Exchanging Goods and Damages: The Role of Trade on the Distribution of Climate Change Costs

The impacts of climate change vary significantly across world regions. Whereas tropical and subtropical regions are expected to suffer severely from the effects of climate change, the impacts in northern latitudes should remain relatively moderate. However, regions are not self-sufficient, and the costs of climate change can spread across regions through international trade. I study the international spillover of climate impacts within a regionalised, climate-sensitive, dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the world economy. Using data from a global climate model shows that the world regions face welfare losses between 0.6 and 2.1 % due to climate change. I also show that climate change affects terms of trade and sectoral competitiveness. By means of a decomposition method, the extent of spillover impacts through international trade can be identified. Spillover impacts significantly affect, either positively or negatively, the total costs of climate change for a region. For regions with low exposure to climate change and high adaptive capacities, spillover effects are responsible for a 1/6 of the total cost of climate change.     

Spatial and Temporal Efficiency in Climate Policy: Applications of FUND

FUND is an integrated assessment model of the interactions between climate and economy. Nine world regions emit greenhouse gases, and suffer damages from climate change. A number of greenhouse gas emission reduction policies are compared, including optimal and cost-effective strategies, strategies with early and late abatement, and strategies with and without international co-operation. The analyses confirm that co-operation matters, resulting in substantially lower costs or higher welfare. The real commitments of policy targets based on an absolute level (e.g., 1990 emissions) are hard to estimate because of the uncertainties in the baseline. Postponing action conflicts with minimising costs and maximising welfare, but so does sharp emission reduction at the short-term as proposed in the Kyoto Protocol.     

The stability likelihood of an international climate agreement

Results derived from empirical analyses on the stability of climate coalitions are usually very sensitive to the large uncertainties associated with the benefits and costs of climate policies. This paper provides the methodology of Stability Likelihood (SL) that links uncertainties about benefits and costs of climate change to the stability of coalitions. We show that the concept of SL improves upon the robustness and interpretation of stability analyses. Moreover, our numerical application qualifies conclusions from a recent strand of literature based on stylised models with ex-ante symmetric players that learning has a negative impact on the success of coalition formation in context of uncertainty.      

The Impact of Climate Change on the Balanced Growth Equivalent: An Application of <Emphasis Type="Italic">FUND</Emphasis>

The Stern Review added balanced growth equivalents (BGE) to the economic climate change research agenda. We first propose rigorous definitions of the BGE for multiple regions and under uncertainty. We show that the change in the BGE is independent of the assumed scenario of per capita income. For comparable welfare economic assumptions as the Stern Review, we calculate lower changes in BGE between a business as usual scenario and one without climate impacts with the model FUND than the Stern Review found with the model PAGE. We find that mitigation policies give even lower changes in BGE and argue that those policy choices should be the focus of the research effort rather than total damage estimates. According to our results, the current carbon tax should be below $55/tC. Sensitivity analyses show that the Stern Review chose parameters that imply high impact estimates. However, for regionally disaggregated welfare functions, we find changes in BGE that are significantly higher than the results from the Stern Review both for total damage as for policy analysis. With regional disaggregation and high risk aversion, we observe fat tails and with that very high welfare losses.      

Why economic dynamics matter in assessing climate change damages: Illustration on extreme events

Extreme events are one of the main channels through which climate and socioeconomic systems interact, and it is likely that climate change will modify the probability distribution of the losses they generate. The long-term growth models used in climate change assessments, however, cannot capture the effects of such short-term shocks. To investigate this issue, a non-equilibrium dynamic model (NEDyM) is used to assess the macroeconomic consequences of extreme events. This exercise allowed us to define the economic amplification ratio, as the ratio of the overall production loss due to an event to its direct costs. This ratio could be used to improve the cost-benefit analysis of prevention measures. We found also that, unlike a Solow-like model, NEDyM exhibits a bifurcation in GDP losses: for each value of the capacity to fund reconstruction, GDP losses remain moderate if the intensity and frequency of extremes remain under a threshold value, beyond which GDP losses increase sharply. This bifurcation may partly explain why some poor countries that experience repeated natural disasters cannot develop. Applied to the specific issue of climate change, this model highlights the importance of short-term constraints in the assessment of long-term damages, and shows that changes in the distribution of extremes may entail significant GDP losses in absence of specific adaptation. It suggests, therefore, that to avoid inaccurately low assessments of damages, researchers must take into account the distribution of extremes instead of their average cost and make explicit assumptions on the organization of future economies.     

