“Grandfathering” grants preferential treatment to existing resource users over new entrants based on prior use. Grandfathering is based on the concept of first-in-time or prior appropriation and has…

Today, more than ever, ‘Spaceship Earth’ is an apt metaphor as we chart the boundaries for a safe planet. Social scientists both ​analyse why society courts disaster by approaching or even…

In this paper, we explore the synergies and tradeoffs between abatement of global and local pollution. We build a unique dataset of Swedish combined heat and power plants with detailed boiler-level…

Many economists have long held that carbon pricing—either through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade—is the most cost-effective way to decarbonize energy systems, along with subsidies for basic research…

We analyze optimal social discount rates when people derive utility from relative consumption, i.e. their own consumption level relative to the consumption level of others. We compare the social…

An attempt to reconcile the effects of temperature on economic productivity at the micro and macro levels produces predictions of global economic losses due to climate change that are much higher than…

The Climate conference in ParisDecember 2015 is described as “last chance” or “5 to twelve” but in the climate arena there is a risk that we have over-utilized the doomsday vocabulary already in the…

Make wind and solar power even cheaper by opening up access to the electricity gridand ending fossil-fuel subsidies, urge Gernot Wagner and colleagues. Putting a price on carbon dioxide and other…

Top-down climate negotiations embodied by the Kyoto Protocol have all but stalled, chiefly because of disagreements over targets and objections to financial transfers. To avoid those problems, many…

We live at a unique moment in history when rapid economic growth has finally lifted hundreds of millions out of deep poverty, not only in Asia and Latin America but increasingly in Africa (Sala-i…