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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Long-Term Environmental Problems And Strategic Intergenerational Transfers, Timo Goeschl, Daniel Heyen, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Long-Term Environmental Problems And Strategic Intergenerational Transfers, Timo Goeschl, Daniel Heyen, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
The impacts of long-lived stock pollutants and the measures supposed to address them link current and future generations. Altruism towards successor generations is a prerequisite for resolving the resulting inter-generational equity issues. Preference asymmetry and imperfect altruism introduce strategic conflicts between generations. Here, a current generation decides on a combination of abatement and whether to provide an imperfect backstop. The future generation decides whether to use the backstop or not. We identify three outcomes: (1) Technology denial, in which the current generation deliberately rejects the imperfect backstop to avoid misuse by the future generation. (2) Under-abatement, in which the current …
A Spatial Approach To Energy Economics, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, M Scott Taylor
A Spatial Approach To Energy Economics, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, M Scott Taylor
Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
We develop a spatial model of energy exploitation where energy sources are differentiated by their geographic location and energy density. The spatial setting creates a scaling law that magnifies the importance of differences across energy sources. As a result, renewable sources twice as dense, provide eight times the supply; and all new non-renewable resource plays must first boom and then bust. For both renewable and non-renewable energy sources we link the size of exploitation zones and energy supplies to energy density, and provide empirical measures of key model attributes using data on solar, wind, biomass, and fossil fuel energy sources. …
Strategic Incentives For Climate Geoengineering Coalitions To Exclude Broad Participation, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, Kate L. Ricke, Ken Caldeira
Strategic Incentives For Climate Geoengineering Coalitions To Exclude Broad Participation, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, Kate L. Ricke, Ken Caldeira
Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Solar geoengineering is the deliberate reduction in the absorption of incoming solar radiation by the Earth's climate system with the aim of reducing impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Climate model simulations project a diversity of regional outcomes that vary with the amount of solar geoengineering deployed. It is unlikely that a single small actor could implement and sustain global-scale geoengineering that harms much of the world without intervention from harmed world powers. However, a sufficiently powerful international coalition might be able to deploy solar geoengineering. Here, we show that regional differences in climate outcomes create strategic incentives to form coalitions …
Back To The Future Of Green Powered Economies, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, M. Scott Taylor
Back To The Future Of Green Powered Economies, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, M. Scott Taylor
Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of power density [Watts/m2] into economics. By introducing an explicit spatial structure into a simple general equilibrium model we are able to show how the power density of available energy resources determines the extent of energy exploitation, the density of urban agglomerations, and the peak level of income per capita. Using a simple Malthusian model to sort population across geographic space we demonstrate how the density of available energy supplies creates density in energy demands by agglomerating economic activity. We label this result the density-creates-density hypothesis and evaluate it using …
Mitigation And The Geoengineering Threat, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Mitigation And The Geoengineering Threat, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Recent scientific advances have introduced the possibility of engineering the climate system to lower ambient temperatures without lowering greenhouse gas concentrations. This possibility has created an intense debate given the ethical, moral and scientific questions it raises. In this paper I examine the economic issues introduced when geoengineering becomes available in a standard two-period two-country model where strategic interaction leads to suboptimal mitigation. Geoengineering introduces the possibility of technical substitution away from mitigation, but it also affects the strategic interaction across countries: mitigation decisions made in the first period directly affect the geoengineering decisions made in the second period. With …