Climate Change Policy and Economics

Climate change policy economics examines how societies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions efficiently, who bears the costs of doing so, and how different policy instruments—carbon taxes, cap-and-trade systems, regulations—compare in practice. Because the damages from warming and the burdens of mitigation fall unevenly across countries, industries, and income groups, the distributional consequences of policy choices are as contested as the aggregate ones. Researchers are actively working to quantify the social cost of carbon with greater precision, to understand how clean energy transitions reshape labor markets and trade flows, and to model which socioeconomic pathways keep global temperature increases within manageable bounds. A central open question is whether existing policy tools, even if well-designed, can be implemented at the speed and scale the physical science now demands.

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Keywords

Climate ChangeEconomic ImpactsGreenhouse Gas EmissionsPolicy InstrumentsCarbon PricingSocioeconomic Pathways