In many commodity markets, the arrival of new information leads to unexpectedly rapid changes--or jumps--in commodity prices. Such arrivals suggest the assumption that log-return relatives are normally distributed may not hold. Combined with time-varying volatility, the possibility of jumps...

Transitioning the economy from one that relies on fossil fuels to one that emphasizes renewable energy sources will have important implications for the pattern of natural resource use. Such a transition depends on government policies. As elected politicians have an incentive to weigh the...

Transitioning the economy from one that relies on fossil fuels to one that emphasizes renewable energy sources will have important implications for the pattern of natural resource use. Such a transition depends on government policies. As elected politicians have an incentive to weigh the...

The potential presence of jumps and time-varying volatility in convenience yields can lead to abnormally fat tails, which has implications for investment in storage capacity, leasing and drilling for crude oil. In this paper we evaluate the potential for these features in convenience yields. To...

Addressing global climate change is likely to require broad-based deployment of new infrastructure. This new infrastructure is likely to be both costly to build and difficult to reverse – suggesting the deployment of new infrastructure is an example of “investment under uncertainty” (Dixit...

Economists have analyzed potential for damages from climate change from theoretical analyses and with Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). Analytical models typically write damages as a function of the carbon stock, while IAMs typically view damages as based on temperatures. In this paper, we...