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Abstract
The economics of global climate mitigation is discussed when there is imperfect
knowledge of future climatic changes, of policy effectiveness and of the policy responses
by different countries. Uncertainty is accounted for by using heuristics derived from
classical decision rules. These heuristics provide plausible policy rules that depend on
only limited information. They emphasize the possibility of “getting it wrong” in terms of
the appropriate scale of policy response and from policy failure itself. The minimax rule or
Precautionary Principle, which targets “worst case” situations, is not useful unless policies
are effective with certainty. However the widespread presumption that policy action is
warranted if climate-induced losses without action are “large" relative to costs of policy
can be justified using minimax regret reasoning. The global analysis is extended to
individual national decision-making when nations jointly play a game against nature with
policy spillovers. Simultaneous moves game solutions as well as heuristics are provided
and indicate how policy actions are best determined for individual countries rather than for
a global authority.