Climate Policy Decisions under Ambiguity and Pressure of Time

This article summarises our studies on the optimal timing of climate policy adoption by focusing on ambiguity in the climate damage cost assessments (Chen et al., 2011) and on the limited time to achieve certain climate policy targets (Chen et al., 2012). Using real options theory, both studies conclude that climate policy adoption should be accelerated. However, the implementation of climate policy is evaded by high uncertainty about critical parameters and possible climate pathways