The Virus Is Teaching Everyone What Runaway Growth Really Means
To make sense of the spread of Covid-19, economics—particularly black swan events and compound growth—can provide guidance.
Writing
My columns, essays, books, as well as research and teaching materials like case studies.
Compound Growth Could Kill Us – or Make Us Stronger
The power of compound growth has long been recognized as essential to economic development. But in both the COVID-19 pandemic and the slower-moving climate crisis, this same mathematical force is cutting the other way, revealing dangerous shortcomings in how we manage externalities.
How Economics Can Inform Coronavirus Decision-Making
When considering travel and other choices, economic principles can provide guidance.
The True Price of Carbon
A $40 carbon dioxide price? Try $100, $200, or possibly more.
An Economist’s Guide to Spending Bezos’s Billions on Climate Change
The money would go far in politics, but it will also allow for technological experimentation and will take a fundraising burden off recipients.
Carbon Taxes Alone Aren’t Good Climate Policy
To drive down tomorrow’s CO₂ emissions, governments need to subsidize fossil fuel alternatives, too.
Why Oil Giants Figured Out Carbon Costs First
Inaugural Risky Climate column
Do We Really Have Only 12 Years to Avoid Climate Disaster?
By Gernot Wagner and Constantine Samaras
Planetary Boundaries and the Anthropocene
Classifying policies by type and by rights assigned to polluters or victims.
The Hazard of Environmental Morality
Efforts to combat climate change should be pragmatic above all else.
The Economics of Climate Engineering
Fast, Cheap, and Imperfect
An Economic Anatomy of Optimal Climate Policy
by Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, Gernot Wagner, and David W. Keith
Recommendations for Improving the Treatment of Risk and Uncertainty by the IPCC
by Thomas Stoerk, Gernot Wagner, and Robert E.T. Ward
Fast, cheap, and imperfect? US public opinion about solar geoengineering
by Aseem Mahajan, Dustin Tingley, and Gernot Wagner
Potentially large equilibrium climate sensitivity tail uncertainty
by Gernot Wagner & Martin L. Weitzman; reply to Cox et al. (2018), Nature 553 (7688), 319-322.
Chemtrails Are Not the Geoengineering Debate We Should Be Having (Because They’re Not Real)
Around 60 percent of all social media discourse on geoengineering is conspiratorial, and belief in the conspiracy appears across party lines.
„Der Zug ist abgefahren. Es geht darum so rasch wie möglich aufzuspringen“
Gespräch mit Benjamin Enajat
Factoring in the forgotten role of renewables in CO2 emission trends using decomposition analysis
by Kristina Mohlin, Jonathan R. Camuzeaux, Adrian Muller, Marius Schneider, and Gernot Wagner
A Big-Sky Plan to Cool the Planet
Pumping aerosols into the stratosphere may buy us more time, but it’s no substitute for cutting carbon emissions—and we still don’t know enough to do it responsibly.
Ramsey discounting calls for subtracting climate damages from economic growth rates
by J. Paul Kelleher and Gernot Wagner
