The Ramsey rule for the consumption rate of discount assumes a transfer of money of a (representative) agent at one point in time to the same agent at another point in time. Climate policy (implicitly) transfers money not just over time but also between agents. I propose three alternative...

The European Commission did not publish a cost-benefit analysis for its 2020 climate package. This paper fills that gap, comparing the marginal costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction. The uncertainty about the marginal costs of climate change is large and skewed, and estimates...

We assess the subsidy for the installation of biomass boilers and wood gasification boilers under the Greener Homes Scheme in Ireland. We find that the (implicit) subsidy per tonne of carbon dioxide avoided varies hugely across households. The current policy costs 17% too much for the emissions...

Uncertainty plays a significant role in evaluating climate policy, and fattailed uncertainty may dominate policy advice. Should we make our utmost effort to prevent the arbitrarily large impacts of climate change under deep uncertainty? In order to answer to this question we propose an new way...

In this paper we carry out a meta-analysis of recent studies into the costs of greenhouse gas mitigation policies that aim at the long-term stabilization of these gases in the atmosphere. We find the cost estimates of the studies to be sensitive to the level of the stabilization target, the...