In economic project analysis, the rate at which future benefits and costs are discounted relative to current values often determines whether a project passes the benefit-cost test. This is especially true of projects with long time horizons, such as those to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG)...

This paper uses a vote-counting procedure to estimate the probability density function of the total economic impact as a parabolic function of global warming. There is a wide range of uncertainty about the impact of climate change up to 3°C, and the information becomes progressively more...

We generalize Wirl’s (JEEM, 2009) “oligopoly meets oligopsony” model of a permit market for the case of heterogeneous players. Both oligopolists and oligopsonists reduce welfare by restricting trade. Having both in the market reinforces this. However, oligopolists seek to increase the...

Uncertainty plays a significant role in evaluating climate policy, and fat-tailed 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 a new way...

I estimate the cost of meeting the EU 2030 targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction, using statistical emulators of ten alternative models. Assuming a first-best policy implementation, I find that total and marginal costs are modest. The statistical emulators allow me to compute the risk...

This paper investigates the relationship between investment in new and second-hand capital goods and energy intensity. Using a panel dataset of about 4,500 Chilean firms for the period 2001-2007, we find that both types of investment help reducing energy intensity although second-hand machinery...

The transition from autocracy to democracy may lead a country to break-up. The break-ups of the USSR and Yugoslavia led to sharp falls in the level of emissions (while pre- and post-crisis trends are similar). If something like that would happen in China, an event with an unknown but small...