Animal economics

Humans care about animals, and many would argue that animals are morally relevant. Many of our decisions profoundly affect the welfare of animals and yet welfare economics has not, up to this point, considered animals in its frameworks, theories and cost-benefit calculations. This is poised to change with the publication of Animal Economics by Nicolas Treich, who is a pioneer in bringing animals into economics.

Professor Treich will present the main arguments of the book, which explores the complexity of human attitudes toward animals and combines this with economic theory to show how we can understand animal welfare as an externality and thereby incorporate animals into decisions. After the book presentation, a panel will debate and further explore the themes of the book.

Meet our speakers and chair

Jonathan Birch (@birchlse) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the new Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE. In 2021, he led a "Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans" that led to invertebrate animals including octopuses, crabs and lobsters being included in the UK government's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act. In 2024, he published The Edge of Sentience: risk and precaution in humans, other animals, and AI, an Open Access book.

Nicolas Treich is a research associate at INRAE and TSE. He has written numerous papers on climate policy, the precautionary principle and other aspects of environmental decision making under uncertainty. In recent years, he has pioneered the economic analysis of animal welfare, resulting in the publication of Animal Economics, which will surely become a landmark publication for those who wish to know how to incorporate the welfare of animals in our policy decisions.

Marion Dumas is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute at LSE. Her research focuses on finding the institutional, behavioural and policy processes that underpin successful green innovation, from EVs to plant-based foods. She is currently working on engaging consumers in deliberative processes to examine and reconsider their preferences regarding the consumption of animal-based products.

More about this event

The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (@GRI_LSE) was established by LSE in 2008 to create a world-leading multidisciplinary centre for policy-relevant research and training on climate change and the environment, bringing together international expertise from across LSE and beyond, including on economics, finance, geography, the environment, science, law, international relations, development and political science.

Launched in 2025, the Global School of Sustainability at LSE (GSoS) is the centre of social science expertise for sustainability impact at LSE. We work in partnerships across the LSE community and beyond to advance pioneering sustainability research and global policy engagement.

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