IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trr/wpaper/200902.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Uncertainty and Insurance in Endogenous Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Georg Müller-Fürstenberger
  • Ingmar Schumacher

Abstract

We investigate the economic impact of stochastic endogenous extreme events and insurance in a growth model. Our analytical results and computational experiments show that i) transparency of the insurance sector is the decisive requisite for abatement activities, implying substantial policy opportunities; ii) we can fully characterize and quantify the impact of uncertainty on the social planner's decisions; iii) a decentralized economy will under-invest in abatement without adequate policy interventions; iv) precautionary beliefs on the frequency of extreme events lead to more sustainability; v) technical change does not change the ordering of the paths but leads to a more sustainable future; v) a social security system which prices insurance fairly is preferable to an insurance industry which provides insurance with an overhead.

Suggested Citation

  • Georg Müller-Fürstenberger & Ingmar Schumacher, 2009. "Uncertainty and Insurance in Endogenous Climate Change," Research Papers in Economics 2009-02, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:trr:wpaper:200902
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb4/prof/VWL/EWF/Research_Papers/2009-02.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nordhaus, William D, 1991. "To Slow or Not to Slow: The Economics of the Greenhouse Effect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(407), pages 920-937, July.
    2. Ken Sennewald & Klaus Wälde, 2006. "“Itô's Lemma” and the Bellman Equation for Poisson Processes: An Applied View," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 1-36, October.
    3. MOSSIN, Jan, 1968. "Aspects of rational insurance purchasing," LIDAM Reprints CORE 23, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    4. Keller, Klaus & Bolker, Benjamin M. & Bradford, D.F.David F., 2004. "Uncertain climate thresholds and optimal economic growth," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 723-741, July.
    5. James B. Elsner & James P. Kossin & Thomas H. Jagger, 2008. "The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones," Nature, Nature, vol. 455(7209), pages 92-95, September.
    6. Gjerde, Jon & Grepperud, Sverre & Kverndokk, Snorre, 1999. "Optimal climate policy under the possibility of a catastrophe," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3-4), pages 289-317, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Müller-Fürstenberger, Georg & Schumacher, Ingmar, 2015. "Insurance and climate-driven extreme events," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 59-73.
    2. Tol, Richard S.J., 2013. "Targets for global climate policy: An overview," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 911-928.
    3. Frederick Ploeg & Aart Zeeuw, 2019. "Pricing Carbon and Adjusting Capital to Fend Off Climate Catastrophes," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(1), pages 29-50, January.
    4. Bommier, Antoine & Lanz, Bruno & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Models-as-usual for unusual risks? On the value of catastrophic climate change," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1-22.
    5. Richard S.J. Tol & Samuel Fankhauser & Richard G. Richels & Joel B. Smith, 2000. "How Much Damage Will Climate Change Do? Recent Estimates," Working Papers FNU-2, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Sep 2000.
    6. 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.
    7. Megan Ceronsky & David Anthoff & Cameron Hepburn & Richard S.J. Tol, 2005. "Checking The Price Tag On Catastrophe: The Social Cost Of Carbon Under Non-Linear Climate Response," Working Papers FNU-87, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Aug 2005.
    8. Simon Dietz & Nicholas Stern, 2014. "Endogenous growth, convexity of damages and climate risk: how Nordhaus� framework supports deep cuts in carbon emissions," GRI Working Papers 159, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    9. Makropoulou, Vasiliki & Dotsis, George & Markellos, Raphael N., 2013. "Environmental policy implications of extreme variations in pollutant stock levels and socioeconomic costs," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 417-428.
    10. Ren, Bijie & Polasky, Stephen, 2014. "The optimal management of renewable resources under the risk of potential regime shift," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 195-212.
    11. Carraro, Carlo & Sgobbi, Alessandra & Bosetti, Valentina & Tavoni, Massimo, 2008. "Delayed Action and Uncertain Targets. How Much Will Climate Policy Cost?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6973, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Baptiste Perrissin Fabert & Antonin Pottier & Etienne Espagne & Patrice Dumas & Franck Nadaud, 2014. "Why are climate policies of the present decade so crucial for keeping the 2 °C target credible?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 126(3), pages 337-349, October.
    13. van den Bijgaart, Inge & Gerlagh, Reyer & Liski, Matti, 2016. "A simple formula for the social cost of carbon," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 75-94.
    14. Tol, Richard S.J., 2006. "Why Worry About Climate Change? A Research Agenda," Climate Change Modelling and Policy Working Papers 12047, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    15. Christian Azar, 1998. "Are Optimal CO 2 Emissions Really Optimal?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(3), pages 301-315, April.
    16. Ahn, Kwangwon & Chu, Zhuang & Lee, Daeyong, 2021. "Effects of renewable energy use in the energy mix on social welfare," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    17. Vogt-Schilb, Adrien & Meunier, Guy & Hallegatte, Stéphane, 2018. "When starting with the most expensive option makes sense: Optimal timing, cost and sectoral allocation of abatement investment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 210-233.
    18. de Zeeuw, Aart & He, Xiaoli, 2017. "Managing a renewable resource facing the risk of a regime shift in the ecological system," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 42-54.
    19. Ngo Van Long, 2019. "Managing, Inducing, and Preventing Regime Shifts: A Review of the Literature," CESifo Working Paper Series 7749, CESifo.
    20. Nkuiya, Bruno, 2020. "Tradeoffs between costly capacity investment and risk of regime shift," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 117-127.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic growth; climate change; insurance; integrated assessment; extreme events; catastrophes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

    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:trr:wpaper:200902. 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: Matthias Neuenkirch (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/petride.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.