Sacrifice, discounting and climate policy: five questions

Larry Karp

Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley

Abstract: I provide a selective review of discounting and climate policy. After reviewing evidence on the importance of the discount rate in setting policy, I ask whether standard models tend to exaggerate the sacrifices that the current generation needs to undertake in order to internalize climate damages. I then consider whether the risk of catastrophic damage really overwhelms discounting, in the determination of optimal policy. I revisit the question of how we actually think about the distant future.

Keywords: climate change; discounting; intergenerational conflict; catastrophic risk; hyperbolic discounting; Life Sciences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/1zq431s8.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Sacrifice, discounting and climate policy: five questions (2009)
Working Paper: Sacrifice, Discounting and Climate Policy: Five Questions (2009)
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:cdl:agrebk:qt1zq431s8

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().