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A 4-stated DICE: quantitatively addressing uncertainty effects in climate change

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  • Traeger, Christian

Abstract

We introduce a version of the DICE-2007 model designed for uncertaintyanalysis. DICE is a wide-spread deterministic integrated assessment model of climatechange. However, climate change, long-term economic development, and theirinteractions are highly uncertain. A thorough empirical analysis of the effects ofuncertainty requires a recursive dynamic programming implementation of integratedassessment models. Such implementations are subject to the curse of dimensionality.Every increase in the dimension of the state space is paid for by a combinationof (exponentially) increasing processor time, lower quality of the value function andcontrol rules approximations, and reductions of the uncertainty domain. The paperpromotes a four stated recursive dynamic programming implementation of the DICEmodel. Our implementation solves the infinite planning horizon problem for an arbitrarytime step. Moreover, we present a closed form continuous time approximationto the exogenous (discretely and inductively defined) processes in DICE and presenta Bellman equation for DICE that disentangles risk attitude from the propensity tosmooth consumption over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Traeger, Christian, 2012. "A 4-stated DICE: quantitatively addressing uncertainty effects in climate change," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt6jx2p7fv, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdl:agrebk:qt6jx2p7fv
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lemoine, Derek M. & Traeger, Christian P., 2010. "Tipping Points and Ambiguity in the Economics of Climate Change," CUDARE Working Papers 98127, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
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    18. Traeger, Christian P., 2010. "Intertemporal risk aversion – or – wouldn’t it be nice to tell whether Robinson Crusoe is risk averse?," CUDARE Working Paper Series 1102, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy.
    19. Alex L. Marten & Stephen C. Newbold, 2013. "Temporal resolution and DICE," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(6), pages 526-527, June.
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences; climate change; uncertainty; intergrated assessment; DICE; dynamic programming; risk aversion; interemporal substitution; recursive utility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q00 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - General
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques

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