Topic: Carbon Prices and Forest Preservation over Space and Time in the Brazilian Amazon
Speaker: José A. Scheinkman, Charles and Lynn Zhang Professor of Economics, Columbia University
Time: 10:00am-11:30am, October 8 (Beijing Time)
Location: 1-200
Abstract:
Some portions of land in Brazilian Amazon are forested, and other portions used in agricultural activities, principally cattle-ranching. Deforestation (reforestation) emits (captures) carbon, which has consequence for the global climate. The social and private productivities for these alternative land uses vary across locations within the Amazon region. In this research, we build and analyze a spatial/dynamic model of socially efficient land allocation to establish a benchmark for ad-hoc policies. We show how to incorporate the stochastic evolution of cattle prices, and we explore the consequences of ambiguity in the location-specific productivities on the socially efficient policy. Finally, we assess the consequences of imposing alternative social costs of carbon emissions on the spatial/dynamic allocation of land use. Our results indicate that with modest transfers per ton of net CO2 Brazil would find it optimal to choose policies that produce substantial capture of greenhouse gasses in the next 30 years, suggesting that the management of tropical forests could play an important role on climate change mitigation in the near future.
Speaker Biography:
José A. Scheinkman is the Charles and Lynn Zhang Professor of Economics at Columbia University, Theodore A. Wells ‘29 Professor of Economics (emeritus) at Princeton University and a Research Associate at the NBER. Previously, Scheinkman was the Alvin H. Baum Distinguished Service Professor and Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, Blaise Pascal Research Professor (France), Visiting Professor at Collège de France, Vice President in the Financial Strategies Group of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He has served as a consultant to several financial institutions and serves on the board of Cosan Limited, a NYSE listed company engaged in the production and distribution of sugar, ethanol and energy in Brazil.
Scheinkman is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the American Finance Association, Fellow of the Econometric Society, Corresponding Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and received a “docteur honoris causa” from the Université Paris-Dauphine. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2007 and the CME-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2014. Scheinkman’s current research focuses on speculation in financial markets and on the effect of increases in liquidity on financial fragility.
