Climate Policies with Burden Sharing: The Economics of Climate Financing
International Corporate Governance and Regulation
ISBN: 978-1-78756-536-4, eISBN: 978-1-78756-535-7
Publication date: 1 November 2018
Abstract
Climate control needs have reached momentum. While scientists call for stabilizing climate and regulators structure climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts around the globe, economists are concerned with finding proper and fair financing mechanisms. In an overlapping-generations framework, Sachs (2014) solves the climate change predicament that seems to pit today’s against future generations. Sachs (2014) proposes that the current generation mitigates climate change financed through bonds to remain financially as well-off as without mitigation while improving environmental well-being of future generations through ensured climate stability. This intergenerational tax-and-transfer policy turns climate change mitigation into a Pareto improving strategy. Sachs’ (2014) discrete model is integrated in contemporary growth and resource theories. The following article analyzes how climate bonds can be phased-in, in a model for a socially optimal solution and a laissez-faire economy. Optimal trajectories are derived partially analytically (e.g., by using the Pontryagin maximum principle to define the optimal equilibrium), partially data driven (e.g., by the use of modern big market data), and partially by using novel cutting-edge methods – for example, nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC), which solves complex dynamic optimization problems with different nonlinearities for infinite and finite decision horizons. NMPC will be programed with terminal condition in order to determine appropriate numeric solutions converging to some optimal equilibria. The analysis tests if the climate change debt adjusted growth model stays within the bounds of a sustainable fiscal policy by employing NMPC, which solves complex dynamic systems with different nonlinearities.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgement
Financial support of the American Academic Research Conference on Global Business, Economics, Finance and Social Sciences, Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, George Washington University, The New School Dean’s Office, The New School Department of Economics, The New School Fee Board, The New School for Social Research, The New School Eugene Lang College, and the University of Vienna is gratefully acknowledged. The author declares no conflict of interest. The author thanks the participants of Young Scientists Scholars Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis for helpful comments on the presented ideas and Sergey Orlov for his invaluable help with the graphical solution presented. All omissions, errors, and misunderstandings in this piece are solely the author’s.
Citation
Puaschunder, J.M. (2018), "Climate Policies with Burden Sharing: The Economics of Climate Financing", International Corporate Governance and Regulation (Advances in Financial Economics, Vol. 20), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1569-373220180000020001
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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