Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in the Sustainable Development program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

I am an environmental and spatial economist. I use applied econometric and quantitative structural methods to study the distributional consequences of urban transportation policy, climate and other environmental health impacts, and residential sorting.

I am on the 2026-27 job market.

Before starting my PhD, I worked as a consultant at the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and as a research assistant at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, where I focused on the intersection of development economics and natural disaster impacts—areas that still interest me.

I received my BSc in Economics from Freie Universität Berlin, hold an MSc in Statistics from Imperial College London, and a Masters in International Trade, Finance, and Development from the Barcelona School of Economics.

If you are interested in my research and would like to chat, please reach out!

Contact: stephan.thies@columbia.edu