The Golden Gate Bridge in a warm gold treatment

Research

Environmental and resource economics, economic dynamics, and decision-making under risk and uncertainty.

Working papers

Environmental, resource, and climate economics

1.1

Temperature Shocks and Climate Change: A Conceptual Analysis.

1.2

Uncertainty in the Analytic Climate Economy.

1.3

Pricing Climate Risk.

With Svenn Jensen.

1.4

SolACE - Solar Geoengineering in an Analytic Climate Economy.

With Felix Meier.

1.5

Uncertain Remedies to Fight Uncertain Consequences: The Case of Solar Geoengineering.

With Felix Meier.

1.6

Self-enforcing Stable Sets.

With Hiroaki Sakamoto.

1.7

IAMs and CO2 Emissions – An Analytic Discussion

1.8

Pricing an Unknown Climate.

With Svenn Jensen.

1.9

The Green Transition: Non-convexities and the Need for the Big Push.

With Laurens Walleghem and Niko Jaakkola.

Risk, uncertainty, decision theory, and discounting

2.1

Characterizing and Comparing Intrinsic Risk Attitude

2.2

Once Upon a Time Preference - How Rationality and Risk Aversion Change the Rationale for Discounting

2.3

Subjective Risk, Confidence, and Ambiguity

2.4

Discounting and Confidence

Journal publications

  1. Meier, F., M. Quaas, W. Rickels, and C.P. Traeger (forthcoming), From Gross to Net: Carbon Dioxide Removal in an Analytic Climate Economy (WP). Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.

  2. Casey, G., W. Jeon, and C.P. Traeger (2026), The Macroeconomics of Clean Energy Subsidies (WP). Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 138: 103311.

  3. Karp, L. and C.P. Traeger (2025), Smart Cap (WP). Journal of the European Economic Association 23(2): 554–593.

  4. Jensen, S. and C.P. Traeger (2024), Uncertainty in Climate-Economic Modeling (WP). In Handbook of the Economics of Climate Change, pp. 351–423.

  5. Drupp, M.A., M.C. Hänsel, E.P. Fenichel, M. Freeman, C. Gollier, B. Groom, G.M. Heal, P.H. Howard, A. Millner, F.C. Moore, F. Nesje, M.F. Quaas, S. Smulders, T. Sterner, C. Traeger, and F. Venmans (2024), Accounting for the Increasing Benefits from Scarce Ecosystems (AM). Science 383(6687): 1062–1064.

  6. Karp, L. and C.P. Traeger (2024), Taxes versus Quantities Reassessed (WP). Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 125: 102951.

  7. Traeger, C.P. (2023), ACE—Analytic Climate Economy (WP). American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 15(3): 372–406.

  8. Traeger, C., G. Perino, K. Pittel, T. Requate, and A. Schmitt (2020), The Flexcap—An Innovative CO2 Pricing Method for Germany. ifo DICE Report 18(1): 42–48.

  9. Lemoine, D. and C.P. Traeger (2016), Ambiguous Tipping Points (WP). Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 132(B): 5–18.

  10. Lemoine, D. and C.P. Traeger (2016), Economics of Tipping the Climate Dominoes. Nature Climate Change 6: 514–519.

  11. Crost, B. and C.P. Traeger (2014), Optimal CO2 Mitigation under Damage Risk Valuation. Nature Climate Change 4: 631–636.

  12. Traeger, C.P. (2014), A 4-stated DICE: Quantitatively Addressing Uncertainty Effects in Climate Change (WP). Environmental and Resource Economics 59: 1–37.

  13. Traeger, C.P. (2014), On Option Values in Environmental and Resource Economics (WP). Resource and Energy Economics 37: 242–252.

  14. Jensen, S. and C.P. Traeger (2014), Optimal Climate Change Mitigation under Long-Term Growth Uncertainty: Stochastic Integrated Assessment and Analytic Findings. European Economic Review 69: 104–125.

  15. Traeger, C.P. (2014), Why Uncertainty Matters—Discounting under Intertemporal Risk Aversion and Ambiguity (WP). Economic Theory 56(3): 627–664.

  16. Lemoine, D. and C.P. Traeger (2014), Watch Your Step: Optimal Policy in a Tipping Climate. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 6(1): 137–166.

  17. Traeger, C.P. (2013), Discounting under Uncertainty: Disentangling the Weitzman and the Gollier Effect (WP). Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 66(3): 573–582.

  18. Crost, B. and C.P. Traeger (2013), Optimal Climate Policy: Uncertainty versus Monte Carlo. Economics Letters 120(3): 552–558.

  19. Karp, L. and C.P. Traeger (2013), Discounting. In J.F. Shogren (ed.), Encyclopedia of Energy, Natural Resource, and Environmental Economics, vol. 2, pp. 286–292.

  20. Schneider, M.T., C.P. Traeger, and R. Winkler (2012), Trading off Generations: Equity, Discounting, and Climate Change (WP). European Economic Review 56(8): 1621–1644.

  21. Traeger, C.P. (2011), Sustainability, Limited Substitutability, and Non-constant Social Discount Rates (WP). Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 62(2): 215–228.

  22. Traeger, C.P. (2009), Recent Developments in the Intertemporal Modeling of Uncertainty. Annual Review of Resource Economics 1: 261–286.

Book and other writing

Book draft

Dynamic Environmental and Resource Economics

With Larry Karp. The book develops environmental and resource economics through dynamic methods in discrete and continuous time, including renewable and nonrenewable resources, integrated assessment, dynamic programming, non-convex systems, learning, time inconsistency, risk, and ambiguity.

Research note

Generalized Cost-Benefit-Analysis and Social Discounting with Intertemporally Dependent Preferences. Paper Draft from 2009 with Larry Karp.

We derive the social discount rate in the context of intertemporally dependent preferences. Contains the proof underlying Dietz and Venmans' (2019, JEEM) "The endowment effect, discounting and the environment"