Publications
Agreeing to disagree on climate policy
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Disagreements about the value of the utility discount rate—the rate at which our concern for the welfare of future people declines with their distance from us in time—are at the heart of the debate about the appropriate intensity of climate policy. read more »
How certain are we about the certainty-equivalent long term social discount rate?
The case for using declining social discount rates when the future is uncertain is now widely accepted in both academic and policy circles. We present sharp … read more »
Non-identical quadruplets: four new estimates of the elasticity of marginal utility for the UK
This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the value of the elasticity of marginal utility for the United Kingdom. This parameter is a key determinant of … read more »
Discounting under disagreement
NBER Working Paper. A group of agents disagree about the appropriate inter temporal preferences to use when exploiting a common productive resource. read more »
On welfare frameworks and catastrophic climate risks
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 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). read more »
Declining discount rates and the Fisher Effect: inflated past, discounted future?
Uncertain, yet persistent, real rates of return to capital underpin one argument for using a declining schedule of social discount rates. Yet persistency is only present … read more »
Ethics, equity and the economics of climate change. Paper 2: economics and politics
Both intergenerational and intratemporal equity are central to the examination of policy towards climate change. However, many discussions of intergenerational issues have been marred by serious … read more »
Ethics, equity and the economics of climate change. Paper 1: science and philosophy
This paper examines a broad range of ethical perspectives and principles relevant to the analysis of issues raised by the science of climate change and explores … read more »
The emerging geographies of climate justice
Climate justice is a well-used concept within the international climate debate yet it has often remained little more than a static ideal. This paper brings together … read more »
The treatment of risk and uncertainty in the US Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis
This note considers the treatment of risk and uncertainty in the recently established ‘social cost of carbon’ (SCC) for analysis of federal regulations in the United States. It argues … read more »
