[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/oxcrwp/145.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Growth and Mitigation Policies with Uncertain Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Lucas Betschger
  • Alexandra Vinogradova
Abstract
Climate physics predicts that the intensity of natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change. One of the biggest challenges for economic modeling is the inherent uncertainty of climate events, which crucially affects consumption, investment, and abatement decisions. We present a stochastic model of a growing economy where natural disasters are multiple and random, with damages driven by the economy's polluting activity. We provide a closed-form solution and show that the optimal path is characterized by a constant growth rate of consumption and the capital stock until a shock arrives, triggering a downward jump in both variables. Optimum mitigation policy consists of spending a constant fraction of output on emissions abatement. This fraction is an increasing function of the arrival rate, polluting intensity of output, and the damage intensity of emissions. A sharp response of the optimum growth rate and the abatement share to changes in the arrival rate and the damage intensity justifes more stringent climate policies as compared to the expectation-based scenario. We subsequently extend the baseline model by adding climate-induced fluctuations around the growth trend and stock-pollution effects, demonstrating robustness of our results. In a quantitative assessment of our model we show that the optimal abatement expenditure at the global level may represent 0.9% of output, which is equivalent to a tax of $71 per ton carbon.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucas Betschger & Alexandra Vinogradova, 2014. "Growth and Mitigation Policies with Uncertain Climate Change," OxCarre Working Papers 145, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:oxcrwp:145
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:08ebd178-e279-40b9-b52b-36162bf76070
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ikefuji, Masako & Horii, Ryo, 2012. "Natural disasters in a two-sector model of endogenous growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 784-796.
    2. Pindyck, Robert S., 2012. "Uncertain outcomes and climate change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 289-303.
    3. Tsur, Yacov & Zemel, Amos, 1998. "Pollution control in an uncertain environment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 967-975, June.
    4. van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2014. "Abrupt positive feedback and the social cost of carbon," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 28-41.
    5. Susanne Soretz, 2007. "Efficient Dynamic Pollution Taxation in an Uncertain Environment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 36(1), pages 57-84, January.
    6. Robert S. Pindyck & Neng Wang, 2013. "The Economic and Policy Consequences of Catastrophes," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 306-339, November.
    7. Toche, Patrick, 2005. "A tractable model of precautionary saving in continuous time," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 267-272, May.
    8. de Zeeuw, Aart & Zemel, Amos, 2012. "Regime shifts and uncertainty in pollution control," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 939-950.
    9. Tsur, Yacov & Zemel, Amos, 1996. "Accounting for global warming risks: Resource management under event uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(6-7), pages 1289-1305.
    10. Robert S. Pindyck, 2013. "The Climate Policy Dilemma," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 7(2), pages 219-237, July.
    11. Steger, Thomas M., 2005. "Stochastic growth under Wiener and Poisson uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 311-316, March.
    12. Clarke, Harry R. & Reed, William J., 1994. "Consumption/pollution tradeoffs in an environment vulnerable to pollution-related catastrophic collapse," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 991-1010, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Can Askan Mavi, 2017. "Creative Destruction vs Destructive Destruction ? : A Schumpeterian Approach for Adaptation and Mitigation," Working Papers halshs-01455297, HAL.
    2. Jean-Marc Bourgeon & Margot Hovsepian, 2017. "Green Technology Adoption and the Business Cycle," CESifo Working Paper Series 6485, CESifo.
    3. Marc Chesney & Pierre Lasserre & Bruno Troja, 2017. "Mitigating global warming: a real options approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 255(1), pages 465-506, August.
    4. Müller-Fürstenberger, Georg & Schumacher, Ingmar, 2015. "Insurance and climate-driven extreme events," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 59-73.
    5. Mavi, Can Askan, 2024. "Creative destruction vs destructive destruction: A Schumpeterian approach for adaptation and mitigation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 36-53.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lucas Bretschger & Alexandra Vinogradova, 2014. "Growth and Mitigation Policies with Uncertain Climate Damage," CESifo Working Paper Series 5085, CESifo.
    2. Lucas Bretschger & Alexandra Vinogradova, 2014. "Going beyond tradition:Growth and Mitigation Policies with Uncertain Climate Damage," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 14/202, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    3. Lucas Bretschger & Susanne Soretz, 2022. "Stranded Assets: How Policy Uncertainty affects Capital, Growth, and the Environment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 83(2), pages 261-288, October.
    4. Lucas Bretschger, 2018. "Greening Economy, Graying Society," CER-ETH Press, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich, edition 2, number 18-001.
    5. Alexandra Brausmann & Lucas Bretschger, 2024. "Escaping Damocles’ Sword: Endogenous Climate Shocks in a Growing Economy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 87(6), pages 1545-1592, June.
    6. Frederick Ploeg & Aart Zeeuw, 2019. "Pricing Carbon and Adjusting Capital to Fend Off Climate Catastrophes," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(1), pages 29-50, January.
    7. van der Ploeg, Frederick & De Zeeuw, Aart, 2014. "Climate Tipping and Economic Growth: Precautionary Saving and the Social Cost of Carbon," CEPR Discussion Papers 9982, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Bommier, Antoine & Lanz, Bruno & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Models-as-usual for unusual risks? On the value of catastrophic climate change," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1-22.
    9. Yacov Tsur & Cees Withagen, 2013. "Preparing for catastrophic climate change," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 110(3), pages 225-239, November.
    10. van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2014. "Abrupt positive feedback and the social cost of carbon," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 28-41.
    11. Nkuiya, Bruno & Costello, Christopher, 2016. "Pollution control under a possible future shift in environmental preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PB), pages 193-205.
    12. Yacov Tsur & Amos Zemel, 2016. "The Management of Fragile Resources: A Long Term Perspective," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(3), pages 639-655, November.
    13. Lemoine, Derek & Traeger, Christian P., 2016. "Ambiguous tipping points," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PB), pages 5-18.
    14. Nævdal, Erik & Vislie, Jon, 2012. "Resource Depletion and Capital Accumulation under Catastrophic Risk: The Role of Stochastic Thresholds and Stock Pollution," Memorandum 24/2012, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    15. Frederick van der Ploeg & Aart de Zeeuw, 2018. "Climate Tipping and Economic Growth: Precautionary Capital and the Price of Carbon," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(5), pages 1577-1617.
    16. van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2014. "Abrupt positive feedback and the social cost of carbon," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 28-41.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate policy; uncertainty; natural disasters; endogenous growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxf:oxcrwp:145. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Melis Boya (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oxcaruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.