• DOI:10.1093/reep/rer006
• Corpus ID: 14736858

Fat-Tailed Uncertainty in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change

@article{Weitzman2011FatTailedUI,
  title={Fat-Tailed Uncertainty in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change},
  author={Martin Weitzman},
  journal={Review of Environmental Economics and Policy},
  year={2011},
  volume={5},
  pages={275 - 292}
}

• M. Weitzman
• Published 1 July 2011
• Economics
• Review of Environmental Economics and Policy

In this article, I revisit some basic issues concerning structural uncertainty and catastrophic climate change. My target audience here are general economists, so this article could also be viewed as a somewhat less technical exposition that supplements my previous work. Using empirical examples, I argue that it is implausible that low-probability, high-negative impact events would not much influence an economic analysis of climate change. I then try to integrate the empirical examples and the theory together into a unified package with a unified message that the possibility of catastrophic climate change needs to be taken seriously.