Methodological aspects of recent climate change damage cost studies

Onno Kuik, Barbara Buchner, Michela Catenacci, Etem Karakaya () and Richard Tol

No FNU-122, Working Papers from Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University

Abstract: This paper discusses methodological aspects of recent climate change damage studies. Assessing the total and/or marginal damage costs of environmental change is often difficult and it is certainly difficult in the case of climate change. A major obstacle is the uncertainty on the physical impacts of climate change, especially related to extreme events and so-called ‘low-probability high-impact’ scenarios. The subsequent transposition of physical impacts into monetary terms is also a delicate step, given that climate change impacts involve both market and non-market goods and services, covering health, environmental and social values, and that impacts may be distant in time and space. The complexity of climate change cost assessment thus involves several crucial dimensions, including non-market evaluation, risk and uncertainty, baseline definition, equity and discounting, further elaborated in this paper in the course of the overview of the literature and of the overview and evaluation of the key methodological issues.

Keywords: Climate change damage costs; cost of inaction; methodological aspects; risk and uncertainty; discounting; equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2006-12, Revised 2006-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published, Integrated Assessment Journal, 8 (1), 19-40

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