IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03031728.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Model Uncertainty in Climate Change Economics: A Review and Proposed Framework for Future Research

Author

Listed:
  • Loïc Berger

    (CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IÉSEG School Of Management [Puteaux], EIEE - European Institute on Economics and the Environment, CMCC - Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici [Bologna])

  • Massimo Marinacci

    (Bocconi University [Milan, Italy])

Abstract

We review recent models of choices under uncertainty that have been proposed in the economic literature. In particular, we show how different concepts and methods of economic decision theory can be directly useful for problems in environmental economics. The framework we propose is general and can be applied in many different fields of environmental economics. To illustrate, we provide a simple application in the context of an optimal mitigation policy under climate change.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Loïc Berger & Massimo Marinacci, 2020. "Model Uncertainty in Climate Change Economics: A Review and Proposed Framework for Future Research," Post-Print hal-03031728, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03031728
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-020-00503-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. I. Gilboa & W. A. Postlewaite & D. Schmeidler, 2009. "Probability and Uncertainty in Economic Modeling," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 10.
    2. Battigalli, P. & Francetich, A. & Lanzani, G. & Marinacci, M., 2019. "Learning and self-confirming long-run biases," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 740-785.
    3. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Robust Control and Model Uncertainty," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 5, pages 145-154, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. 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.
    5. Hansen, Lars Peter, 2013. "Uncertainty Outside and Inside Economic Models," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-7, Nobel Prize Committee.
    6. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107016064, September.
    7. Hill , Brian & Bradley , Richard & Helgeson, Casey, 2016. "Climate Change Assessments: Confidence, Probability and Decision," HEC Research Papers Series 1131, HEC Paris.
    8. Itzhak Gilboa & Andrew Postlewaite & David Schmeidler, 2012. "Rationality of belief or: why savage's axioms are neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality," Post-Print hal-00745599, HAL.
    9. ,, 2016. "Objective rationality and uncertainty averse preferences," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(2), May.
    10. Athanassoglou, Stergios & Xepapadeas, Anastasios, 2012. "Pollution control with uncertain stock dynamics: When, and how, to be precautious," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 304-320.
    11. Valentina Bosetti & Elke Weber & Loïc Berger & David V. Budescu & Ning Liu & Massimo Tavoni, 2017. "COP21 climate negotiators’ responses to climate model forecasts," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 185-190, March.
    12. Cerreia-Vioglio, S. & Maccheroni, F. & Marinacci, M. & Montrucchio, L., 2011. "Uncertainty averse preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(4), pages 1275-1330, July.
    13. L. Drouet & V. Bosetti & M. Tavoni, 2015. "Selection of climate policies under the uncertainties in the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(10), pages 937-940, October.
    14. Loic Berger & Massimo Marinacci, 2017. "Model Uncertainty in Climate Change Economics," Working Papers 616, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    15. Rezai, Armon & van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2017. "Climate policies under climate model uncertainty: Max-min and min-max regret," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 4-16.
    16. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107638105, September.
    17. Loïc Berger & Valentina Bosetti, 2020. "Are Policymakers Ambiguity Averse?," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(626), pages 331-355.
    18. Rudik, Ivan, 2016. "Optimal Climate Policy When Damages are Unknown," ISU General Staff Papers 201611130800001011, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    19. Nordhaus, William D, 1993. "Optimal Greenhouse-Gas Reductions and Tax Policy in the "Dice" Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 313-317, May.
    20. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107016057, September.
    21. Howard, Peter & Sterner, Thomas, 2014. "Loaded DICE: Refining the Meta-analysis Approach to Calibrating Climate Damage Functions," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 169952, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    22. Loïc Berger & Johannes Emmerling & Massimo Tavoni, 2017. "Managing Catastrophic Climate Risks Under Model Uncertainty Aversion," Post-Print hal-01744501, HAL.
    23. Frank J. Convery & Gernot Wagner, 2015. "Reflections–Managing Uncertain Climates: Some Guidance for Policy Makers and Researchers," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 9(2), pages 304-320.
    24. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107674165, September.
    25. Lemoine, Derek & Traeger, Christian P., 2016. "Ambiguous tipping points," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PB), pages 5-18.
    26. Gilboa, Itzhak & Postlewaite, Andrew & Schmeidler, David, 2009. "Is It Always Rational To Satisfy Savage'S Axioms?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 285-296, November.
    27. Ghirardato, Paolo & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2004. "Differentiating ambiguity and ambiguity attitude," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 133-173, October.
    28. Simone Cerreia†Vioglio & Lars Peter Hansen & Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci, 2020. "Making Decisions under Model Misspecification," Working Papers 2020-103, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    29. Loïc Berger, 2016. "The impact of ambiguity and prudence on prevention decisions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 80(3), pages 389-409, March.
    30. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    31. Hill, Brian, 2013. "Confidence and decision," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 675-692.
    32. 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.
    33. Howard Kunreuther & Geoffrey Heal & Myles Allen & Ottmar Edenhofer & Christopher B. Field & Gary Yohe, 2013. "Risk management and climate change," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(5), pages 447-450, May.
