Article ID: | iaor20123834 |
Volume: | 37 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 205 |
End Page Number: | 216 |
Publication Date: | Jun 2012 |
Journal: | Journal of Productivity Analysis |
Authors: | Fre Rolf, Grosskopf Shawna, Margaritis Dimitri, Weber William |
Keywords: | technological change, carbon dioxide, climate change |
In 2007 Nicholas Stern’s Review (2007) estimated that global GDP would shrink by 5–20% due to climate change which brought forth calls to reduce emissions by 30–70% in the next 20 years. Stern’s results were contested by Weitzman (2007) who argued for more modest reductions in the near term, and Nordhaus (2007) who questioned the low discount rate and coefficient of relative risk aversion employed in the Stern Review, which caused him to argue that ‘the central question about global‐warming policy–how much how, how fast, and how costly–remain open.’ We present a simulation model developed by Färe et al. (in Time substitution with application to data envelopment analysis, 2009) on intertemporal resource allocation that allows us to shine some light on these questions. The empirical specification here constrains the amount of undesirable output a country can produce over a given period by choosing the magnitude and timing of those reductions. We examine the production technology of 28 OECD countries over 1992–2006, in which countries produce real GDP and CO