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Working Paper
Understanding Climate Damages: Consumption versus Investment
Existing climate-economy models use aggregate damage functions to model the effects of climate change. This approach assumes climate change has equal impacts on the productivity of firms that produce consumption and investment goods or services. We show the split between damage to consumption and investment productivity matters for the dynamic consequences of climate change. Drawing on the structural transformation literature, we develop a framework that incorporates heterogeneous climate damages. When investment is more vulnerable to climate, we find short-run consumption losses will be ...
Journal Article
How Long Do Rising Temperatures Affect Economic Growth?
How might rising temperatures around the world affect the growth rate of GDP per person? Examining data across countries over the past half-century shows that a change in temperature affects GDP growth, but only temporarily. Combining estimates from past data with a simple growth model can help project the impacts of future higher temperatures on GDP per person by country. These projections suggest that total global losses in output per person could be substantial, though smaller than if a given change in temperature had a permanent effect on GDP growth.
Working Paper
Seawalls and Stilts: A Quantitative Macro Study of Climate Adaptation
Can we reduce the damage from climate change by investing in seawalls, stilts, or otherforms of adaptation? Focusing on the case of severe storms in the US, I develop a macroheterogeneous-agent model to quantify the interactions between adaptation, federal disaster policy, and climate change. The model departs from the standard climate damage function and incorporates the damage from storms as the realization of idiosyncratic shocks.I find that while the moral hazard effects from disaster aid reduce adaptation in the USeconomy, federal subsidies for investment in adaptation more than correct ...
Working Paper
Projecting the Impact of Rising Temperatures: The Role of Macroeconomic Dynamics
We use theory and empirics to distinguish between the impact of temperature on transition (temporary) and steady state (permanent) growth in output per capita. Standard economic theory suggests that the long-run growth rate of output per capita is determined entirely by the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP). We find evidence suggesting that the level of temperature affects the level of TFP, but not the growth rate of TFP. This implies that a change in temperature will have a temporary, but not a permanent, impact on growth in output per capita. To highlight the quantitative ...
Journal Article
The Economy’s Response to Potential Climate Policy
Uncertainty about U.S. climate policy in the future creates risk that affects the investment decisions businesses make today. If firms expect future policy to raise the cost of carbon emissions, then they could react to this by both shifting investment towards cleaner capital and reducing overall investment. These two responses lead to lower emissions, even if no actual climate policy is in place. Evidence suggests that this risk encourages companies to voluntarily reduce emissions using internal carbon prices and other mechanisms.
Working Paper
The Macro Effects of Climate Policy Uncertainty
Uncertainty surrounding if and when the U.S. government will implement a federal climate policy introduces risk into the decision to invest in capital used in conjunction with fossil fuels. To quantify the macroeconomic impacts of this climate policy risk, we develop a dynamic, general equilibrium model that incorporates beliefs about future climate policy. We find that climate policy risk reduces carbon emissions by causing the capital stock to shrink and become relatively cleaner. Our results reveal, however, that a carbon tax could achieve the same reduction in emissions at less than half ...
Working Paper
Recycling Carbon Tax Revenue to Maximize Welfare
This paper explores how to recycle carbon tax revenue back to households to maximize welfare. Using a general equilibrium lifecycle model calibrated to reflect the heterogeneity in the U.S. economy, we find the optimal policy uses two thirds of carbon-tax revenue to reduce the distortionary tax on capital income while the remaining one third is used to increase the progressivity of the labor-income tax. The optimal policy attains higher welfare and more equality than the lump-sum rebate approach preferred by policymakers as well as the approach originally prescribed by economists -- which ...
Working Paper
The Distributional Effects of a Carbon Tax on Current and Future Generations
This paper examines the non-environmental welfare effects of introducing a revenue- neutral carbon tax policy. Using a life cycle model, we find that the welfare effects of the policy differ substantially for agents who are alive when the policy is enacted compared to those who are born into the new steady state with the carbon tax in place. Consistent with previous studies, we demonstrate that, for those born in the new steady state, the welfare costs are always lower when the carbon tax revenue is used to reduce an existing distortionary tax as opposed to being returned in the form of ...
Working Paper
Climate Policy Transition Risk and the Macroeconomy
Uncertainty surrounding if the U.S. will implement a federal climate policy introduces risk into the decision to invest in long-lived capital assets, particularly those designed to use, or to replace fossil fuel. We develop a dynamic, general equilibrium model to quantify the macroeconomic impacts of this climate policy transition risk. The model incorporates beliefs over the likelihood that the government adopts a climate policy causing the economy to dynamically transition to a lower carbon steady state. We find that climate policy transition risk decreases carbon emissions today by causing ...
Discussion Paper
The Green Dividend Dilemma: Carbon Dividends Versus Double-Dividends
By raising the price of carbon-emitting energy sources, a carbon tax would flexibly incentivize households and businesses to reduce fossil fuel consumption and substitute towards cleaner energy sources. A carbon tax would also generate a substantial stream of government revenue. This raises an important question – how should this revenue be used? In this note, we summarize findings from our recent research (Fried et al. (2018)) that examine this question.