EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Use and Misuse of Models for Climate Policy

Robert Pindyck

Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2017, vol. 11, issue 1, 100-114

Abstract: In recent articles I have argued that integrated assessment models (IAMs) have flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision that is illusory and can fool policymakers into thinking that the forecasts the models generate have some kind of scientific legitimacy. However, some economists and climate scientists have claimed that we need to use some kind of model for policy analysis and that IAMs can be structured and used in ways that correct for their shortcomings. For example, it has been argued that although we know very little about key relationships in the model, we can get around this problem by attaching probability distributions to various parameters and then simulating the model using Monte Carlo methods. I argue that this would buy us nothing and that a simpler and more transparent approach to the design of climate change policy is preferable. I briefly outline what such an approach would look like.

JEL-codes: D81 Q51 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (106)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/reep/rew012 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Use and Misuse of Models for Climate Policy (2015) Downloads
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:oup:renvpo:v:11:y:2017:i:1:p:100-114.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Environmental Economics and Policy is currently edited by Robert Stavins

More articles in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy from Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:oup:renvpo:v:11:y:2017:i:1:p:100-114.