IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/15-051.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Better Predictions, Better Allocations: Scientific Advances and Adaptation to Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Freeman, Mark C.

    (Loughborough University)

  • Groom, Ben

    (London School of Economics and Political Science)

  • Zeckhauser, Richard

    (Harvard Univesrity)

Abstract

The initial hope for climate science was that an improved understanding of what the future might bring would lead to appropriate public policies and effective international climate agreements. Even if that hope is not realized, as now seems likely, scientific advances leading to a more refined assessment of the uncertainties surrounding the future impacts of climate change would facilitate more appropriate adaptation measures. Such measures might involve shifting modes or locales of production, for example. This article focuses on two broader tools: consumption smoothing in anticipation of future losses, and physical adaptation measures to reduce damages. It shows that informative signals on climate-change effects lead to better decisions in the use of each tool.

Suggested Citation

  • Freeman, Mark C. & Groom, Ben & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2015. "Better Predictions, Better Allocations: Scientific Advances and Adaptation to Climate Change," Working Paper Series 15-051, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:15-051
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=1248
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Weitzman, Martin L., 2010. "What Is the "Damages Function" for Global Warming — And What Difference Might It Make?," Scholarly Articles 33373343, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    2. Kimball, Miles S, 1990. "Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 53-73, January.
    3. repec:dau:papers:123456789/12262 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Catherine Wolfram & Orie Shelef & Paul Gertler, 2012. "How Will Energy Demand Develop in the Developing World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 119-138, Winter.
    5. Michael Finus & Alejandro Caparrós (ed.), 2015. "Game Theory and International Environmental Cooperation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15345.
    6. Eric Brousseau & Tom Dedeurwaerdere & Pierre-André Jouvet & Marc Willinger, 2012. "Global environmental commons : analytical and political challenges in building governance mechanisms," Post-Print hal-01492334, HAL.
    7. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801.
    8. K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), 2005. "Handbook of Environmental Economics," Handbook of Environmental Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    9. Botzen, W.J.W. & Aerts, J.C.J.H. & van den Bergh, J.C.J.M., 2009. "Willingness of homeowners to mitigate climate risk through insurance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(8-9), pages 2265-2277, June.
    10. Salvatore Di Falco & Marcella Veronesi & Mahmud Yesuf, 2011. "Does Adaptation to Climate Change Provide Food Security? A Micro-Perspective from Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 93(3), pages 825-842.
    11. Gernot Wagner & Martin L. Weitzman, 2016. "Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 2, number 10725.
    12. 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.
    13. Botzen, W.J.W. & van den Bergh, J.C.J.M., 2012. "Risk attitudes to low-probability climate change risks: WTP for flood insurance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 151-166.
    14. Ulrich J. Wagner, 2001. "The Design of Stable International Environmental Agreements: Economic Theory and Political Economy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 377-411, July.
    15. Roy, Devjani & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2015. "Grappling with Ignorance: Frameworks from Decision Theory, Lessons from Literature," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 33-65, April.
    16. Gollier, Christian & Jullien, Bruno & Treich, Nicolas, 2000. "Scientific progress and irreversibility: an economic interpretation of the 'Precautionary Principle'," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 229-253, February.
    17. Schelling, Thomas C, 1995. "Intergenerational discounting," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(4-5), pages 395-401.
    18. 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.
    19. Epstein, Larry G, 1980. "Decision Making and the Temporal Resolution of Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(2), pages 269-283, June.
    20. Martin L. Weitzman, 2009. "On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-19, February.
    21. Roger Pielke & Gwyn Prins & Steve Rayner & Daniel Sarewitz, 2007. "Lifting the taboo on adaptation," Nature, Nature, vol. 445(7128), pages 597-598, February.
    22. Saleemul Huq & Hannah Reid & Mama Konate & Atiq Rahman & Youba Sokona & Florence Crick, 2004. "Mainstreaming adaptation to climate change in Least Developed Countries (LDCs)," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 25-43, March.
    23. Ashley Gorst & Ben Groom & Ali Dehlavi, 2015. "Crop productivity and adaptation to climate change in Pakistan," GRI Working Papers 189, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    24. Antony Millner, 2012. "Climate prediction for adaptation: Who needs what?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 110(1), pages 143-167, January.
    25. Martin L. Weitzman, 2010. "What Is The "Damages Function" For Global Warming — And What Difference Might It Make?," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(01), pages 57-69.
    26. Antony Millner & Simon Dietz & Geoffrey Heal, 2013. "Scientific Ambiguity and Climate Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 55(1), pages 21-46, May.
    27. Fankhauser, Samuel & Smith, Joel B. & Tol, Richard S. J., 1999. "Weathering climate change: some simple rules to guide adaptation decisions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 67-78, July.
    28. Pindyck, Robert S., 2012. "Uncertain outcomes and climate change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 289-303.
    29. Kai A. Konrad & Marcel Thum, 2012. "The Role of Economic Policy in Climate Change Adaptation," CESifo Working Paper Series 3959, CESifo.
    30. Hirshleifer, J & Riley, John G, 1979. "The Analytics of Uncertainty and Information-An Expository Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1375-1421, December.
    31. Barrett, Scott, 2005. "The theory of international environmental agreements," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 28, pages 1457-1516, Elsevier.
    32. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    33. Kelly, David L. & Kolstad, Charles D., 1999. "Bayesian learning, growth, and pollution," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 491-518, February.
    34. Eric Brousseau & Tom Dedeurwaerdere & Pierre-André Jouvet & Marc Willinger, 2012. "Introduction: Global Environmental Commons: Analytical and Political Challenges in Building Governance Mechanisms," Post-Print hal-01492342, HAL.
    35. Barrett, Scott, 2013. "Climate treaties and approaching catastrophes," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 235-250.
    36. Matthew E. Kahn, 2005. "The Death Toll from Natural Disasters: The Role of Income, Geography, and Institutions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 271-284, May.
    37. Kahn, Matthew E., 2015. "Climate Change Adaptation: Lessons from Urban Economics," Strategic Behavior and the Environment, now publishers, vol. 5(1), pages 1-30, June.
    38. Eric Brousseau & Tom Dedeurwaerdere & Pierre-André Jouvet & Marc Willinger, 2012. "Global environmental commons : analytical and political challenges in building governance mechanisms," Post-Print hal-01492334, HAL.
    39. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    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. Nawab Khan & Jiliang Ma & Hazem S. Kassem & Rizwan Kazim & Ram L. Ray & Muhammad Ihtisham & Shemei Zhang, 2022. "Rural Farmers’ Cognition and Climate Change Adaptation Impact on Cash Crop Productivity: Evidence from a Recent Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-16, October.

