New climate economics: Methodological choices and recommendations

Evaluating the future socio-economic impacts, benefits and costs of climate mitigation and adaptation policies typically involves the use of detailed empirical research and modeling. That inevitably involves a number of choices about the methodological approach and underlying assumptions, which have important consequences for the projections and, therefore, the ultimate selection of policies to be implemented.

This document presents a series of critical issues for climate mitigation and adaptation policy analysis, involving overarching choices that affect multiple areas of expert analysis. They identify key issues for a comprehensive and realistic economic analysis of climate policies, present major options for answering those issues, and recommend a preferred course of action or option for analysts to consider (akin to what some refer to as “new economic thinking”).

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