We consider international negotiations on the level of global pollution, and examine the Lindahl solution which determines the distribution of the pollution permits with unanimous agreement. We show various properties to clarify difficulties to achieve a Pareto efficient allocation as an...

Recent theoretical work in the economics of climate change has suggested that climate policy is highly sensitive to 'fat-tailed' risks of catastrophic outcomes (Weitzman, 2009). Such risks are suggested to be an inevitable consequence of scientific uncertainty about the effects of increased...

Empirical evaluation of policies to mitigate climate change has been largely confined to the application of discounted utilitarianism (DU). DU is controversial, both due to the conditions through which it is justified and due to its consequences for climate policies, where the discounting of...

Nearly all discussions about the appropriate consumption discount rate for climate change policy evaluation assume that a single discount rate concept applies. We argue that two distinct concepts and associated rates apply. We distinguish between a social-welfare-equivalent discount rate...

We investigate how moral concerns about permit trading affect an endogenous pollution permit trading equilibrium, where governments choose non-cooperatively the amount of permits they allocate to domestic industries. Politicians may feel reluctant to allow permit trading and/or may prefer that...

Most studies show that the present generation has to take the burden and reduce consumption to mitigate future climate change. However, significant climate change is due to a market failure, and corrections of market failures give possibilities of Pareto improvements. In this paper, we study the...

Climate change raises challenging questions in the economics of risk, space, time and in broader aspects of human well-being. Many of these are normative questions, which cannot be addressed without engaging with difficult ethical issues. The relationship between economics and ethics cuts both...

Based on unique data from a world-wide survey of agents involved in international climate policy, this paper empirically analyzes the importance of equity in this field. We find that equity issues are considered highly important in international climate negotiations and that the polluter-pays...

Low probability catastrophic climate change can have a significant influence on policy under hyperbolic discounting. We compare the set of Markov Perfect Equilibria (MPE) to the optimal policy under time-consistent commitment. For some initial levels of risk there are multiple MPE; these may...

The Integrated Assessment Models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rely heavily on negative emissions technologies [NETs] for scenarios that keep global temperature rise to 2° C or lower. One favoured NET is bio-energy combined with carbon capture and storage [BECCS]. It is...