Climate Impacts on Capital Accumulation in the Small Island State of Barbados

Eric Kemp-Benedict (), Jonathan Lamontagne, Timothy Laing and Crystal Drakes
Additional contact information
Jonathan Lamontagne: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University School of Engineering, Science & Engineering Complex, Anderson Hall, Medford, MA 02155, USA
Crystal Drakes: BlueGreen Initiative Inc., Peterkin Road, St. Michael, Barbados

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-23

Abstract: This paper constructs a model of climate-related damage for small island developing states (SIDS). We focus on the loss of private productive capital stocks through extreme climate events. In contrast to most economic analyses of climate impacts, which assume temperature-dependent damage functions, we draw on the engineering literature to allow for a greater or lesser degree of anticipation of climate change when designing capital stocks and balancing current adaptation expenditure against future loss and damage. We apply the model to tropical storm damage in the small island developing state of Barbados and show how anticipatory behavior changes the damage to infrastructure for the same degree of climate change. Thus, in the model, damage depends on behavior as well as climate variables.

Keywords: climate change; adaptation; loss and damage; damage function; return period; tropical cyclone (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3192/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3192/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:11:p:3192-:d:237989

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().