AI4GCC - Team: Below Sea Level: Critiques and Improvements
This work addresses incremental improvements to simulation frameworks for climate policy analysis, targeting researchers and policymakers in environmental economics.
The paper critically analyzes the RICE-N integrated assessment model for climate change economics, identifying issues like action masking and unrealistic functions, and suggests improvements such as using tariff revenue to enhance its utility for policymakers.
We present a critical analysis of the simulation framework RICE-N, an integrated assessment model (IAM) for evaluating the impacts of climate change on the economy. We identify key issues with RICE-N, including action masking and irrelevant actions, and suggest improvements such as utilizing tariff revenue and penalizing overproduction. We also critically engage with features of IAMs in general, namely overly optimistic damage functions and unrealistic abatement cost functions. Our findings contribute to the ongoing efforts to further develop the RICE-N framework in an effort to improve the simulation, making it more useful as an inspiration for policymakers.