Spatial Economic Models to Evaluate Climate Policy

The problem of climate change has fundamentally economic origins, driven by the private economic incentives of firms and households around the world. Solutions to climate change therefore must consider economic forces alongside physical and biological processes. Governments and regulatory agencies use complex economic models, often with an important spatial dimension, to evaluate climate policies related to transportation, biofuels, deforestation, and land use. Unfortunately, the models used in practice are often outdated and have poor empirical foundations. This project seeks to improve the theoretical and empirical dimensions of the spatial economic models that drive real-world policy by building on recent work at Yale and elsewhere to produce a class of models that are well-grounded in up-to-date spatial economics and credible empirical estimates and well-integrated with biological and geophysical insights.