    34. Hansen, Lars Peter & Sargent, Thomas J., 2007. "Recursive robust estimation and control without commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 1-27, September.
    35. Itzhak Gilboa & Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci & David Schmeidler, 2010. "Objective and Subjective Rationality in a Multiple Prior Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(2), pages 755-770, March.
    36. 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.
    37. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    38. Peter Klibanoff & Massimo Marinacci & Sujoy Mukerji, 2005. "A Smooth Model of Decision Making under Ambiguity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1849-1892, November.
    39. Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci & Aldo Rustichini, 2006. "Ambiguity Aversion, Robustness, and the Variational Representation of Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1447-1498, November.
    40. Ilke Aydogan & Loic Berger & Valentina Bosetti & Ning Liu, 2018. "Three layers of uncertainty: an experiment," Working Papers 623, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    41. Chambers, Robert G. & Melkonyan, Tigran, 2017. "Ambiguity, reasoned determination, and climate-change policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 74-92.
    42. Loïc Berger, 2016. "The impact of ambiguity and prudence on prevention decisions," Post-Print hal-03027146, HAL.
    43. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107627314, September.
    44. H. Damon Matthews & Nathan P. Gillett & Peter A. Stott & Kirsten Zickfeld, 2009. "The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions," Nature, Nature, vol. 459(7248), pages 829-832, June.
    45. Nicholas Stern, 2016. "Economics: Current climate models are grossly misleading," Nature, Nature, vol. 530(7591), pages 407-409, February.
    46. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107016040, September.
    47. Ivan Rudik, 2020. "Optimal Climate Policy When Damages Are Unknown," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 340-373, May.
    48. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    49. Itzhak Gilboa & Andrew Postlewaite & David Schmeidler, 2007. "Probabilities in Economic Modeling," PIER Working Paper Archive 07-023, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    50. Mukerji, Sujoy, 2009. "Foundations Of Ambiguity And Economic Modelling," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 297-302, November.
    51. Malte Meinshausen & Nicolai Meinshausen & William Hare & Sarah C. B. Raper & Katja Frieler & Reto Knutti & David J. Frame & Myles R. Allen, 2009. "Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C," Nature, Nature, vol. 458(7242), pages 1158-1162, April.
    52. Loïc Berger & Johannes Emmerling & Massimo Tavoni, 2017. "Managing Catastrophic Climate Risks Under Model Uncertainty Aversion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(3), pages 749-765, March.
    53. Burke, M. & Craxton, M. & Kolstad, C.D. & Onda, C. & Allcott, H. & Baker, E. & Barrage, L. & Carson, R. & Gillingham, K. & Graff-Zivin, J. & Greenstone, M. & Hallegatte, S. & Hanemann, W.M. & Heal, G., 2016. "Opportunities for advances in climate change economics," ISU General Staff Papers 3565, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    54. Burke, M & Craxton, M & Kolstad, CD & Onda, C & Allcott, H & Baker, E & Barrage, L & Carson, R & Gillingham, K & Graf-Zivin, J & Greenstone, M & Hallegatte, S & Hanemann, WM & Heal, G & Hsiang, S & Jo, 2016. "Opportunities for advances in climate change economics," University of California at Santa Barbara, Recent Works in Economics qt4tc5d9pb, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    55. Lars Peter Hansen, 2014. "Nobel Lecture: Uncertainty Outside and Inside Economic Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(5), pages 945-987.
    56. -, 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).
    57. Robert S. Pindyck, 2017. "The Use and Misuse of Models for Climate Policy," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(1), pages 100-114.
    58. Marisa Beck & Tobias Krueger, 2016. "The epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of uncertainty in integrated assessment modeling," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(5), pages 627-645, September.
    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. Stanca, Lorenzo, 2023. "Robust Bayesian choice," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 94-106.
    2. Xepapadeas, Anastasios, 2024. "Uncertainty and climate change: The IPCC approach vs decision theory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    3. Ilke Aydogan & Loïc Berger & Valentina Bosetti & Ning Liu, 2023. "Three Layers of Uncertainty," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(5), pages 2209-2236.
    4. repec:hal:journl:hal-03031751 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Bose, Subir & Daripa, Arup, 2023. "Eliciting second-order beliefs," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    6. Ceron, Federica & Vergopoulos, Vassili, 2022. "Objective rationality and recursive multiple priors," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    7. Stanca Lorenzo, 2023. "Robust Bayesian Choice," Working papers 079, Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
    8. Lorenzo Stanca, 2023. "Robust Bayesian Choice," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 690 JEL Classification: C, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    9. Svenn Jensen & Christian P. Traeger & Christian Träger, 2021. "Pricing Climate Risk," CESifo Working Paper Series 9196, CESifo.
    10. Tørstad, Vegard & Wiborg, Vegard, 2023. "Commitment Ambiguity and Ambition in Climate Pledges," Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Working Paper Series qt7gd693zp, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California.
    11. Anderson, Robert M. & Duanmu, Haosui & Ghosh, Aniruddha & Khan, M. Ali, 2024. "On existence of Berk-Nash equilibria in misspecified Markov decision processes with infinite spaces," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    12. Eddai, Nahed & Guerdjikova, Ani, 2023. "To mitigate or to adapt: How to deal with optimism, pessimism and strategic ambiguity?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 1-30.
    13. Ongsakul, Viput & Papangkorn, Suwongrat & Jiraporn, Pornsit, 2023. "Estimating the effect of climate change exposure on firm value using climate policy uncertainty: A text-based approach," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).

