EAERE Award for the Best Paper Published in Environmental and Resource Economics During 2013

摘要

For a number of years now the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) has, at its annual conference, awarded a prize, generously donated by Springer, for the best paper published in the previous calendar year within its journal Environmental and Resource Economics (ERE). In determining this award, a panel consisting of the ERE Editor, Ian Bateman, and Co-Editors Hassan Benchekroun and Christian Vossler, assesses all of the paper published by the journal over the relevant period. We are delighted to announce that the winner of the award for the best paper published in ERE during 2013 is: Antony Millner, Simon Dietz and Geoffrey Heal, "Scientific Ambiguity and Climate Policy" This superb paper focuses on the problem that humanity has never faced the conditions which anthropocentric climate change is likely to bring over the next few decades and lacks certainty regarding the impacts this may cause. This ambiguity means that decision makers face problems of uncertainty rather than risk. The paper adds to this mix the observation that individuals appear more averse to situations involving ambiguity than risk. Ambiguity aversion is shown to have a similar effect on climate policy to lowering the social rate of discount, magnifying the negative consequences of insufficient abatement. Assessing the effect of ambiguity aversion using the popular DICE model, the authors show that its impact for policy will be particularly large if damages increase rapidly at higher temperatures. Further insights such as the effects of inequality aversion are also investigated to deliver an excellent contribution to the literature.