简介

Attempts to narrow the uncertainty over the costs and benefits of climate change policy are constrained by two fundamental facts: anthropogenic climate change is unprecedented, and its impacts will occur gradually. Under such circumstances, the central challenge for empirical researchers is to combine appropriate historical evidence with relevant theory to produce credible out-of-sample predictions. As an economist with training in engineering and atmospheric physics, Dr. Meng explores particular empirical settings selected to inform upon a world under anthropogenic climate change. Examples include examining the relationship between adverse local weather driven by the El Ninõ Southern Oscillation and the onset of civil wars in the tropics during recent decades; using betting markets to elicit beliefs over the cost of U.S. climate policy; and studying the development of 20th-century U.S. coal-fired electricity capacity to inform upon a future low-carbon energy transition.