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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I. Introduction to the Maximum Principle -- 1. The Calculus of Variations and the Stationary Rate of Return on Capital -- 2. The Prototype-Economic Control Problem -- 3. The Maximum Principle in One Dimension -- 4. Applications of the Maximum Principle in One Dimension -- Part II. Comprehensive Accounting and the Maximum Principle -- 5. Optimal Multisector Growth and Dynamic Competitive Equilibrium -- 6. The Pure Theory of Perfectly Complete National Income Accounting -- 7. The Stochastic Wealth and Income Version of the Maximum Principle -- References -- Index

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I: Introduction to the Maximum Principle -- 1. The Calculus of Variations and the Stationary Rate of Return on Capital -- 2. The Prototype-Economic Control Problem -- 3. The Maximum Principle in One Dimension -- 4. Applications of the Maximum Principle in One Dimension -- Part II: Comprehensive Accounting and the Maximum Principle -- 5. Optimal Multisector Growth and Dynamic Competitive Equilibrium -- 6. The Pure Theory of Perfectly Complete National Income Accounting -- 7. The Stochastic Wealth and Income Version of the Maximum Principle -- References -- Index.

This paper argues that a uniform global tax‐like price on carbon emissions, whose revenues each country retains, can provide a focal point for a reciprocal common climate commitment, whereas quantity targets, which do not nearly so readily present such a single focal point, tend to rely ultimately on individual quantity commitments. The paper postulates the conceptually useful allegory of a futuristic 'World Climate Assembly' (WCA) that votes for a single worldwide price on carbon emissions via the basic democratic principle of one person, one vote majority rule. A WCA‐like uniform price‐tax counters self‐interest by incentivizing countries or agents to internalize the externality because each WCA agent's higher abatement cost from a higher emissions price is counterbalanced by that agent's extra benefit from inducing all other WCA agents to simultaneously lower their emissions in response to the higher price. The paper derives fresh insights and new simple formulae that relate each emitter's most‐preferred world price of carbon to the world 'social cost of carbon' (SCC), and further relates the WCA‐voted world price of carbon to the world SCC. Some implications are discussed. The overall methodology of the paper is a mixture of mostly classical with some behavioural economics.

At high enough greenhouse gas concentrations, climate change might conceivably cause catastrophic damages with small but non-negligible probabilities. If the bad tail of climate damages is sufficiently fat, and if the coefficient of relative risk aversion is greater than one, the catastrophe-reducing insurance aspect of mitigation investments could in theory have a strong influence on raising the social cost of carbon. In this paper I exposit the influence of fat tails on climate change economics in a simple stark formulation focused on the social cost of carbon. I then attempt to place the basic underlying issues within a balanced perspective.

Abstract

In textbook expositions of the equity-premium, riskfree-rate and equity-volatility puzzles, agents are sure of the economy's structure while growth rates are normally distributed. But because of parameter uncertainty the thin-tailed normal distribution conditioned on realized data becomes a thick-tailed Student-t distribution, which changes the entire nature of what is considered "puzzling" by reversing every inequality discrepancy needing to be explained. This paper shows that Bayesian updating of unknown structural parameters inevitably adds a permanent tail-thickening effect to posterior expectations. The expected-utility ramifications of this for asset pricing are strong, work against the puzzles, and are very sensitive to subjective prior beliefs—even with asymptotically infinite data. (JEL D84, G12)

By incorporating the probability distribution directly into the analysis, this paper proposes a new theoretical approach to resolving the perennial dilemma of being uncertain about what discount rate to use in cost-benefit analysis. A numerical example is constructed from the results of a survey based on the opinions of 2,160 economists. The main finding is that even if every individual believes in a constant discount rate, the wide spread of opinion on what it should be makes the effective social discount rate decline significantly over time. Implications and ramifications of this proposed "gamma-discounting" approach are discussed. (JEL H43)

For guidance in determining which items should be included in comprehensive NDP (net domestic product) and how they should be included, reference is often made to the linearised Hamiltonian from an optimal growth problem. The paper gives a rigorous interpretation of this procedure in terms of a money-metric utility function linked to familiar elements of standard welfare theory. A key insight is that the Hamiltonian itself is a quasilinear utility function, so imposing the money-metric normalisation is simply equivalent to using Marshallian consumer surplus as the appropriate measure of welfare when there are no income effects. The twin concepts of the 'sustainability-equivalence principle' and the 'dynamic welfare-comparison principle' are explained, and it is indicated why these two principles are important for the theory of national income accounting.