Values in the Economics of Climate Change

Economics has played an important role in assessing climate change impacts, and the effects of various individual and policy response strategies. Proponents of a key role for economics in analysis of climate change policies and goals argue that its capacity to incorporate and compare a variety of costs and benefits makes it uniquely useful for normative assessment. Critics of economic analysis of climate change have questioned not only its empirical capacities, but also its fundamental usefulness given some of the important but often implicit assumptions on which it is based. After reviewing this debate and its implications for public policy on climate change, the paper sketches a way in which more technical economic analysis and public dialogue might be combined.