Modeling Environment Improving Technological Innovations Under Uncertainty

The issues of technology and uncertainty are very much at the heart of the policy debate of how much to control greenhouse gas emissions. The costs of doing so are present and high while the benefits are very much in the future and, most importantly, they are highly uncertain. Whilst there is broad consensus on the key elements of climate change science and agreement that near-term actions are needed to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, there is little agreement on the costs and benefits of climate policy. The book looks at different ways of reconciling the needs for sustainability and equity with the costs of action now. Presenting a compendium of methodologies for evaluating the economic impact of technological innovation upon climate-change policy, this book describes mathematical models and their predictions. The goal is to provide a practitioner’s guide for doing the science of economics and climate change. Because the assumptions motivating different problems in the economics of climate change have different complexities, a number of models are presented with varying levels of difficulty: reduced-form and structural, partial- and general-equilibrium, closed-form and computational. A unifying theme of these models is the incorporation of a number of price and quantity instruments and an analysis of their respective efficacies. This book presents models that contain structural uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty that economic agents respond to via their risk attitudes. The novelty of this book is to relate the effects of risk and risk attitudes to environment-improving technological innovation.

This book presents a compendium of methodologies for evaluating the economic impact of technological innovation upon climate-change policy. There is a broad consensus on the key elements of climate-change science and agreement that near-term actions are needed to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. However, there is little agreement on the costs and benefits of climate policy. Any policy implementation will result in an irreversible but environment-improving investment in alternative technologies; this change will generate immediately-realized costs but significantly-delayed benefits. Hence, a critical element in policy selection is the inherent uncertainty in the climate and economy that can be expected over time.

This book presents provides a rigorous yet accessible treatment of the main topics in climate change policy using a large body of research generated using WITCH (World Induced Technical Change Hybrid), an innovative and path-breaking integrated assessm

This book introduces a new way of analyzing, measuring and thinking about mega-risks, a “paradigm shift” that moves from single-solutions to multiple competitive solutions and strategies. “Robust simulation” is a statistical approach that demonstrates future risk through simulation of a suite of possible answers. To arrive at this point, the book systematically walks through the historical statistical methods for evaluating risks. The first chapters deal with three theories of probability and statistics that have been dominant in the 20th century, along with key mathematical issues and dilemmas. The book then introduces “robust simulation” which solves the problem of measuring the stability of simulated losses, incorporates outliers, and simulates future risk through a suite of possible answers and stochastic modeling of unknown variables. This book discusses various analytical methods for utilizing divergent solutions in making pragmatic financial and risk-mitigation decisions. The book emphasizes the importance of flexibility and attempts to demonstrate that alternative credible approaches are helpful and required in understanding a great many phenomena.

This open access book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn, it discusses the development of alternative policy pathways and the identification of optimal switching points, drawing on concrete examples to do so. Lastly, it discusses climate change mitigation policies’ implications for the agricultural, food, building, transportation, service and manufacturing sectors.

A review of the literature on environmental taxes, focusing on European experiences, and analysing how such taxes can contribute to green causes as well as reducing the tax burden from "ordinary" taxation. The authors examine the potential 'double dividend' from tax reform for helping the environment, reducing unemployment and encouraging growth.

The 13 articles of this collection are the result of three workshops on induced technological change (ITC) held in 1997-1999 at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria (where two of the editors teach; the third teaches economics at Yale U.). The chapters consider topics that include the history of the ITC debate, international perspectives, various ITC modeling approaches, evolutionary interpretation of innovation in medical history, the relation of costs and performance of new technologies with carbon dioxide emission reduction, and the place of ITC in the context of global climate change policy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Use of Economics in Implementing European Environmental Policy is a timely exploation of the use of the Choice Experiment and Contingent valuation methods in different parts of Europe in order to inform environmental policy. Koundouri focuses predominantly on water, wetland, forest and agricultural management and her book includes results, both methodological and empirical, from a recent research project.