Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/85323 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
The Constitutional Economics Network Working Papers No. 01-2013
Publisher: 
University of Freiburg, Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory, Freiburg i. Br.
Abstract: 
Economics has a key role to play for understanding vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. However, economic approaches to climate adaptation are rarely articulated and discussed at a framework level. This article first reviews and critically assesses welfare economics approaches to climate adaptation and, secondly, develops a novel institutional economics approach to climate adaptation. Concepts and tools of welfare economics have contributed to assessments of benefits and costs of adaptation; outlined strategies for adaptation; identified responsibilities of the public sector and described policy instruments for adaptation. However, the neoclassical framing of collective action based on the concept of market failure seems too narrow to do analytical justice to the multitude of governance challenges associated with adaptation. Adaptation economics seems underequipped with analytical tools to study the role of institutions for climate adaptation. Therefore, an institutional economics approach to climate adaptation is developed and illustrated. This approach contributes to integrated economic analyses of climate adaptation in three major ways: First, by broadening the scope of climate adaptation economics; second, by delivering a diagnostic framework of climate adaptation that enables the analyst to explain adaptation processes in a systematic manner, synthesizes findings from a large number of research efforts, places particular research questions, governance problems and results in a broader context, and can guide the design of theoretical and empirical inquiries of climate adaptation; third, by offering research strategies and methods for developing generalisable and valid insights in the face of pronounced heterogeneity and diversity of climate adaptation.
Subjects: 
Economics of Climate Adaptation
Institutional Economics
Governance of Climate Adaptation
Diagnostic Framework
JEL: 
Q54
B52
D02
D78
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
541.36 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.