We investigate the optimal policy response to the possibility of abrupt, irreversible shifts in system dynamics. The welfare cost of a tipping point emerges from the policymaker's response to altered system dynamics. Our policymaker also learns about a threshold's location by observing the...

An increasingly common type of environmental policy instrument limits the carbon intensity of transportation and electricity markets. In order to extend the policy's scope beyond point-of-use emissions, regulators assign each competing fuel an emission intensity rating for use in calculating...

The benefits and costs of increasing solar electricity generation depend on the scale of the increase and on the time frame over which it occurs. Short-run analyses focus on the cost-effectiveness of incremental increases in solar capacity, holding the rest of the power system fixed. Solar’s...

We provide the first revealed preference estimates of the benefits of routine weather forecasts. The benefits come from how people use advance information to reduce mortality from heat and cold. Theoretically, more accurate forecasts reduce mortality if and only if mortality risk is convex in...

I propose a new climate policy, called greenhouse gas (GHG) property, that makes atmospheric GHG stocks the unit of regulation. The initial extractor or importer of a fossil fuel would own tradable carbon property that would become carbon dioxide (CO2) property upon combustion. This CO2 property...

Uncertainty is critical to questions about climate change policy. Recently developed recursive integrated assessment models have become the primary tools for studying and quantifying the policy implications of uncertainty. We decompose the channels through which uncertainty affects policy and...

Our perception of time is both nonlinear and nonstationary, which makes preference reversals possible. I decompose the sources of dynamic inconsistency into a time acceleration effect and a time compression effect. Standard economic models focus only on the second effect. I show that when the...

Uncertainty is critical to questions about climate change policy. Recently developed recursive integrated assessment models have become the primary tools for studying and quantifying the policy implications of uncertainty. We decompose the channels through which uncertainty affects policy and...

A rapidly growing empirical literature seeks to estimate the costs of future climate change from time series variation in weather. I formally analyze the consequences of a change in climate for economic outcomes. I show that those consequences are driven by changes in the distribution of...