Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Climate policy faces increasingly complex challenges that span multiple human decision scales in nature-society systems. Contemporary climate policy models, while valuable and increasingly versatile in handling spatial and temporal scales, struggle to capture interacting multiscale decisions on the socioeconomic side. This perspective draws attention to the power of coupling among different modeling families, taking integrated assessment models (IAM), computable general equilibrium models (CGE), and agent-based models (ABM) as examples. Recent computational advances, maturity of models, availability of data, and interdisciplinary expertise make model coupling an increasingly feasible, effective, and useful tool for climate policy analysis. We examine the unique contributions of each modeling approach, highlight synergies from uniting their strengths, and discuss alternatives to and conditions for coupling. In addressing methodological challenges, we present examples of effective coupling of IAM-ABM-CGE, emphasizing the importance of maintaining model integrity while enhancing policy relevance. By bridging human decision scales and leveraging complementary strengths, coupled models can provide nuanced insights into climate-economy interactions, ultimately supporting effective and equitable-not just efficient and optimal-climate policies.
Authors: Tatiana Filatova, Joos Akkerman, Francesco Bosello, Theodoros Chatzivasileiadis, Ignasi Cortés Arbués, Amineh Ghorbani, Olga Ivanova, Nina Knittel, Jan Kwakkel, Francesco Lamperti, Nicholas R. Magliocca, Giacomo Marangoni, Stefan Nabernegg, Anton Pichler, Adrian Poujon, Karolina Safarzynska, Alessandro Taberna, Mariësse A. E. van Sluisveld, Liz Verbeek, Taoyuan Wei
Institutions: Delft University of Technology, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment, CMCC Foundation - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, University of Graz, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, University of Alabama, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Complexity Science Hub, University of Warsaw, CICERO Center for International Climate Research
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4414195082