Browsing by Author "Pizer, W"

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    Discounting the Benefits of Climate Change Policies Using Uncertain Rates
    (Resources, 2002-01-01) Newell, R; Pizer, W
    Evaluating environmental policies, such as the mitigation of greenhouse gases, frequently requires balancing near-term mitigation costs against long-term environmental benefits. Conventional approaches to valuing such investments hold interest rates constant, but the authors contend that there is a real degree of uncertainty in future interest rates. This leads to a higher valuation of future benefits relative to conventional methods that ignore interest rate uncertainty.
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    Economic tools to promote transparency and comparability in the Paris Agreement
    (Nature Climate Change, 2016-11-01) Aldy, J; Pizer, W; Tavoni, M; Reis, LA; Akimoto, K; Blanford, G; Carraro, C; Clarke, LE; Edmonds, J; Iyer, GC; McJeon, HC; Richels, R; Rose, S; Sano, F
    © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature.The Paris Agreement culminates a six-year transition towards an international climate policy architecture based on parties submitting national pledges every five years. An important policy task will be to assess and compare these contributions. We use four integrated assessment models to produce metrics of Paris Agreement pledges, and show differentiated effort across countries: wealthier countries pledge to undertake greater emission reductions with higher costs. The pledges fall in the lower end of the distributions of the social cost of carbon and the cost-minimizing path to limiting warming to 2 °C, suggesting insufficient global ambition in light of leaders' climate goals. Countries' marginal abatement costs vary by two orders of magnitude, illustrating that large efficiency gains are available through joint mitigation efforts and/or carbon price coordination. Marginal costs rise almost proportionally with income, but full policy costs reveal more complex regional patterns due to terms of trade effects.
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    Environmental economics. Determining benefits and costs for future generations.
    (Science, 2013-07-26) Arrow, K; Cropper, M; Gollier, C; Groom, B; Heal, G; Newell, R; Nordhaus, W; Pindyck, R; Pizer, W; Portney, P; Sterner, T; Tol, RSJ; Weitzman, M
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    Modeling economy-wide vs sectoral climate policies using combined aggregate-sectoral models
    (Energy Journal, 2006-07-25) Pizer, W; Burtraw, D; Harrington, W; Newell, R; Sanchirico, J
    Economic analyses of climate change policies frequently focus on reductions of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions via market-based, economy-wide policies. The current course of environment and energy policy debate in the United States, however, suggests an alternative outcome: sector-based and/or inefficiently designed policies. This paper uses a collection of specialized, sector-based models in conjunction with a computable general equilibrium model of the economy to examine and compare these policies at an aggregate level. We examine the relative cost of different policies designed to achieve the same quantity of emission reductions. We find that excluding a limited number of sectors from an economy-wide policy does not significantly raise costs. Focusing policy solely on the electricity and transportation sectors doubles costs, however, and using non-market policies can raise cost by a factor of ten. These results are driven in part by, and are sensitive to, our modeling of pre-existing tax distortions. Copyright © 2006 by the IAEE. All rights reserved.