Frank Ackerman

INPUT–OUTPUT ANALYSIS AND CARBON FOOTPRINTING: AN OVERVIEW OF APPLICATIONS

This article provides an overview of how generalised multi-regional input–output models can be used for carbon footprint applications. We focus on the relevance and suitability of such evidence to inform decision making. Such an overview is currently missing. Drawing on UK results, we cover carbon footprint applications in seven areas: national emissions inventories and trade, emission drivers, economic sectors, supply chains, organisations, household consumption and lifestyles as well as sub-national emission inventories. The article highlights the multiple uses of generalised multi-regional input–output models for carbon footprinting and concludes by highlighting important avenues for future research.

Looming global-scale failures and missing institutions

Navigating global changes requires a coevolving set of collaborative, global institutions. Energy, food, and water crises; climate disruption; declining fisheries; increasing ocean acidification; emerging diseases; and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating scale of human activity. They are outpacing the development of institutions to deal with them and their many interactive effects. The core of the problem is inducing cooperation in situations where individuals and nations will collectively gain if all cooperate, but each faces the temptation to take a free ride on the cooperation of others. The nation-state achieves cooperation by the exercise of sovereign power within its boundaries. The difficulty to date is that transnational institutions provide, at best, only partial solutions, and implementation of even these solutions can be undermined by internation competition and recalcitrance.

Climate Risks and Carbon Prices: Revising the Social Cost of Carbon

The social cost of carbon - or marginal damage caused by an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions - has been estimated by a U.S. government working group at

Still dead after all these years: interpreting the failure of general equilibrium theory

21 in 2010. That calculation, however, omits many of the biggest risks associated with climate change, and downplays the impact of our current emissions on future generations. Our reanalysis explores the effects of uncertainty about climate sensitivity, the shape of the damage function, and the discount rate. We show that the social cost of carbon is uncertain across a broad range, and could be much higher than

Inside the integrated assessment models: Four issues in climate economics

21. In our worst case, it could be almost

The Economics of Atrazine

900 in 2010, rising to

The economics of inaction on climate change: a sensitivity analysis

1,500 in 2050. The most ambitious scenarios for eliminating carbon dioxide emissions as rapidly as technologically feasible (reaching zero or negative net global emissions by the end of this century) require spending up to

The Shrinking Gains from Global Trade Liberalization in Computable General Equilibrium Models: A Critical Assessment

150 to

Waste Management and Climate Change

500 per ton of reductions in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Using a reasonable set of alternative assumptions, therefore, the damages from a ton of carbon dioxide emissions in 2050 could exceed the cost of reducing emissions at the maximum technically feasible rate. Once this is the case, the exact value of the social cost of carbon loses importance: the clear policy prescription is to reduce emissions a rapidly as possible, and cost-effectiveness analysis offers better insights for climate policy than cost-benefit analysis.

Mixed signals: market incentives, recycling, and the price spike of 1995

More than 25 years after the discovery that the equilibrium point of a general equilibrium model is not necessarily either unique or stable, there is still a need for an intuitively comprehensible explanation of the reasons for this discovery. Recent accounts identify two causes of the finding of instability: the inherent difficulties of aggregation, and the individualistic model of consumer behaviour. The mathematical dead end reached by general equilibrium analysis is not due to obscure or esoteric aspects of the model, but rather arises from intentional design features, present in neoclassical theory since its beginnings. Modification of economic theory to overcome these underlying problems will require a new model of consumer choice, nonlinear analyses of social interactions, and recognition of the central role of institutional and social constraints.