We are recruiting a fully funded doctoral student at the Division of Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, for the project “Quantity or quality? A Blind Spot for Carbon Footprint Analysis and Demand-Side Policy” (2026–2030).
Consumption-based carbon footprint accounting for households assumes that emissions scale with spending: €100 on clothing counts as ten times the emissions of €10. But that €100 could be ten shirts, or one shirt at ten times the price. This known weakness distorts how emissions are allocated between social groups, and likely understates the benefits of measures against fast fashion and of circular business models. The project builds the first method to separate quantity from quality at scale, on both the demand and the supply side, using Swedish transaction-level household microdata and firm-level business statistics.
The doctoral student will work on two connected questions:
– How much of a larger carbon footprint comes from buying more, and how much from buying better? This bears directly on widely cited estimates of carbon inequality.
– What could quality-oriented policies, such as France’s regulation of ultra-fast fashion and the EU Right-to-Repair Directive, deliver in emission reductions, and how strong is public support for them in Sweden and Europe?
The position is strongly quantitative. We are looking for candidates with a master’s degree in environmental science, economics, sustainability science or a related field, and solid skills in R or Python. Experience with input-output analysis, econometric analysis of microdata, or survey and stated-preference methods is a merit. The project is a collaboration with KTH, Statistics Sweden and the greentech company Svalna.
Full advertisement and application: https://www.chalmers.se/om-chalmers/arbeta-hos-oss/lediga-tjanster/?rmpage=job&rmjob=15088&rmlang=SE
Deadline: October 20, 2026