Cameron Hepburn
Professorial Research Fellow
Cameron works for the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment on the projects ‘Climate science and decision making’ and ‘Mitigation of climate change: carbon markets and technology’.
Background
Cameron has a DPhil in Economics from Oxford, along with an MPhil in Economics from Oxford, an L.L.B (Hons) and a B.Eng (Hons) from Melbourne University, Australia.
Research interests
- Environmental economics;
- Climate change economics;
- Environmental policy;
- Carbon markets and emissions trading;
- Sustainability;
- Behavioural economics.
2014
Green growth: an assessment
‘Green growth’ is almost tautologically required for global welfare to rise in the long run. Economic growth is desirable, not least because over 1 billion people still live in conditions … read more »
2013
Benefit–cost analysis of non-marginal climate and energy projects
Conventional benefit–cost analysis incorporates the normally reasonable assumption that the policy or project under examination is marginal. Among the assumptions this entails is that the policy or project is … read more »
Analysis and control design of sustainable policies for greenhouse gas emissions
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is now an urgent priority. Systems control theory, and in particular feedback control, can be helpful in designing policies that achieve sustainable levels of emissions … read more »
Economic instruments for climate change
Reference Meckling, J., and Hepburn, C. 2013. Economic instruments for climate change. In: The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy (Falkner, R. [ed.]). Wiley-Blackwell.
Prosperity with Growth: Economic Growth, Climate Change and Environmental Limits
Bowen, Alex and Hepburn, Cameron. 2013. Chapter in Handbook On Energy And Climate Change
Tackling unsustainable wildlife trade
This chapter describes and illustrates the issues surrounding wildlife trade policies. Wildlife trades are complex and heterogeneous, requiring different management approaches although the issues discussed may be common. It … read more »
Emissions trading with profit-neutral permit allocations
This paper examines the impact of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) on equilibrium emissions, output, price, market concentration, and profits in a generalized Cournot model. We develop formulae for … read more »
Intermediate inputs and economic productivity
Many models of economic growth exclude materials, energy and other intermediate inputs from the production function. Growing environmental pressures and resource prices suggest that this may be increasingly inappropriate. … read more »
2012
Intermediate inputs and economic productivity
Many models of economic growth exclude materials, energy and other intermediate inputs from the production function. Growing environmental pressures and resource prices suggest that this may … read more »
Prosperity with growth: economic growth, climate change and environmental limits
Debate about the relationship between environmental limits and economic growth has been taking place for several decades. These arguments have re-emerged with greater intensity following advances … read more »
Trade, climate change and the political game theory of border carbon adjustments
The lack of real progress at the Durban climate change conference in 2011—postponing effective action until at least 2020—has many causes, one of which is the … read more »
2011
A stated preference investigation into the Chinese demand for farmed vs. wild bear bile
Farming of animals and plants has recently been considered not merely as a more efficient and plentiful supply of their products but also as a means of protecting wild … read more »
Carbon trading: unethical, unjust and ineffective?
Cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions are an important part of the climate change policies of the EU, Japan and New Zealand, among others, as well … read more »
Emerging markets and climate change: Mexican standoff or low-carbon race?
Schelling (1995) stressed the importance of correctly disaggregating the impacts of climate change to understand how individual interests differ across space and time. This paper considers … read more »
Carbon trading: unethical, unjust and ineffective?
Cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions are an important part of the climate change policies of the EU, Japan, New Zealand, among others, as well as China (soon) and … read more »
Self-interested low-carbon growth in G-20 emerging markets
This article suggests that some or all G-20 Emerging Markets (GEMs = Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey) could seize the climate policy agenda … read more »
Action on climate change in Asia's self-interest. Asia 2050: realizing the Asian century
This chapter examines the issue of whether low-carbon growth might be in the self-interest of key Asian countries. Individually, the leading countries in Asia are very important to each … read more »
Combining multiple climate policy instruments: how not to do it
Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policy makers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example, by complementing cap-and-trade … read more »
Optimal harvesting of fish stocks under a time-varying discount rate
Optimal control theory has been extensively used to determine the optimal harvesting policy for renewable resources such as fish stocks. In such optimisations, it is common to maximise the … read more »
Thinking through the climate change challenge
In October 2010, a group of leading thinkers on environmental policy met at the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester for a conference in honour of Nobel … read more »
2010
Combining multiple climate policy instruments: How not to do it
Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policymakers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example by complementing cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon … read more »
Designing carbon markets. Part I: carbon markets in time
This paper analyses the design of carbon markets in time (i.e., intertemporally). It is part of a twin set of papers that ask, starting from first principles, what an … read more »
Designing carbon markets. Part II: carbon markets in space
Designing carbon markets read more »
Environmental policy, government, and the market
Environmental policy is made in a context of both market failure and government failure. On the one hand, leaving environmental protection to the free market, relying on notions of … read more »
Behavioural economics, hyperbolic discounting and environmental policy
This paper reviews some recent research in “behavioural economics” with an application to environmental issues. Empirical results from behavioural economics provide a reminder that human behaviour is context-dependent, implying … read more »
International air travel and greenhouse gas emissions: A proposal for an adaptation levy
(1287) Cameron Hepburn and Benito Müller Greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation services have been increasing rapidly and are likely to continue to do so in the absence of … read more »
On non-marginal cost-benefit analysis
Conventional cost-benefit analysis incorporates the normally reasonable assumption that the policy or project under examination is marginal in the sense that it will not significantly change … read more »
An issue of trust: state corruption, responsibility and greenhouse gas emissions
Climate change is increasingly seen to raise difficult normative issues. To date, cumulative emissions have been disproportionately from the developed world, while the consequences of climate change are anticipated … read more »
2009
Carbon markets in space and time
We analyse the design of carbon markets in time (intertemporally) and space (geographically) from first principles, starting initially with a relatively clean slate and asking what … read more »
Siblings, not triplets: social preferences for risk, inequality and time in discounting climate change
Arguments about the appropriate discount rate often start by assuming a Utilitarian social welfare function with isoelastic utility, in which the consumption discount rate is a function of the … read more »
Equity weighting and the marginal damage costs of climate change
Climate change will give rise to different impacts in different countries, and different countries have different levels of development. Equity-weighted estimates of the (marginal) impact of greenhouse gas emissions … read more »
2008
Economics, ethics and climate change. Arguments for a Better World
There may never have been an instance of environmental pollution to challenge our powers of analysis and evaluation quite like climate change. Global in its causes and consequences, spanning … read more »
A new global deal on climate change
A global target of stabilizing greenhouse-gas concentrations at between 450 and 550 parts per million carbon-dioxide equivalent (ppm CO2e) has proven robust to recent developments in the science and … read more »
2014
Path dependence, innovation and the economics of climate change
Shifting our fossil-fuelled civilisation to clean modes of production and consumption requires deep transformations in our energy and economic systems read more »
2011
The 'surrender charge' on international units in the Australian ETS
Cameron Hepburn, Sarah Chapman, Baran Doda, Chris Duffy, Samuel Fankhauser, James Rydge, Kathryn Smith, Luca Taschini and Alessandro Vitelli
2015
Urgent market stability reserve: Important for clean energy investment
This column discusses how the Market Stability Reserve should be designed and whether it could improve the emissions trading. read more »
2014
Governments must stop 'dithering' over climate action, warns report
New study from Grantham Institute says costs of tackling climate change will spiral unless concerted action is taken urgently read more »
Incomplete climate models lead to complacency
Financial Times – Subscription required
2013
Permits to pollute can be bought too cheaply
When the carbon price collapsed to below €3 in April this year, EU policymakers sought to prop up carbon prices by a deal that would delay the release of carbon … read more »
2012
Should the EU suspend its airline emissions charge?
The inclusion of aviation in the EU Emissions Trading System since 1 January 2012 has faced strong opposition from other nations, particularly the US and China. The Vox
Stephanomics
BBC Radio
Carbon price floor crucial to its aims
While the political noise around the carbon laws continues, we risk losing sight of the fact that a minimum carbon price floor guards against the policy becoming a toothless tiger … read more »
2011
The Australian Government's proposals for a carbon pricing policy
Australia’s Government has put forward a carbon pricing package which is, in some respects, as significant as the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The scheme promises to be a cost-effective … read more »
2015
Green Growth and the New Industrial Revolution
Keynote Speakers Professor Cameron Hepburn, University of Oxford and Grantham Research Institute Simon Upton, Environment Director, OECD Chairs Professor Dame Judith Rees, Grantham Research Institute Professor Sam Fankhauser, Grantham Research … read more »
2010
Current Challenges in the Carbon Markets
Current Challenges in the Carbon Markets read more »