Productivity cost model of the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with abatacept

Background: The cost of the biological drug abatacept may be partly offset by reductions in the cost of productivity losses due to employee absences and reduced effectiveness at work because of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods: This was a 1-year productivity cost model based on epidemiologic and economic data. The setting was private industry in the US and the primary outcome measure was the difference in the costs of lost productivity and drug treatment with and without abatacept (‘cost difference’).

Results: The lost productivity cost of RA for a firm of 10,000 was $1.69 million, largely due to the cost of RA-related absenteeism ($1.55 million) rather than to worker displacement ($0.12 million) or care-giving for spouses with RA ($0.02 million). In the base case analysis (excluding presenteeism), 37% of the acquisition cost of abatacept was offset by reductions in the cost of RA-related productivity losses. In some industry groups (Utilities and Finance), and in models that included presenteeism, reductions in lost productivity costs exceeded the abatacept cost.

Conclusions: Much of the acquisition cost of abatacept may be offset by reductions in the cost of productivity losses due to RA. Abatacept treatment could be cost saving in some industry groups.     

The price of anarchy of serial, average and incremental cost sharing

We compute the price of anarchy (PoA) of three familiar demand games, i.e., the smallest ratio of the equilibrium to efficient surplus, over all convex preferences quasi-linear in money. For any convex cost, the PoA is at least in the average and serial games, where n is the number of users. It is zero in the incremental game for piecewise linear cost functions. With quadratic costs, the PoA of the serial game is , and for the average and incremental games. This generalizes if the marginal cost is convex or concave, and its elasticity is bounded.      

Climate Policy,Uncertainty, and the Role of Technological Innovation

We study how uncertainty about climate change severity affects the relative benefits of early abatement and a portfolio of research and development (R&D) in lowering future abatement costs. Optimal early abatement depends on the curvature of the marginal benefit and marginal abatement cost (MAC) functions and how the uncertain parameter affects marginal benefits. R&D in a particular technology depends on whether uncertainty increases early abatement; whether investment lowers marginal costs for that technology; whether R&D lowers the slope of that technology's MAC function; and the shape of that technology's MAC function. We illustrate, focusing on the role of backstop technologies.     

Fertility and climate change*

A quarter of the total increase in emissions is attributable to the growth of emissions per capita, whereas three-quarters are due to population growth. This evidence notwithstanding, demography in climate–economy models typically follows exogenous trends. We develop a climate–economy integrated model with endogenous fertility through a quality–quantity trade-off. The decentralization of the social optimum requires two complementary instruments: a carbon pricing policy and family planning interventions. Global population increases and reaches a peak, depending on the scenario, between 11.6 billion in the social optimum and 14.6 billion if only carbon prices are implemented. Fertility costs (i.e., the net present value of the climate-related costs per child) are in 2020 estimated to be about 22,000 euros in the “social optimum” scenario, and about 88,000 euros in the “second-best with fertility taxes” scenario. Carbon pricing tends to have a rebound effect as it increases population growth leading to higher future emissions. Our results highlight the effects of fertility choices and global population on climate change, quantifying the cost of neglecting the interaction.     

The effect of ambiguous risk, and coordination on farmers' adaptation to climate change — A framed field experiment

The risk of losses of income and productive means due to adverse weather can differ significantly among farmers sharing a productive landscape, and is of course hard to estimate, or even “guesstimate” empirically. Moreover, the costs associated with investments in reduced vulnerability to climatic events are likely to exhibit economies of scope. We explore the implications of these characteristics on farmer's decisions to adapt to climate change using a framed field experiment applied to coffee farmers in Costa Rica. As expected, we find high levels of risk aversion, but even using that as a baseline, we further find that farmers behave even more cautiously when the setting is characterized by unknown or ambiguous risk (i.e. poor or non-reliable risk information). Secondly, we find that farmers, to a large extent, coordinated their decisions to secure a lower adaptation cost, and that communication among farmers strongly facilitated coordination.     

