Modern agriculture relies on a small number of highly productive crops and the continued expansion of agricultural land area has led to a significant loss of biodiversity. In this paper we consider the macroeconomic consequences of a continued expansion of modern agriculture from the perspective...

We study the interactions between global population, technological progress, per capita income, the demand for food, and agricultural land expansion over the period 1960 to 2100. We formulate a two-sector Schumpeterian growth model with a Barro-Becker representation of endogenous fertility. A...

To slow or not to slow� (Nordhaus, 1991) was the first economic appraisal of greenhouse gas emissions abatement and founded a large literature on a topic of great, worldwide importance. In this paper we offer our assessment of the original article and trace its legacy, in particular...

The global climate is changing, and will continue to do so even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically curbed. Economies are therefore faced with the challenge of adapting to climate change. This challenge is particularly important in developing countries, which, due to a combination of...

Economic evaluation of climate policy traditionally treats uncertainty by appealing to expected utility theory. Yet our knowledge of the impacts of climate policy may not be of sufficient quality to justify probabilistic beliefs. In such circumstances, it has been argued that the axioms of...

Many insurance and reinsurance contracts are contingent on events such ashurricanes, terrorist attacks or political upheavals whose probabilities are not known with precision. There is a body of experimental evidence showing thathigher premiums are charged for these �ambiguous�...

Many investments involve both a long time-horizon and risky returns. Making investment decisions thus requires assumptions about time and risk preferences. In the public sector in particular, such assumptions are frequently contested and there is no immediate prospect of universal agreement....

In this paper we compare two high-profile strategic policy reviews undertaken for the UK government on environmental risks: radioactive waste management and climate change. These reviews took very different forms, both in terms of analytic approach and deliberation strategy. The Stern Review on...

When a natural disaster hits, the affected households try to cope with its impacts. A variety of coping strategies may be employed, from reducing current consumption to disposing of productive assets. The latter strategies are especially worrisome, as they may reduce the capacity of the...

This note considers the treatment of risk and uncertainty in the recently established �social cost of carbon� (SCC) for analysis of federal regulations in the United States. It argues that the analysis of the US Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon did not go far enough...