The global response to a catastrophic shock to productivity which becomes more imminent with global warming is to have carbon taxes to curb the risk of a calamity and to accumulate precautionary capital to facilitate smoothing of consumption. Our multi-region model of growth and climate change...

The Green Paradox states thata gradually more ambitious climate policy such as a renewables subsidy or an anticipated carbon tax induces fossil fuel owners to extract more rapidly and accelerate global warming However, if extraction becomes more costly as reserves are depleted, such policies...

A classroom model of global warming, fossil fuel depletion and the optimal carbon tax is formulated and calibrated. It features iso-elastic fossil fuel demand, stock-dependent fossil fuel extraction costs, an exogenous interest rate and no decay of the atmospheric stock of carbon. The optimal...

Optimal climate policy is studied in a Ramsey growth model. A developing economy weighs global warming less, hence is more likely to exhaust fossil fuel and exacerbate global warming. The optimal carbon tax is higher for a developed economy. We analyze the optimal time of transition from fossil...

We analyze a power struggle about the control of natural resources where competing factions in society have a private stock of financial assets and a common stock of natural resources with inadequately defined private property rights. We solve a dynamic common-pool problem and obtain political...

For a country fractionalized in competing factions, each owning part of the stock of naturalexhaustible resources, or with insecure property rights, we analyze how resources are transformed into productive capital to sustain consumption. We allow property rights to improve as the country...

We investigate the Hartwick rule for saving of a nation necessary to sustain a constant level of private consumption for a small open economy with an exhaustible stock of natural resources. The amount by which a country saves and invests less than the marginal resource rents equals the expected...

Optimal climate policy is studied. Coal, the abundant resource, contributes more CO2 per unit of energy than the exhaustible resource, oil. We characterize the optimal sequencing oil and coal and departures from the Herfindahl rule. "Preference reversal" can take place. If coal is very dirty...

This article examines the possible adverse effects of well-intended climate policies. A weak Green Paradox arises if the announcement of a future carbon tax or a sufficiently fast rising carbon tax encourages fossil fuel owners to extract reserves more aggressively, thus exacerbating global...