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...

A growing body of literature from the natural and the social sciences indicates that the rate of temperature increase is another key driver of total climate damages, next to the absolute increase in temperature compared to the pre-industrial level. Nonetheless, the damage functions employed in...

To mitigate climate change, some governments opt for instruments focused on investment, like performance standards or feebates, instead of carbon prices. We compare these policies in a Ramsey model with clean and polluting capital, irreversible investment and a climate constraint. Alternative...

Climate feedback mechanisms that have the potential to intensify global warming have been omitted almost completely in the integrated assessment of climate change and the economy so far. With the present paper we try to narrow this gap in literature. We discuss different types of feedback...

This paper provides a review of the literature on competitiveness and leakage concerns associated with differentiated climate abatement commitments among countries. The literature reviewed is not exhausted, but it is sufficient to provide a balanced view of both academics and policy circles....

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....

This paper uses a benchmark climate model with endogenous technical change to consider the effects of three extensions on optimal policy under a clean transition. First, the movement of workers between non-energy and energy sectors lowers the cost of abatement by more than an order of magnitude,...

This paper describes an integrated assessment model with an unknown temperature threshold where severe and irreversible climate impacts, called a tipping point, occurs. The possibility of tipping leads to the following linked outcomes: a prolonged period of peak temperature; a rebound in...

We study how public policies affects an economy where production emits pollutants and investment in productive assets raises the economy’s overall productivity. We explore two hypotheses about how the accumulation of pollutants affects human well-being. Under the first one, there is no limit...

This paper introduces geoengineering into an optimal control model of climate change economics. Together with mitigation and adaptation, carbon and solar geoengineering span the universe of possible climate policies. Their wildly different characteristics have important implications for climate...