    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. Freeman, Mark C. & Wagner, Gernot & Zeckhauser, Richard J., 2015. "Climate Sensitivity Uncertainty: When Is Good News Bad?," Working Paper Series rwp15-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Aronsson, Thomas & Schöb, Ronnie, 2018. "Climate change and psychological adaptation: A behavioral environmental economics approach," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 79-84.
    3. Letta, Marco & Montalbano, Pierluigi & Tol, Richard S.J., 2018. "Temperature shocks, short-term growth and poverty thresholds: Evidence from rural Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 13-32.
    4. Adler, Matthew & Treich, Nicolas, 2014. "Consumption, Risk and Prioritarianism," TSE Working Papers 14-500, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    5. Adler, Matthew D. & Treich, Nicolas, 2017. "Utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and intergenerational equity: A cake eating model," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 94-102.
    6. Marco Letta & Richard S. J. Tol, 2019. "Weather, Climate and Total Factor Productivity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(1), pages 283-305, May.
    7. Rick van der Ploeg, 2020. "Discounting and Climate Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 8441, CESifo.
    8. Cameron Hepburn & Greer Gosnell, 2014. "Evaluating impacts in the distant future: cost–benefit analysis, discounting and the alternatives," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 9, pages 140-159, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Rising, James A. & Taylor, Charlotte & Ives, Matthew C. & Ward, Robert E.T., 2022. "Challenges and innovations in the economic evaluation of the risks of climate change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    10. Ton S. van den Bremer & Frederick van der Ploeg, 2021. "The Risk-Adjusted Carbon Price," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(9), pages 2782-2810, September.
    11. Loïc Berger & Johannes Emmerling & Massimo Tavoni, 2017. "Managing Catastrophic Climate Risks Under Model Uncertainty Aversion," Post-Print hal-03027150, HAL.
    12. van der Ploeg, Frederick & Rezai, Armon, 2019. "The agnostic's response to climate deniers: Price carbon!," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 70-84.
    13. Arvaniti, Maria, 2016. "Uncertainty, Extreme Outcomes and Climate Change: a critique," CERE Working Papers 2016:11, CERE - the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics.
    14. Jensen, Svenn & Traeger, Christian P., 2014. "Optimal climate change mitigation under long-term growth uncertainty: Stochastic integrated assessment and analytic findings," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 104-125.
    15. Jasper N. Meya & Ulrike Kornek & Kai Lessmann, 2018. "How empirical uncertainties influence the stability of climate coalitions," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 175-198, April.
    16. van der Ploeg, Frederick & ,, 2018. "Pricing Carbon Under Economic and Climactic Risks: Leading-Order Results from Asymptotic Analysis," CEPR Discussion Papers 12642, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. McDermott,Thomas K.J., 2016. "Investing in disaster risk management in an uncertain climate," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7631, The World Bank.
    18. 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.
    19. Stefano Giglio & Bryan Kelly & Johannes Stroebel, 2021. "Climate Finance," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 15-36, November.
    20. Christoph Hambel & Holger Kraft & Eduardo Schwartz, 2015. "Optimal Carbon Abatement in a Stochastic Equilibrium Model with Climate Change," NBER Working Papers 21044, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • 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:ecl:harjfk:15-051. 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/ksharus.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.