Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: The Costs of Climate Change and Opportunities for Adaptation

(Natural Resource Security, Energy and Environmental Policy)

Climate change is considered by many one of the biggest public policy challenges of our times. While much of the earlier work focused on the costs of alternative mitigation strategies, such as carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs, recently much of the focus has moved towards understanding and identifying opportunities for climate adaptation. In order to empirically measure climate adaptation and identify the mechanisms that leads to adaptation, the following is necessary: First, careful empirical measurement of climate change – measures that simultaneously account for weather shocks and long-run climate trends. Second, careful empirical measurement of the costs of climate change in a variety of outcomes, including economic productivity, air pollution, and traffic accidents. Third, develop novel measures of climate adaptation that account for natural adaptation – adaptation that results from the behavioral adjustment of economic agents – as well as public policy induced adaptation – adaptation that results from the interactions of the regulatory system with the behavior of economic agents. This session brings together a group of leading scholars working on various aspects of the literature on the costs of climate change and sources of adaptation. The first paper focuses on the long-term impacts of higher temperatures on economic productivity; the second paper, estimates the ‘climate penalty’ on local air pollution and discusses sources of adaptation within the regulatory framework of the clean air act; and the third paper considers the effects of climate change on traffic accidents. Together, the session will provide a unique opportunity for the broader profession to be updated on the latest research in this area.