Jiaxin Zhao is trained as an economist and engineer. He is now a PhD candidate in Political Economy and Government at Tsinghua University. From 2020 to 2022, He worked as a Research Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and was affiliated with the Blavatnik School of Government and the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford. During the same period, he also worked at Envision, a renewables corporate, to help accelerate the net-zero transition in China and around the world.
His current research focuses on the political economy of development and transition. His past research experience includes energy, climate, public finance and the economics of welfare.
Jiaxin’s academic interests span multiple disciplines with publications in top economic and scientific journals. His economic work at Oxford appears at international conferences such as the Annual Conferences of the European Economic Association and the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. During his engineering career at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, he published seven academic articles in peer-reviewed journals, e.g. Energy and Applied Energy, with expertise in renewable energy systems and modelling.
He has provided advice on economics, energy and climate, and corporate sustainability to public agencies (e.g. China’s Ministry of Ecology and the Environment, Development Research Centre of the State Council, UN Climate Action Summit, Shanghai and Shenzhen City governments), not-for-profit organisations (e.g. CDP and Green Light-year), and for-profit corporates (e.g. Envision, MSCI and ENGIE). Topics cover corporate governance, green finance, energy infrastructure investment, trade policy, urban planning, and natural resource management. His opinions appear on BBC World Service, Chatham House, and various local media in Europe and China.
Jiaxin holds a Master of Public Policy and an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and a BSc in Alternative Energy Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He shortly studied at Waseda University in Japan.
Contact: jackson_zhao@outlook.com
Jiaxin Zhao 