A principal reason that losses from catastrophic risks have been increasing over time is that more individuals and firms are locating in harm's way while not taking appropriate protective measures. Several behavioural biases lead decision-makers not to invest in adaptation measures until after...

A group of agents disagree about the appropriate inter temporal preferences to use when exploiting a common productive resource. They thus delegate decision making to a social planner who allocates consumption efficiently across heterogeneous individuals and over time. We define `policy...

Uncertainty is intrinsic to climate change: we know that the climate is changing, but not precisely how fast or in what ways. Nor do we understand fully the social and economic consequences of these changes, or the options that will be available for reducing climate change. Furthermore the...

Does temperature affect economic performance? Has temperature always affected social welfare through its impact on physical and cognitive function? While many economic studies have explored the indirect links between climate and welfare (e.g. agriculture, conflict, sea-level rise), few address...

Greater use of renewable energy is seen as a key component of any move to combat climate change, and is being aggressively promoted as such by the new U.S. administration and by other governments. Yet there is little economic analysis of renewable energy. This paper surveys what is written and...

Social distancing via shelter-in-place strategies has emerged as the most effective way to combat Covid-19. In the United States, choices about such policies are made by individual states. Here we show that the policy choice made by one state influences the incentives that other states face to...

The selection of climate policies should be an exercise in risk management reflecting the many relevant sources of uncertainty. Studies of climate change and its impacts rarely yield consensus on the distribution of exposure, vulnerability, or possible outcomes. Hence policy analysis cannot...

What have we learned from the outpouring of literature as a result of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change? A lot. We have explored the model space and the parameter space much more thoroughly, though there are still unexplored regions. While there are aspects of the Stern...

I calculate the cost of replacing all power stations in the U.S. using coal and gas by wind and solar power stations by 2050, leaving electric power generation in the U.S. carbon free. Allowing for the savings in the cost of fossil fuel arising from the replacement of fossil fuel plants this is...