Renate Schubert

Renate Schubert is Professor for Economics at ETH Zurich. She got her Dr. rer. pol. in Tübingen and did her habilitation at the Technical University Darmstadt. Before starting her habilitation she did postgraduate studies at the German Institute for Development in Berlin, did field studies in Costa Rica and worked as a consultant for Lahmeyer International in Frankfurt/M. In the 1980's R. Schubert spent several months working for projects in developing countries (Niger, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, etc.). Between 1990 and 1991 she was Professor for Economics at the University of Regensburg and between 1991 and 1992 at the University of Tübingen. In Tübingen she was the Deputy Director of the University's "International Center".

Between 1993 and 2006 R. Schubert was head of the Center for Economic Research at ETH Zurich. From October 1997 through October 1999 she was head of the Law and Economics Department at ETH Zurich and from October 1999 through September 2001 she ran the Department for Humanities, Social and Political Sciences. In summer 2006 R. Schubert founded the interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED) at ETH Zurich. She was Head of the Institute until 2014. Since 2008 R.Schubert is the Gender Delegate of ETH Zurich’s President and in this function an Associate Vice President of ETH Zurich.

R. Schubert worked for the Scientific Council to the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (1992-2005). Between 1997 and 2000 she was member of the Swiss Council for Development and Cooperation. In 1997/98 R. Schubert was President of a working group to evaluate Bavarian Economics Faculties at Universities on behalf of the Bavarian Ministry for Education and Research. Between 2000 and 2004 R. Schubert was member of the "Hochschulrat" at Regensburg University. She was on the Board of the Swiss National Science Foundation (1994-2004) and was a member of Senat and Hauptausschuss at the German Science Foundation (1999-2005). From 2000 until 2013 R. Schubert was appointed to the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), which she chaired between 2004 and 2008. Since 2004 she is member of the External Advisory Board of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University. From 2005 - 2007 R. Schubert was a member of the Swiss Federal Economic Policy Commission. From 2011 – 2015 she was a member of the Advisory Board of the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. Since November 2011 she has been a member of the Supervisory Board of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), which she is chairing since March 2012. As of April 2015 R. Schubert is running a project on private households’ energy efficiency in Singapore. The project is part of the FRS (Future Resilient Systems) cluster within the SEC (Singapore-ETH Center). R. Schubert has been member of various juries, evaluation committees and research networks.

The scientific work of R. Schubert mainly deals with risk perception and risk behavior as well as with applied behavioral economics topics. Her key field of application is environmental and energy related behavior of private households. R. Schubert published books and articles on decision-making, risk and insurance problems, on energy and environmental economics, on gender research as well as on problems of developing countries.