The Stern Review constitutes today the most complete and didactic synthesis of the economics of climate change. Despite appearances, it is not, however, a simple reference manual. Its most attractive feature is the author’s commitment to action in the face of climactic risk. The report’s...

The paper will discuss the possibilities of the development of nuclear energy in the world in the midterm and long term. It will correlate the prospects with the emissions of CO2 and the effects on climate change. In particular it will discuss the problems nuclear energy face to make a large...

In the wake of the Copenhagen Conference and the outstanding issue of shaping climate change mitigation for the period beyond that covered by the Kyoto protocol, this paper puts into context the various economic instruments available fot tackling climate change, and highlights the emergence, as...

Species distribution modeling (SDM) is used to map areas predicted to be suitable for commercial banana production in Central and northwestern South America. Using the downscaled climate projections for 2060 from seven leading global climate models we then predict the geographical shifts in...

This paper argues that it is countries' historical experience with democracy, the democratic capital stock, rather than current levels of democracy that determines current climate change policies. Empirical evidence using data starting as far back as year 1800 for 87 countries, which together...

The introduction of a price on carbon dioxide is expected to be more efficient than prescriptive regulation. It also instantiates substantial economic value. Initially programs allocated this value to incumbent firms (grandfathering), but the growing movement toward auctioning or emissions fees...

A concern of many environmentalists is that the use of biomass energy will decimate the forests. Searchinger et al. (2008, 2009) examined this issue related to corn ethanol and suggested that substituting corn ethanol for petroleum would increase carbon emissions associated with the land...

The European Union (EU) is actively campaigning for the global regulation of carbon emissions generated by maritime bunker fuels because these emissions are presently barely regulated and are projected to increase significantly in the coming decades. However, since a global regulation has not...

This document is the executive summary of "The Climate and Development Challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean: Options for climate resilient low carbon development", a joint work with Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), presented...

Global climate change mitigation will require the development and diffusion of a large number and variety of new technologies. How will patent protection affect this process? In this paper we first review the evidence on the role of patents for innovation and international technology transfer in...