (2016) and before the Spanish Congress of Deputies’ Committee on Climate Change (2013 and 2018).

Other merits of interest

He has supervised five PhD theses: Miguel Rodríguez Méndez (2003), Xiral López-Otero (2012), Ana Ramos (2015), Pablo Pintos (2017) and Susana Bayo (2024). He was postdoctoral supervisor for 10 researchers between 2011 and 2017, funded by Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology, Fundación Alcoa, Fundación Iberdrola, Portugal’s Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, and the European University Institute’s Max Weber programme. He carried out research stays at Berkeley (1992-1993), University College London (1994-1997) and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (1998); in 2012 he visited the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the University of Bath, the European University Institute, ETH Zürich and Keio University; in 2013 he visited the University of Oxford and Arizona State University; he was a Robert Schuman Fellow at the EUI in 2017, and completed further stays at Keio University (2020) and the EUI (2018-2019 and 2021-2024). Author of 6 books, including the White Paper on Tax Reform (2022) and Climate Change Policies (Edward Elgar, 2010), and of numerous book chapters, including two chapters in the IPCC Assessment Reports (AR5, 2014; AR6, 2022).