Climate change and hailstorm damage: Empirical evidence and implications for agriculture and insurance

There is much uncertainty about the effects of anthropogenic climate change on the frequency and severity of extreme weather events like hailstorms, and subsequent economic losses, while this is also relevant information for the design of climate policy. Few studies conducted indicate that a strong positive relation exists between hailstorm activity and hailstorm damage, as predicted by minimum temperatures using simple correlations. This relation suggests that hailstorm damage may increase in the future if global warming leads to further temperature increase. This study estimates a range of Tobit models of relations between normalized insured hailstorm damage to agriculture and several temperature and precipitation indicators for the Netherlands. Temporal dynamics are explicitly modelled. A distinction is made between damage costs for greenhouse horticulture and outdoor farming, which appear to be differently affected by variability in weather. ‘Out of sample’ forecast tests show that a combination of maximum temperatures and precipitation predicts hailstorm damage best. Extrapolations of the historical relations between hailstorm damage and weather indicators under climate change scenarios project a considerable increase in future hailstorm damage. Our estimates show that by 2050 annual hailstorm damage to outdoor farming could increase by between 25% and 50%, with considerably larger impacts on greenhouse horticulture in summer of more than 200%. The economic implications of more hailstorm damage for, and adaptation by, the agricultural and insurance sectors are discussed.     

Policy Adoption Rules and Global Warming

Although there is widespread agreement about the dangers of global warming and the resulting need to cut down emissions, there does not seem to be general agreement about the exact form the policy should take or the timing of its adoption. Failure to adopt and implement policies against global warming reflects the complexity of the problem, the uncertainties of climate change and the cost of policy adoption. Issues associated with the interactions between uncertainties and irreversibilities in determining the timing of policy adoption are analyzed by using the methodology of optimal stopping rules. Optimal policy functions are derived for cooperative and noncooperative solutions, with differential game representation. Issues associated with the empirical application of the optimal policy rules are also considered.     

The amenity value of the climate: the household production function approach

A basic assumption of the hedonic technique is that there are no barriers to mobility that prevent prices changing to reflect the net benefits of a given location. But climate variables are undeviating over relatively large distances and the absence of a common language coupled with the existence of political boundaries may prevent the net advantages associated with a particular region from being eliminated. Apart from in a handful of countries, methods alternative to the hedonic approach may therefore be required to estimate the amenity value of climate. Adopting the household production function approach this paper undertakes a systematic examination of the role played by climate in determining consumption patters using data from 88 different countries. Given certain assumptions the paper then proceeds to calculate the constant utility change in the cost of living for a 2.5 °C increase in globally averaged mean temperature. It is determined that high latitude countries benefit from limited climate change whereas low latitude countries suffer significant losses.     

Climate change—environmental and technology policies in a strategic context

There are a number of features of climate change which make it one of the most challenging problems confronting policy makers and policy analysts. In this paper we consider three such features: (i) climate change is a global pollutant so there are strategic interactions between governments over climate policy; (ii) cutting greenhouse gas emissions can have significant cost effects across a number of sectors of the economy, raising concerns about the implications of climate change policy on competitive advantage; (iii) the long-time scales on which climate change operates means that an important dimension of climate change policy is policy towards R&D to cut the costs of dealing with climate change. In Ulph and Ulph (1996) [Ulph A, Ulph D (1996) In: Carraro C, Katsoulacos Y, Xepapadeas A (eds) Environmental policy and market structure. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 181–208] we presented a model to analyse these issues, but considered only environmental policies. In this paper we extend that analysis to allow for both a richer set of policy instruments (environmental and technology policies) and a richer strategic context.     

Distributional Preferences and the Incidence of Costs and Benefits in Climate Change Policy

We explore the relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation and distributional preferences, by which we mean individuals’ opinions about who should be responsible for climate change prevention and whether the share of climate change impacts borne by the poor is a cause for concern. We use 1,770 responses to an online stated preference survey. The domestic costs in our survey’s policy choice scenarios are expressed as a set of randomized shares across four different payment vehicles, and the international cost shares are randomized across four groups of countries. We also elicit respondents’ perceptions of the likely regressivity of climate change impacts under a policy of business-as-usual. WTP is higher when larger cost shares are borne by parties deemed to bear a greater responsibility for mitigation, and when respondents believe (and care) that the impacts of climate change may be borne disproportionately by the world’s poor. That WTP for an environmental policy depends on the distributional consequences of the policy is an unsettling result: efficiency assessments are typically assumed to be separate from equity considerations in most benefit-cost analyses.     

