Journal Article10.1002/wcc.850
Abandon the idea of an “optimal economic path” for climate policy
2
TL;DR: The authors argue that the existence of pervasive increasing returns to scale, network externalities, learning curves, spillovers, and other nonlinear effects puts the idea of a single optimal economic path at odds with our current understanding of the most important forces driving the development of real economic and technological systems.
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Abstract: Many economic modelers believe that there is an “optimal economic path” for solving the climate problem that exists independent of human choices. This belief rests on the notion that Integrated Assessment Models can determine the path that “maximizes global welfare” and, in turn, this path should drive climate policy. This commentary focuses on an under-appreciated problem with that belief. We argue that the existence of pervasive increasing returns to scale, network externalities, learning curves, spillovers, and other nonlinear effects puts the idea of a single optimal economic path at odds with our current understanding of the most important forces driving the development of real economic and technological systems. We further argue that this idea is detrimental to rigorous understanding of climate solutions. This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Scenario Development and Application Climate Economics > Economics and Climate Change Climate Economics > Economics of Mitigation
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Modelling induced innovation for the low-carbon energy transition: a menu of options
Roberto Pasqualino,Cristina Peñasco,Peter Barbrook-Johnson,Fernanda Senra de Moura,Sergey Kolesnikov,Sarah Hafner,Femke J. M. M. Nijsse,Francesco Lamperti,Benjamin Hinder,Yaroslav Melekh,Simon Sharpe,Laura Diaz Anadon,Timothy M. Lenton,Michael Grubb +13 more
TL;DR: Modelling induced innovation for the low-carbon energy transition requires non-equilibrium, non-optimal models to capture the complex dynamics of the process.
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- 29 Aug 2024
TL;DR: This article explores the evolution and diversity of path dependence as an explanatory framework in policy research, highlighting its application in social and environmental policy, and illustrating how its meaning is shaped by the discussion environment.
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