Uncertain future payoffs and irreversible costs characterize investment in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Under these conditions, it is relevant to analyze investment decisions in a real options framework, as this approach takes into account the economic value associated with investment time flexibility. In this paper, we provide an overview of the literature adopting a real option approach to analyze investment in climate change adaptation and mitigation, and examine how the uncertain impacts of climate change on the condition of the human environment, risk preferences, and strategic interactions among decisions-makers have been modeled. We found that the complex nature of uncertainties associated with climate change is typically only partially taken into account and that the analysis is usually limited to decisions taken by individual risk neutral profit maximizers. Our findings call for further research to fill the identified gaps.

In this paper stochastic dynamic programming is used to investigate land conversion decisions taken by a multitude of landholders under uncertainty about the value of environmental services and irreversible development. We study land conversion under competition on the market for agricultural products when voluntary and mandatory measures are combined by the Government to induce adequate participation in a conservation plan. We study the impact of uncertainty on the optimal conversion policy and discuss conversion dynamics under di¤erent policy scenarios on the basis of the relative long-run expected rate of deforestation. Interestingly, we show that uncertainty, even if it induces conversion postponement in the short-run, increases the average rate of deforestation and reduces expected time for total conversion in the long run. Finally, we illustrate our …ndings through some numerical simulations. keywords: optimal stopping, deforestation, payments for environmental services, natural resources management. jel classification: C61, D81, Q24, Q58.We wish to thank Guido Candela for helpful comments. We are also grateful for comments and suggestions to participants at the 12th International BIOECON conference; the 51st SIE conference; the 18th Annual EAERE Conference; the 8th workshop of the International Society of Dynamic Games; and to seminar participants at

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract