A stylized model for energy, population, the economy, and the environment

You can find here the work I produced for my master thesis under the supervision of Hippolyte d’Albis and Katheline Schubert. I present here an attempt at a model linking energy consumption, population dynamics, economic dynamics and the impacts of global warming. It should be noted that this is incomplete and unfinished work which I intend to return to in the context of my Ph.D thesis.

In all integrated assessment models, demography is fixed exogenously by some scenario elements and therefore cannot vary in response to the effects of global warming. In order to bridge this gap, I construct and present a stylized integrated model that portrays endogenous fertility, energy consumption, economic production and the consequences of climate change. This model is built on three pillars: we use a two-sector central unified growth theory framework, whose production function features non-substituability between traditional factor of production and energy in the spirit of ecological economics. Emissions arising from this energy use result in global warming. Finally, this rise in temperature implies differentiated effects of climate change on economic sectors that have consequences on the whole economy and society. With numerical simulation, I assess the attractive performance of the model on 300 years of history and I deem that it provides prospective estimates of interesting quality. Furthermore this model appears quite promising as some improvements and extensions might be of prime interest in order to assess climate policy.

Download the paper here and the presentation there.

Recommended citation: Cheritel, C.: A stylized model for energy, population, the economy, and the environment, Paris School of Economics Master Thesis, 2020.