Climate Change Policy Analysis: An Example of how Supercomputing can Solve “Intractable” Economic Models

Salem Policy Seminar: Tuesday October 6th, 10am-11:30am

Climate Change Policy Analysis: An Example of how Supercomputing can Solve “Intractable” Economic Models

Models that analyze climate change policies are necessarily complex because they need to include elements of both the climate and economic systems. The result is that the literature is full of papers that investigate a few features of an integrated system, justifying unrealistic simplifications by asserting that doing more “is intractable”. I will describe the DSICE framework which takes basic deterministic models developed by Nordhaus and adds elements of economic and climate uncertainty. I will illustrate applications to the social cost of carbon, how direct capture of CO2 could affect policy, and implications for scenarios of global warming.