Environmental Economics in the Presence of Tipping Points

Environmental economics must integrate ecological systems and tipping points. This Element examines models of regime shifts and uncertain shocks, using examples like lakes, fisheries, and climate impacts on growth. It outlines key concepts and tools for managing environmental risks and guiding future research.

Environmental economics is growing rapidly. It is simply not sufficient to consider consumption, production, and welfare in isolation from the natural environment. Integrating ecological systems in economic analysis requires to take the possible occurrence of tipping points or regime shifts into account. This Element focuses on two recent developments in environmental economics theory. One is economic management of ecological systems with tipping points, with the lake as the classical example. The other one is investigating the consequences of uncertain possible shocks to parameters in economic models, with the carrying capacity in a fishery and total factor productivity (due to climate tipping) in Ramsey growth as examples. This Element provides a precise account of the concepts, techniques, and results in the analysis of these models, which shows the effects of tipping and allows for other applications. This Element starts with a broader list of examples and management options.