The belief that stringent climate policies are very costly is widespread among political decision-makers and the public. The Trump administration stressed the cost argument as the motivation for the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. However, such judgements ignore the economic...

This paper presents a macroeconomic approach to sustainable growth. After clarifying the concept of sustainability, the interdependence between natural resources and accumulated capital stocks such as physical, human, and knowledge capital is discussed. The conditions for the substitution...

Production often causes pollution as a by-product. Once pollution problems become too severe, regulation is introduced by political authorities which forces the economy to make a transition to cleaner production processes. We model this transition as a change in "general purpose technology"...

We derive the optimal contributions to global climate policy when countries differ with respect to income level and pollution intensity. Countries growth rates are determined endogenously, and abatement efficiency is improved by technical progress. We show that country heterogeneity has a...