Economics of Climate Change - Einzelansicht

Nordhaus & Boyer (2000). Warming the World. MIT Press. (available online: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/web%20table%20of%20contents%20102599.htm and http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/course131/Warm-World00.pdf)

The lecture is provided in cooperation with the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), Berlin.

microeconomics; macroeconomics; knowledge of the "growth and distribtion" lecture is useful.

Porfolio: written exam (60 min) [60%] and assignments (40%). 6 ECTS for successful completion.

The aim of this integrated lecture is to get familiar with key concepts used in economic research on climate change. Typical questions addressed by the lecture are: How do carbon emissions (and their reduction) affect the economy over time? What are optimal policies to reduce emissions? What is the role of uncertainties and limited knowledge for optimal climate policy? Why is international cooperation so important and how to overcome cooperation failures?

The course consists of three parts that are related to various climate-change topics:

1. intertemporal dynamics which includes growth modeling, use of exhaustible resources and sustainability analyses,
2. optimal climate policy under uncertainty and
3. strategic behavior between countries and international climate policy.

The lecture will lay the theoretical foundations in intertemporal optimization techniques (Hamiltonian), decision theory and game theory, but also include practical implementations and examples for concrete problems that are solved by students. Applications and links to current real-work politics will be discussed. Students will also get familiar with stylized integrated assessment models on climate change (including their use for specific climate policy problems). After successful completion, students should be able to analyze conceptually as well as numerically major problems related to climate change and sustainability.

Students in economics that are interested in environmental economics, sustainability sciences as well as numerical modelling of environmental-economics problems.