In a recent article in this journal, Francesco Bosello, Roberto Roson, and Richard Tol make the surprising prediction that the first stages of global warming will, on balance, save a large number of lives. Bosello et al. fail to substantiate this remarkable estimate, and they make multiple...

Beginning in the late 1990s, Canada and the United States began requiring "Environmental Reviews (ERs)" of all trade agreements to be negotiated by each government. This paper, commissioned by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, outlines how ERs have evolved in North...

Revamping the Social Security program has become a domestic policy priority of the Bush administration. The President has stated that the system is facing a “crisis” and will be “bankrupt” in 2041. His proposal to change Social Security is centered on the introduction of private accounts...

Environmental economics assumes that reliance on price signals, adjusted for externalities, normally leads to efficient solutions to environmental problems. We explore a limiting case, when market volatility created "mixed signals": waste paper and other recycled materials were briefly worth an...

Conventional economic analysis is rapidly replacing the arguments of the climate skeptics as the principal justification for inaction on climate change. It is important to create an alternative economics that is consistent with the urgency expressed by the latest climate science. Frank Ackerman...

The problem of low-probability, catastrophic risk is increasingly central to discussion of climate science and policy. But the integrated assessment models (IAMs) of climate economics rarely incorporate this possibility. What modifications are needed to analyze catastrophic economic risks in an...

The climate policy debate has advanced from science to economics, with a growing focus on creating carbon markets and getting the prices right. This is necessary but far from sufficient for an effective and equitable response to the climate challenge. While market-oriented forces such as the IMF...