Modelling and testing behavior in applications to climate change

ROSSELLA BARGIACCHI starts her concluding chapter as follows. It has been our choice in this work to investigate from an economic perspective the question of the optimal extent of climate change prevention. We have therefore chosen an abstract approach to analyze the problem of giving proper ¿rational¿ foundation to the choice of abatement targets, taking into account relevant cognitive and cooperative issues that characterize the climate change problem. The definition of 'optimal' abatement targets involves two conceptually different kinds of economic issues: determining the value of prevention on one side; and implementing international environmental agreements on the other hand. These two issues are deeply correlated: in the case of climate change, the perceived value of prevention for one policy actor depends among other things also on the degree of coordination expected at the international level; similarly, the attractiveness of cooperation depends crucially on the perceived costs and benefits from prevention. Methodologically, however, determining the value of prevention involves the use of very different instruments and concepts than the discussion on international cooperation. For this reason the content of the dissertation can be divided into two parts. Part one is made up by chapters 1 to 3 and it is dedicated to one-agent problems under uncertainty. Part two to is made up by chapters 4 and 5 and concentrates on multi-agents models useful for analyzing the issue of international cooperation.