Introduction: Special issue on ‘The macroeconomics of Climate Change’

The Autumn’s Special Issue of the National Institute Economic Review contains a set of contributions to the ‘Macroeconomics of Climate Change’. Most of the papers in this special issue were selected from presentations at the 17th EUROFRAME Conference on ‘Climate change: Economic implications, tools and challenges for policy-makers in Europe’ held online on 17 and 18 June 2021. Economics as a discipline has a crucial role to contribute to the debate on how to tackle climate change: it emphasises trade-offs and opportunity costs of alternative policies with a focus on the human consequences of climate change actions. Specifically, macroeconomic models, with their dynamic nature, emphasis on market and non-market interdependencies, and core role for anticipation effects, are well equipped to contribute to the design of optimal policies to tackle global warming. This Special Issue brings together four timely contributions of leading scholars in this area.