David Stern is a professor in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at ANU. He is an energy and environmental economist, whose research has focused on understanding the relationship between resource use and economic growth and development. He is also a research associate in Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis and the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at ANU, and is an academic editor of PeerJ.

Professor Stern is also a member of the ANU Grand Challenge: Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific.

He was a lead author for the chapter on Drivers, Trends, and Mitigation in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.

He received a PhD from Boston University in 1994.