EFFICIENCY AND EQUITY IMPLICATIONS OF CHARGING NONRESIDENTS FULL‐COST TUITIONS

With fixed costs and a break‐even constraint describing a public university, tuition and subsidy structures are endogenously determined that maximize constrained welfare, defined as students' value (net consumers' surplus) minus the taxpayer appropriation. Requiring nonresidents to pay full‐cost tuitions introduces relative deviations in demand that lead to efficiency losses and income transfers. To measure these effects, demand and cost expressions are developed to replicate standard decentralized budgeting frameworks for the University of Iowa and Iowa State University. Efficiency losses associated with requiring nonresidents to pay fully allocated costs are modest (2%–6%) compared to orders of magnitude larger distributional transfers from nonresidents to residents and taxpayers. (JEL I22, I28)     

Peak-load pricing and reliability under uncertainty

This paper develops the welfare foundations of peak-load pricing under uncertainty, building on Brown and Johnson (1969), Crew and Kleindorfer (1976), and Chao (1983). The context is that of a welfare-maximizing public enterprise facing uncertain and nondeferrable demand, and uncertain supply. The paper first describes various elements of outage cost, including rationing costs, disruption costs, and surplus losses due to unsatisfied demand. Exact welfare-optimal results are then derived, in contrast to the earlier approximations by Turvey and Anderson (1977) and Chao (1983). The results are generalized to take account of diverse technologies and multiple planning periods, and their implications for utility pricing and investment in an integrated resource planning context are discussed.     

Time consuming resource extraction in an overlapping generations economy with capital

For worldwide fisheries production, two major trends emerge for the next decades: a significantly larger role for aquaculture and reduced output due to climate change impacts. While the former leads to an increase in cost, the latter affects natural regeneration. To address both impacts, we investigate the relevance of resource extraction costs for a private property fishery in an intertemporal general equilibrium model with capital accumulation, commodity production and a labor market. We show how the extraction cost parameter—in addition to time preference, technology and natural regeneration—matters for the existence (and stability) of an economically feasible, nontrivial stationary state. Higher extraction costs increase the equilibrium resource stock, while a reduced regeneration rate (e.g. due to climate change) decreases the stock. Moreover, resource extraction overshoots its new equilibrium value after the cost shock while after a regeneration shock extraction levels adjust monotonically towards the new equilibrium.     

The Inefficiency of Private Adaptation to Pollution in the Presence of Endogenous Market Structure

The paper considers an industry where production costs rise due to pollution, but where this effect can be partially off-set by investing in adaptation as a private good. The focus is not on external effects, but industries where economies of scale are introduced from adapting to pollution. The structure of the resulting oligopolistic market is endogenous, since the level of adaptation is chosen by the firms. The analysis of externalities usually disregards defensive or adaptation measures, with a few exceptions that point to considerable complications. The present debate on adaptation to climate change shows the importance of understanding defensive measures. I show that the market failure caused by economies of scale leads to production costs above the social optimum, i.e. to under-adapation. When pollution increases, adaptation only increases if demand is price inelastic. Otherwise, welfare loss from market failure decreases with pollution. The total welfare loss is only convex if demand is price inelastic and the influence of pollution on production costs is stronger than the influence of adaptation. Concave welfare loss has crucial implications for abatement policies.     

Hayashi meets Kiyotaki and Moore: A theory of capital adjustment costs

Firm-level investment is lumpy and volatile but aggregate investment is much smoother and highly serially correlated. These different patterns of investment behavior have been viewed as indicating convex adjustment costs at the aggregate level but non-convex adjustment costs at the firm level. This paper shows that financial frictions in the form of collateralized borrowing at the firm level (Kiyotaki and Moore, 1997) can give rise to convex adjustment costs at the aggregate level yet at the same time generate lumpiness in plant-level investment. In particular, our model can (i) derive aggregate capital adjustment cost functions identical to those assumed by Hayashi (1982) and (ii) explain the weak empirical relationship between Tobin?s Q and plant-level investment.