IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/37612.html

High impact, low probability? An empirical analysis of risk in the economics of climate change

Author

Listed:
  • Dietz, Simon

Abstract

To what extent does economic analysis of climate change depend on low-probability, high-impact events? This question has received a great deal of attention lately, with the contention increasingly made that climate damage could be so large that societal willingness to pay to avoid extreme outcomes should overwhelm other seemingly important assumptions, notably on time preference. This paper provides an empirical examination of some key theoretical points, using a probabilistic integrated assessment model. New, fat-tailed distributions are inputted for key parameters representing climate sensitivity and economic costs. It is found that welfare estimates do strongly depend on tail risks, but for a set of plausible assumptions time preference can still matter.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:37612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/37612/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Viscusi, W Kip & Aldy, Joseph E, 2003. "The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates throughout the World," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 5-76, August.
    2. Geweke, John, 2001. "A note on some limitations of CRRA utility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 341-345, June.
    3. 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.
    4. Claude Henry & Marc Henry, 2026. "Formalization and Applications of the Precautionary Principle," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 161, pages 7-24.
    5. Aumann, Robert J & Kurz, Mordecai, 1977. "Power and Taxes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(5), pages 1137-1161, July.
    6. William D. Nordhaus, 2009. "An Analysis of the Dismal Theorem," Levine's Working Paper Archive 814577000000000116, David K. Levine.
    7. 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.
    8. -, 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).
    9. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, Enero-Abr.
    10. 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.
    11. Hope, Chris, 2008. "Discount rates, equity weights and the social cost of carbon," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 1011-1019, May.
    12. repec:reg:rpubli:282 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Nicholas Stern, 2008. "The Economics of Climate Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 1-37, May.
    14. Geoffrey Heal, 2008. "Climate Economics: A Meta-Review and Some Suggestions," NBER Working Papers 13927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. 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.
    2. David Hendry, 2010. "Climate Change: Lessons for our Future from the Distant Past," Economics Series Working Papers 485, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Martin L. Weitzman, 2012. "GHG Targets as Insurance Against Catastrophic Climate Damages," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 14(2), pages 221-244, March.
    4. Aldred, Jonathan, 2013. "Justifying precautionary policies: Incommensurability and uncertainty," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 132-140.
    5. Dietz, Simon, 2012. "The treatment of risk and uncertainty in the US social cost of carbon for regulatory impact analysis," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 6, pages 1-12.
    6. Crost, Benjamin & Traeger, Christian P., 2013. "Optimal climate policy: Uncertainty versus Monte Carlo," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(3), pages 552-558.
    7. Thijs Dekker & Rob Dellink & Janina Ketterer, 2013. "The Fatter the Tail, the Fatter the Climate Agreement - Simulating the Influence of Fat Tails in Climate Change Damages on the Success of International Climate Negotiations," CESifo Working Paper Series 4059, CESifo.
    8. Rob Dellink & Thijs Dekker & Janina Ketterer, 2013. "The Fatter the Tail, the Fatter the Climate Agreement," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(2), pages 277-305, 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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Millner, Antony, 2013. "On welfare frameworks and catastrophic climate risks," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 310-325.
    5. 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.
    6. Wei, Yi-Ming & Mi, Zhi-Fu & Huang, Zhimin, 2015. "Climate policy modeling: An online SCI-E and SSCI based literature review," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 57(PA), pages 70-84.
    7. Kelly, David L. & Tan, Zhuo, 2015. "Learning and climate feedbacks: Optimal climate insurance and fat tails," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 98-122.
    8. 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, vol. 5, pages 1-24.
    9. 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.
    10. Newbold, Stephen & Griffiths, Charles & Moore, Chris & Wolverton, Ann & Kopits. Elizabeth, 2010. "The “Social Cost of Carbon” Made Simple," National Center for Environmental Economics-NCEE Working Papers 280887, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
    11. Philippe Aghion & Antoine Dechezleprêtre & David Hémous & Ralf Martin & John Van Reenen, 2016. "Carbon Taxes, Path Dependency, and Directed Technical Change: Evidence from the Auto Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 1-51.
    12. Pindyck, Robert S., 2012. "Uncertain outcomes and climate change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 289-303.
    13. Richard S.J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have not changed over time," Working Paper Series 0821, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    14. Ikefuji, Masako & Laeven, Roger J.A. & Magnus, Jan R. & Muris, Chris, 2020. "Expected utility and catastrophic risk in a stochastic economy–climate model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 214(1), pages 110-129.
    15. Brian Chi-ang Lin & Siqi Zheng & Xiangzheng Deng & Zhan Wang & Chunhong Zhao, 2016. "Economic Evolution In China Ecologically Fragile Regions," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 552-576, July.
    16. 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.
    17. Hassler, J. & Krusell, P. & Smith, A.A., 2016. "Environmental Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1893-2008, Elsevier.
    18. 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.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    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:ehl:lserod:37612. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.