Overview

Students will work alone to produce a cost-benefit analysis that shall be no less than 1,250 words and not more than 2,000 words in length, however any extraneous information that is included in the document will be penalized so students are encouraged to be concise.

There cost-benefit analysis must addresses global climate change mitigation efforts as outlined in the . The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 Parties. Both the United States and China, which represent almost 40% of global emissions, signed on to limit global warming. However it is not settled science exactly how global warming will progress in the coming decades, what the costs of global warming will be, or how the benefits of climate change mitigation efforts should be calculated. In the absence of perfect information about both the present state of the world, not to mention the future, this is a vitally important and unresolved research question that would benefit from your insight.

The project deliverable will be a dispassionately written analytical paper that (1) explains the expected impact of the climate change mitigation efforts on the global economy, (2) discusses potential confounders that might threaten the validity of the analysis, (3) identifies actions that could be undertaken to mitigate those confounders, and (4) advocates for a particular course of action based upon the [expected] net benefit of the policies. The paper should be written for an audience assumed to be neutral or uninformed.

Papers must clearly articulate both the facts and estimates attendant to the analysis. It should educate the reader about the background information relevant to understanding the global climate change while contextualizing the response, relative to both historical experience and scientific model projections. The assignment will require students to acquire data that explains the magnitude of the costs and benefits and to engage in rigorous empirical analysis. The final product should be decipherable by an audience with limited knowledge of statistical inference, meaning that data visualizations and cross tabulations are preferred to coefficient tables.

Requirements

· Writing should be formal (third person)

· Proper attribution must be given (APA or other)

· The paper must include a 200-400 word executive summary

· The paper must include at least 3 graphs, tables or charts