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Greenhouse gases mitigation: global externalities and short-termism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

Giovanni Di Bartolomeo Open the ORCID record for Giovanni Di Bartolomeo [Opens in a new window] ,
Behnaz Minooei Fard  and
Willi Semmler
Giovanni Di Bartolomeo*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy Department of Economics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Behnaz Minooei Fard
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Willi Semmler
Affiliation:
The New School for Social Research, New York, USA University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: giovanni.dibartolomeo@uniroma1.it
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Abstract

Policies designed to control greenhouse gases imply domestic tradeoffs and international externalities, which lead to both domestic and international conflicts, influencing their feasibility and implementations. Our paper investigates two quantitative aspects within this debate. We intend to quantify the impact of: (a) the internalization of international externalities; and (b) the damage associated with a short-term view of climate policies. In this respect, we adopt the innovative (in this field) idea of model predictive control to formalize moving-horizon policy strategies and, thus, to build counterfactuals characterized by a different horizon for all policymakers.

Keywords

climate policyCO2 concentrationglobal warmingnon-linear model predictive controlshort-termism

JEL classification

Q54: Climate • Natural Disasters and Their Management • Global Warming Q58: Government Policy P28: Natural Resources • Energy • Environment C61: Optimization Techniques • Programming Models • Dynamic Analysis
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , June 2023 , pp. 230 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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