Pricing Carbon and Adjusting Capital to Fend Off Climate Catastrophes

Frederick (Rick) van der Ploeg and Aart Zeeuw ()
Additional contact information
Aart Zeeuw: Tilburg University

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2019, vol. 72, issue 1, No 4, 29-50

Abstract: Abstract The optimal reaction to a potential productivity shock as a consequence of climate tipping is to substantially tax carbon in order to curb the risk of tipping, but to adjust capital as well in order to smooth consumption when tipping occurs. We also allow for conventional marginal climate damages and decompose the optimal carbon tax in two catastrophe components and the conventional component. We distinguish constant and increasing marginal hazards. Moreover, the productivity catastrophe is compared with recoverable catastrophes and with a shock to the climate sensitivity. Finally, we allow for investments in adaptation capital as an alternative to counter the potential adverse effects of climate tipping. Quantitatively, the results are investigated with a calibrated model for the world economy.

Keywords: Climate tipping point; Risk; Social cost of carbon; Precautionary capital; Economic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 H20 O40 Q31 Q38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-018-0231-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Pricing Carbon and Adjusting Capital to Fend off Climate Catastrophes (2018)
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:kap:enreec:v:72:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10640-018-0231-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-018-0231-2

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().