    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. Loic Berger & Massimo Marinacci, 2017. "Model Uncertainty in Climate Change Economics," Working Papers 616, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    2. Loïc Berger & Johannes Emmerling & Massimo Tavoni, 2017. "Managing Catastrophic Climate Risks Under Model Uncertainty Aversion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(3), pages 749-765, March.
    3. Ilke Aydogan & Loic Berger & Valentina Bosetti & Ning Liu, 2018. "Three layers of uncertainty: an experiment," Working Papers 623, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    4. Massimo Marinacci, 2015. "Model Uncertainty," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(6), pages 1022-1100, December.
    5. Berger, Loïc & Bosetti, Valentina, 2020. "Characterizing ambiguity attitudes using model uncertainty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 621-637.
    6. Cerreia-Vioglio, Simone & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo & Montrucchio, Luigi, 2013. "Ambiguity and robust statistics," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 974-1049.
      • Simone Cerreia-Vioglio & Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci & Luigi Montrucchio, 2011. "Ambiguity and Robust Statistics," Working Papers 382, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    7. Karni, Edi & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2015. "Ambiguity and Nonexpected Utility," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    8. Loïc Berger & Louis Eeckhoudt, 2021. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Value of Diversification," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 1639-1647, March.
    9. Xepapadeas, Anastasios, 2024. "Uncertainty and climate change: The IPCC approach vs decision theory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    10. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Simone Cerreia-Vioglio & Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci, 2017. "Mixed extensions of decision problems under uncertainty," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 63(4), pages 827-866, April.
    11. Cerreia-Vioglio, Simone & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2022. "Ambiguity aversion and wealth effects," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    12. Loïc Berger & Louis Eeckhoudt, 2020. "Risk, Ambiguity, And The Value Of Diversification," Working Papers hal-02910906, HAL.
    13. Diederik Aerts & Emmanuel Haven & Sandro Sozzo, 2016. "A Proposal to Extend Expected Utility in a Quantum Probabilistic Framework," Papers 1612.08583, arXiv.org.
    14. Han Bleichrodt & Christophe Courbage & Béatrice Rey, 2019. "The value of a statistical life under changes in ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 1-15, February.
    15. Diederik Aerts & Emmanuel Haven & Sandro Sozzo, 2018. "A proposal to extend expected utility in a quantum probabilistic framework," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(4), pages 1079-1109, June.
    16. Loic Berger & Valentina Bosetti, 2016. "Ellsberg Re-revisited: An Experiment Disentangling Model Uncertainty and Risk Aversion," Working Papers 2016.37, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    17. 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.
    18. Dominiak, Adam & Duersch, Peter, 2015. "Benevolent and Malevolent Ellsberg Games," Working Papers 0592, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    19. Robin Cubitt & Gijs van de Kuilen & Sujoy Mukerji, 2020. "Discriminating Between Models of Ambiguity Attitude: a Qualitative Test," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 708-749.
    20. Simone Cerreia†Vioglio & Lars Peter Hansen & Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci, 2020. "Making Decisions under Model Misspecification," Working Papers 2020-103, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • 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:hal:journl:hal-03031728. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.