The effects of climate change on natural systems will be substantial, wide-spread, and likely irreversible. Warmer temperatures and changing precipitation patterns have already contributed to forest dieback and pushed some species towards extinction. Natural systems contribute to human welfare...

The choice of the rate at which one should discount the long-term benefits of mitigating climate change is highly controversial. Both the level and the slope of the term structure of discount rates have been discussed intensively in relation to the determination of the social cost of carbon....

Carbon markets are substantial and expanding. There are many lessons from experience over the past 9 years: fewer free allowances, careful moderation of low and high prices, and a recognition that trading systems require adjustments that have consequences for market participants and market...

Environmental economics has traditionally fallen in the domain of microeconomics, but approaches from macroeconomics have recently been applied to studying environmental policy. We focus on two macroeconomic tools and their application to environmental economics. First, real-business-cycle...

Agriculture is the largest sector in most sub-Saharan economies in terms of employment, and it plays an important role in supplying food and export earnings. Rural poverty rates remain high, and labor productivity is strikingly low. This article asks how these factors shape the role of...

The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act created a trading program in sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions that has served as the seminal example of how an emissions trading program could be designed. Yet despite its success, the trading program was essentially brought to an end by a series of...

The use of payment for environmental services (PES) is not a new type of contract, but PES programs have become more in vogue because of the potential for sequestering carbon by paying to prevent deforestation and degradation of forestlands. We provide a framework utilizing transaction costs to...

Many countries have actively encouraged the production of biofuels as a low-carbon alternative to the use of fossil fuels in transportation. To what extent do these trends imply a reallocation of scarce land away from food to fuel production? This paper critically reviews the small but growing...

The economics of climate change and the various measures that should be implemented to reduce future damages are highly tied to the use of cost-benefit analysis. Traditional approaches ignore the fact that environmental amenities do not experience the same growth rate as do most of the sectors...

This article surveys the literature on the economic impact of climate change. Different methods have been used to estimate the impact of climate change on human welfare. Studies agree that there are positive and negative impacts. In the short term, positive impacts may dominate, but these are...