ESSAYS ON ECONOMIC MODELLING OF CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES

Climate change is a multi-facetted and complex phenomenon. An interdisciplinary approach is required to understand and to quantify its economic effects. Since climate change is already happening, and some impacts are inevitable throughout this century and beyond, aggressive mitigation policies are not any longer sufficient. In fact, they can only slow down the process of climate change without stopping it. In this context, adaptation policies become mandatory to reduce the vulnerability of countries or of specific areas. However, because of the complexity of the phenomenon, few models are able to analyze the effects of adaptive strategies. The aim of this paper is to review the literature on modelling climate change impacts and adaptation policies, by focusing on the top-down approach. We select some relevant models and compare the different strategies applied to deal with climate change and adaptation. The final purpose of this paper is to highlight limits of this approach and to identify potential improvements.