IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/13927.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Climate Economics: A Meta-Review and Some Suggestions

Author

Listed:
  • Geoffrey Heal

Abstract

What have we learned from the outpouring of literature as a result of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change? A lot. We have explored the model space and the parameter space much more thoroughly, though there are still unexplored regions. While there are aspects of the Stern Review's analysis with which we can disagree, it seems fair to say that it has catalyzed a fundamental rethinking of the economic case for action on climate change. We are now in a position to give some conditions that are sufficient to provide a case for strong action on climate change, but need more work before we have a fully satisfactory account of the relevant economics. In particular we need to understand better how climate change affects natural capital - the natural environment and the ecosystems comprising it - and how these affect human welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Geoffrey Heal, 2008. "Climate Economics: A Meta-Review and Some Suggestions," NBER Working Papers 13927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13927
    Note: EEE PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13927.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Sterner & U. Martin Persson, 2008. "An Even Sterner Review: Introducing Relative Prices into the Discounting Debate," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 2(1), pages 61-76, Winter.
    2. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801.
    3. Barbier Edward B & Heal Geoffrey M, 2006. "Valuing Ecosystem Services," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 1-6, February.
    4. Roughgarden, Tim & Schneider, Stephen H., 1999. "Climate change policy: quantifying uncertainties for damages and optimal carbon taxes," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 415-429, July.
    5. Wolfram Schlenker & W. Michael Hanemann & Anthony C. Fisher, 2006. "The Impact of Global Warming on U.S. Agriculture: An Econometric Analysis of Optimal Growing Conditions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(1), pages 113-125, February.
    6. Berry, R. Stephen & Salamon, Peter & Heal, Geoffrey, 1978. "On a relation between economic and thermodynamic optima," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 125-137, October.
    7. Paolo Ghirardato & Massimo Marinacci, 2000. "Risk, Ambiguity and the Separation of Utility and Beliefs," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1143, Econometric Society.
    8. Jeffrey A. Krautkraemer, 1985. "Optimal Growth, Resource Amenities and the Preservation of Natural Environments," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(1), pages 153-169.
    9. Heal, Geoffrey, 2005. "Intertemporal Welfare Economics and the Environment," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 21, pages 1105-1145, Elsevier.
    10. Anthony C. Fisher & John V. Krutilla, 1975. "Resource Conservation, Environmental Preservation, and the Rate of Discount," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 89(3), pages 358-370.
    11. Claude HENRY & Marc HENRY, 2002. "Formalization and Applications of the Precuationary Principle," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2002009, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    12. Fisher, Anthony C. & Narain, Urvashi, 2002. "Global Warming, Endogenous Risk and Irreversibility," CUDARE Working Papers 25107, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    13. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931.
    14. Heal, G., 1998. "Valuing the Future: Economic Theory and Sustainability," Papers 98-10, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
    15. Chichilnisky, Graciela & Heal, Geoffrey & Beltratti, Andrea, 1995. "The Green Golden Rule," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 175-179, August.
    16. Weitzman, Martin L., 1998. "Why the Far-Distant Future Should Be Discounted at Its Lowest Possible Rate," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 201-208, November.
    17. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
    18. Fisher, Anthony C. & Narain, Urvashi, 2002. "Global warming, endogenous risk, and irreversibility," CUDARE Working Paper Series 908R, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy.
    19. Fisher, Anthony C. & Narain, Urvashi, 2002. "Global Warming, endogenous risk and irreversibility," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt2gr8f6vz, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    20. Martin L. Weitzman, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 703-724, September.
    21. William R. Cline, 2007. "Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 4037, October.
    22. Martin Weitzman, 2007. "Structural Uncertainty and the Value of Statistical Life in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 13490, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Geoffrey Heal & Bengt Kriström, 2002. "Uncertainty and Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 22(1), pages 3-39, June.
    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. Rob Aalbers, 2009. "Discounting investments in mitigation and adaptation: a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach of climate change," CPB Discussion Paper 126, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Gerd Nicodemus, 2010. "The Option Value of Investments in Energy-Efficient and Renewable Energy Technologies," Duesseldorf Working Papers in Applied Management and Economics 13, Duesseldorf University of Applied Sciences.
    3. Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Sterner, Thomas, 2015. "Discounting and relative consumption," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 19-33.
    4. Min Gong & David Krantz & Elke Weber, 2014. "Why Chinese discount future financial and environmental gains but not losses more than Americans," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 103-124, October.
    5. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    6. Partha Dasgupta, 2008. "Discounting climate change," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 141-169, December.
    7. Dietz, Simon, 2011. "High impact, low probability?: an empirical analysis of risk in the economics of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 38586, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Simon Dietz & David Maddison, 2009. "New Frontiers in the Economics of Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 43(3), pages 295-306, July.
    9. Hatem M'henni & Mohamed El Hedi Arouri & Adel Ben Youssef & Christophe Rault, 2011. "Income Level and Environmental Quality in The MENA Countries: Discussing the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis," Working Papers 587, Economic Research Forum, revised 05 Jan 2011.
