Estimates of the marginal damage costs of carbon dioxide emissions require the aggregation of monetised impacts of climate change over people with different incomes and in different jurisdictions. Implicitly or explicitly, such estimates assume a social welfare function and hence a particular...

Weitzman's Dismal Theorem has that the expected net present value of a stock problem with a stochastic growth rate with unknown variance is unbounded. Cost-benefit analysis can therefore not be applied to greenhouse gas emission control. We use the Generalized Central Limit Theorem to show that...

It is well-known that the discount rate is crucially important for estimating the social cost of carbon, a standard indicator for the seriousness of climate change and desirable level of climate policy. The Ramsey equation for the discount rate has three components: the pure rate of time...

The authors estimate the growth rate of the social cost of carbon. This is an indication of the optimal rate of acceleration of greenhouse gas emission reduction policy over time. The authors find that the social cost of carbon increases by 1.3% to 3.9% per year, with a central estimate of 2.2%....

We use FUND 3.5 to estimate the social cost of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulphur hexafluoride emissions. We show the results of a range of sensitivity analyses, focusing on the impact of carbon dioxide fertilization. Ignored in previous studies of the social cost of greenhouse...

The social cost of carbon is an estimate of the benefit of reducing CO2 emissions by one ton today. As such it is a key input into cost-benefit analysis of climate policy and regulation. We provide a set of new estimates of the social cost of carbon from the integrated assessment model FUND 3.5...

We apply four alternative decision criteria, two old ones and two new, to the question of the appropriate level of greenhouse gas emission reduction. In all cases, we consider a uniform carbon tax that is applied to all emissions from all sectors and all countries; and that increases over time...

We impute a global social welfare function that is consistent with the burden sharing in the Kyoto Protocol and in two proposals for a post-Kyoto treaty. The Kyoto Protocol favored the EU. The Frankel proposal for a post-Kyoto treaty continues the favorable treatment of the EU, while the EU...