At high enough greenhouse gas concentrations, climate change might conceivably cause catastrophic damages with small but non-negligible probabilities. If the bad tail of climate damages is sufficiently fat, and if the coefficient of relative risk aversion is greater than one, the...

It is difficult to resolve the global warming free-rider externality problem by negotiating n different quantity targets. By contrast, negotiating a single internationally binding minimum carbon price (the proceeds from which are domestically retained) counters self-interest by incentivizing...

What is the best way to incorporate a risk premium into the discount rate schedule for a real investment project with uncertain payoffs? The standard CAPM formula suggests a beta-weighted average of the return on a safe investment and the mean return on an economy-wide representative risky...

A critical issue in climate-change economics is the specification of the so-called "damages function" and its interaction with the unknown uncertainty of catastrophic outcomes. This paper asks how much we might be misled by our economic assessment of climate change when we employ a conventional...

Often it is desirable to formulate certain decision problems without specifying a cut-off date and terminal conditions (which are sometimes felt to be arbitrary). This paper examines the duality theory that goes along with the kind of open-ended convex programming models frequently encountered...

How did climate change become an economic issue? Why is economic discourse so influential on the public policy of climate change? How can it best contribute to the scientific and public debates? Nine eminent scholars explain in this book both how economics has changed environmental understanding...

How did climate change become an economic issue? Why is economic discourse so influential on the public policy of climate change? How can it best contribute to the scientific and public debates? Nine eminent scholars explain in this book both how economics has changed environmental understanding...

If you had a 10 percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10 percent chance this might eventually lead to a...

This paper posits the conceptually useful allegory of a futuristic "World Climate Assembly" that votes on global carbon emissions via the basic principle of majority rule. Two variants are considered. One is to vote on a universal price (or tax) that is internationally harmonized, but the...