    10. Engelbrecht, Hans-Jürgen, 2009. "Natural capital, subjective well-being, and the new welfare economics of sustainability: Some evidence from cross-country regressions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 380-388, December.
    11. Pindyck, Robert S., 2012. "Uncertain outcomes and climate change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 289-303.
    12. Pauline Barrieu & Sinclair Desgagn�, 2009. "Economic policy when models disagree," GRI Working Papers 4, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    13. Anne Musson, 2012. "The importance of the stakeholders’ involvement in building indicators. The case of environmental regulation in France," Working papers of CATT hal-02947023, HAL.
    14. Majah-Leah Ravago & James Roumasset, 2016. "The Public Economics of Electricity Policy with Philippine Applications," Working Papers 201613, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    15. Pauline Barrieu & Bernard Sinclair-Desgagné, 2009. "Economic Policy when Models Disagree," CIRANO Working Papers 2009s-03, CIRANO.
    16. Nkuiya, Bruno, 2020. "Tradeoffs between costly capacity investment and risk of regime shift," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 117-127.
    17. Simon Dietz, 2011. "High impact, low probability? An empirical analysis of risk in the economics of climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 108(3), pages 519-541, October.
    18. Dietz, Simon, 2009. "High impact, low probability? An empirical analysis of risk in the economics of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 37612, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Stephen Newbold & Adam Daigneault, 2009. "Climate Response Uncertainty and the Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 44(3), pages 351-377, November.
    20. Pedro Conceição & Yanchun Zhang, 2010. "Discounting in the context of climate change economics: the policy implications of uncertainty and global asymmetries," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 12(1), pages 31-57, June.
    21. Buchholz, Wolfgang & Schumacher, Jan, 2010. "Discounting and welfare analysis over time: Choosing the [eta]," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 372-385, September.
    22. Maciej Bukowski & Pawel Kowal, 2010. "Large scale, multi-sector DSGE model as a climate policy assessment tool - Macroeconomic Mitigation Options (MEMO) model for Poland," IBS Working Papers 3/2010, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    23. Simon Dietz, 2009. "High impact, low probability? An empirical analysis of risk in the economics of climate change," GRI Working Papers 9, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    24. Anne Musson, 2012. "The importance of the stakeholders’ involvement in building indicators. The case of environmental regulation in France," Working Papers hal-02947023, HAL.
    25. Geoffrey Heal, 2009. "The Economics of Renewable Energy," NBER Working Papers 15081, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Fisher, Anthony, 2014. "Climate Science and Climate Economics," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt746627gz, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    2. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    3. Aline Chiabai & Ibon Galarraga & Anil Markandya & Unai Pascual, 2013. "The Equivalency Principle for Discounting the Value of Natural Assets: An Application to an Investment Project in the Basque Coast," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(4), pages 535-550, December.
    4. Fisher, A. C & Le, P. V, 2014. "Climate Policy: Science, Economics, and Extremes," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt6tj3j4jb, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    5. Joseph E. Aldy & Alan J. Krupnick & Richard G. Newell & Ian W. H. Parry & William A. Pizer, 2010. "Designing Climate Mitigation Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(4), pages 903-934, December.
    6. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    7. Endress, Lee H. & Pongkijvorasin, Sittidaj & Roumasset, James & Wada, Christopher A., 2014. "Intergenerational equity with individual impatience in a model of optimal and sustainable growth," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 620-635.
    8. Kögel, Tomas, 2011. "On the Relation between Discounting of Climate Change and Edgeworth-Pareto Substitutability," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-12.
    9. Kousky, Carolyn & Kopp, Robert E. & Cooke, Roger M., 2011. "Risk premia and the social cost of carbon: A review," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 5, pages 1-24.
    10. Lawrence H. Goulder & Roberton C. Williams, 2012. "The Choice Of Discount Rate For Climate Change Policy Evaluation," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(04), pages 1-18.
    11. Geoffrey Heal & Antony Millner, 2013. "Discounting under disagreement," GRI Working Papers 112, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    12. Kverndokk, Snorre & Nævdal, Eric & Nøstbakken, Linda, 2014. "The trade-off between intra- and intergenerational equity in climate policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 40-58.
    13. Kollenberg, Sascha & Taschini, Luca, 2016. "Emissions trading systems with cap adjustments," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 20-36.
    14. Ackerman, Frank & Stanton, Elizabeth A. & Bueno, Ramón, 2010. "Fat tails, exponents, extreme uncertainty: Simulating catastrophe in DICE," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 1657-1665, June.
    15. Karp, Larry & Tsur, Yacov, 2011. "Time perspective and climate change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-14, July.
    16. Birol, Ekin & Koundouri, Phoebe & Kountouris, Yiannis, 2010. "Assessing the economic viability of alternative water resources in water-scarce regions: Combining economic valuation, cost-benefit analysis and discounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 839-847, February.
    17. Michalis Skourtos & Dimitris Damigos & Areti Kontogianni & Christos Tourkolias & Alistair Hunt, 2019. "Embedding Preference Uncertainty for Environmental Amenities in Climate Change Economic Assessments: A “Random” Step Forward," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-22, October.
    18. Kögel, Tomas, 2009. "On the Relation between Dual-Rate Discounting and Substitutability," Economics Discussion Papers 2009-10, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    19. Rick Van der Ploeg & Bas Jacobs, 2010. "Precautionary Climate Change Policies And Optimal Redistribution," OxCarre Working Papers 049, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    20. Eric Fesselmeyer & Haoming Liu & Alberto Salvo, 2022. "Declining discount rates in Singapore's market for privately developed apartments," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 330-350, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development

    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:nbr:nberwo:13927. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.