This paper demonstrates how three important results in environmental economics, true under mild conditions in closed economies, are false or need serious amendment in a world with international trade in goods. Since the three results we highlight have framed much of the ongoing discussion and...

Climate modelers have recognized the possibility of abrupt climate changes caused by a reorganization of the North Atlantic's current pattern (technically known as a thermohaline circulation collapse). This circulation system now warms north-western Europe and transports carbon dioxide to the...

Integrated assessment models have become the primary tools for comparing climate policies that seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Policy comparisons have often been performed by considering a planner who seeks to make optimal trade-offs between the costs of carbon abatement and the...

This paper examines the tilt and risk-return characteristics of real retirement incomes provided by variable annuities tied to bills, long-term bonds, stocks and a mixed portfolio which combines all three. The analysis emphasizes the riskiness of the real value of benefits provided by...

This paper reviews methods that have been used to statistically measure the effect of climate on economic value, using historic data on weather, climate, economic activity and other variables. This has been an active area of research for several decades, with many recent developments and...

Efficient responses to climate change require accurate estimates of both aggregate damages and where and to whom they occur. While specific case studies and simulations have suggested that climate change disproportionately affects the poor, large-scale direct evidence of the magnitude and...

We study the long-term impact of climate change on economic activity across countries, using a stochastic growth model where labour productivity is affected by country-specific climate variables--defined as deviations of temperature and precipitation from their historical norms. Using a panel...

Recent evidence suggests an increasing risk of natural disasters of the magnitude of hurricane Katrina and Sandy. Concurrently, the number and volume of flood insurance policies has been declining since 2008. Hence, households who have purchased a house in coastal areas may be at increasing risk...

Extreme temperatures lead to large fluctuations in electricity demand and wholesale prices of electricity, which in turn affects the optimal production process for firms to use. Using a large international sample of planned power plant projects, we measure the way that electric utilities'...