Technological change and uncertainty in environmental economics

Technological change is widely believed to play a crucial role in mastering the challenges of man-made climate change. The drivers and impacts of technological change have therefore become an important research issue in the field of climate economics. While models to analyze the interactions between economy, energy and the environment initially treated technological change as exogenous, more recent modeling approaches often represent technological change as enclogenously induced. Typically, models of induced technological change in climate economics are based on perfect foresight in a deterministic world. However, both technological change and climate impacts are subject to large uncertainties that may substantially affect the design of efficient climate policies. Against this background the Special Issue presents five articles contributing to the study Of uncertainty and technological change in climate change economics. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved