The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the U.S. and other economies have grown, the carrying-capacity of the planet - in regard to natural...

The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the U.S. and other economies have grown, the carrying-capacity of the planet - in regard to natural...

Emissions of greenhouse gases linked with global climate change are affected by diverse aspects of economic activity, including individual consumption, business investment, and government spending. An effective climate policy will have to modify the decision calculus for these activities in the...

Despite growing scientific evidence that passing a 2°C temperature increase may trigger tipping points in climate dynamics, most Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) based on Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) with smooth quadratic damage functions are unable to account for the possibility of strong...

China has realized that for its own sake and from the international community's perspective, it cannot afford to continue along the conventional path of encouraging economic growth at the expense of the environment. Accordingly, the country has placed ecological goals at the same level of...

This paper describes changes to the modelling of the transport sector in the WITCH (World Induced Technical Change Hybrid) model to incorporate road freight and account for the intensity of freight with respect to GDP. Modelling freight demand based on the intensity of freight with respect to...

The mismatch between actions to combat climate change, which are based on voluntary national initiatives of limited effort, and the recognition of the importance of global warming is growing. Climate engineering via solar radiation management has been proposed as a possible complement to...

We develop a theoretical model of directed technical change in which clean (zero emissions) and dirty (emissions-intensive) technologies are embodied in long-lived capital. We show how obsolescence costs generated by technological embodiment create inertia in a transition to clean growth....

Greenhouse gas policies confront the trade-off between the costs of reducing emissions and the benefits of avoided climate change. The risk of uncertain and potentially irreversible catastrophes is an important issue related to the latter, and one that has not yet been well incorporated into...

Polar amplification is an established scientific fact which has been associated with the surface albedo feedback and to heat and moisture transport from the Equator to the Poles. In this paper we unify a two-box climate model, which allows for heat and moisture transport from the southern region...