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Max Franks

@maxfranks

Senior scientist @PIK_Climate and formerly @TUBerlin. #carbonpricing, #CDR, #SDGs, #economics, #inequality, -- this is my private account

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17.10.2023
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Latest posts by Max Franks @maxfranks

DP21090 Carbon, Natural Capital and the Option Values of Climate Policies We develop a unified cost-benefit framework that allows for a better understanding of nature conservation and climate policies under risk and uncertainty. We derive modified Hotelling rules from a social planner’s welfare optimization. They reveal four forces that jointly determine market design for climate and nature conservation: First, discounted marginal climate damages enter the social cost of carbon (SCC) and marginal ecosystem services the social value of nature (SVN). Second, climate and nature are coupled, which raises both prices: degradation of ecosystems increases the SCC, while climate damages raise the SVN. Third, a climate-nature beta quantifies additional hedging components of policies against fat tails, when we consider a stochastic setting with exogenous random shocks. The climate-nature beta summarizes the option values for abatement, adaptation, ecosystem restoration and carbon dioxide removal. Fourth, Markov markups quantify tipping risks, which we capture by extending the model to a constrained Markov decision process with state-contingent transition probabilities. Thereby, we endogenize tipping points: the likelihood of moving into a high-damage regime becomes a function of the atmospheric carbon stock and natural capital, which depend on policy choices. Thus, hazard risks are a policy-sensitive component of the system’s dynamics. The model yields state-contingent asset-pricing formulas for carbon prices, restoration subsidies, land charges, and capacity payments. We propose institutions at the level of the European Union that could implement Pigouvian taxes and subsides as well as new types of SCC- and SVN-indexed bonds to share non-diversifiable risks arising from Earth's changing climate and the degradation of its biosphere.

New econ insights on polycrisis:

💡 NEW WP💡 with Ottmar #Edenhofer takes #RiskManagement perspective on #NaturalCapital & #ClimateEconomics & their interlinkages. We propose new policies to harness financial markets 4 risk sharing & discuss institutions 4 implementation 🌍🦋📈🏛️
cepr.org/publications...

29.01.2026 07:47 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Non-permanent carbon removals #CDR, like afforestation, cannot compensate for emissions as permanent ones can. This should be reflected in #CarbonPricing.

PIK study in Environmental and Resource Economics provides guidance, calculates the price difference.

👇
www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/late...

21.01.2026 12:23 👍 18 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0
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Spekulation auf Boden: Ein Pulverfass für die Gesellschaft Bodenpreise steigen rasant: Spekulation treibt Mieten, Immobilien- und Lebensmittelpreise in die Höhe – soziale Spannungen nehmen zu.

Für alle (sorry folks, German only), die noch keine Georgisten sind, hier einen spannende halbe Stunde zu einem Thema, über das alle lernen sollten:

www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/steigende-bo...

#Wohnungsnot #Mieten #Immobilienkrise #Bodenpreise #Stadtentwicklung

10.12.2025 08:14 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Lessons Learned from the German Double Whammy: The Importance of Price Incentives and Targeted Compensation for the Design of Energy and Climate Policy | Review of Environmental Economics and Policy Abstract Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to unprecedented geopolitical and global economic challenges, including a severe shortfall in energy supply and a substantial increase in energy prices. E...

New work lead by Martin Hänsel with other colleagues from @pik-potsdam.bsky.social. Germany's gas price brake winter 2022/23 may be "a blueprint for climate policy, where policy makers often struggle with carbon pricing due to its distributional impacts."

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

15.01.2025 08:38 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

8/ 🌍 Curious about the details? Read the full study here: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... Let’s talk about effective policies for sustainable diets! #ClimateAction #FoodPolicy

10.01.2025 09:32 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

7/ 🤔 Note: We couldn’t include meat substitutes like soy or seitan in our analysis due to data limitations.

10.01.2025 09:32 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Stefanie Stantcheva (@s-stantcheva.bsky.social) 🚨🔢 New data alert! If you are curious about people's attitudes towards climate change and related policies, check out this large-scale survey data from 20 countries from our paper. Publicly available ...

6/ Cf. @s-stantcheva.bsky.social post shorturl.at/Zw127: Public acceptance is possible if there's clear communication that 1) the approach is effective in reducing emissions, 2) poorest households are overcompensated on avg & 3) all revenue is returned, strongly limiting costs to each individual.

10.01.2025 09:32 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

5/ 🛒 Price effects at €200/tCO2:
• Yoghurt & milk: +€0.25/kg
• Beef, sheep & goat meat: +€4/kg

10.01.2025 09:29 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

4/ 📉 Emission reduction potential:
• At €30/tCO2, annual emissions fall by just 2 MtCO2eq.
• At the social cost of carbon (€200/tCO2), emissions drop by a significant 15 MtCO2eq.

10.01.2025 09:29 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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3/ 💶 What is the effect of returning the public revenue as climate dividend? The poorest 20% of households are relieved by 0.14% of their income, i.e., on average they’d be overcompensated, while the better-off face an 0.02% reduction of their income

10.01.2025 09:29 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

2/ 🍽️ We study how a climate fee on food combined with a #climatedividend could help achieve this target in a socially balanced way by encouraging households to choose less CO2-intensive foods—e.g., less red meat and dairy, more vegetables.

10.01.2025 09:28 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

1/ 🐄🌾 Agriculture is responsible for 8% of Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions—about 62 MtCO2eq annually. The government aims to reduce this to 56 MtCO2eq by 2030.

10.01.2025 09:27 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

New research on socially balanced policy for #sustainablediets! Why am I excited about the paper? It’s based on Julian’s Master’s thesis @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social @tuberlin.bsky.social, @pik-potsdam.bsky.social. I’m tremendously proud of this achievement! Here's a 🧵
Paper: tinyurl.com/3drepw9w

10.01.2025 09:27 👍 1 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
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Der Streit um das Gebäudeenergiegesetz belastete die Ampel schwer Das Gebäudeenergiegesetz war das umstrittenste Vorhaben der Ampel. Das Ziel war: unabhängig von russischem Gas werden und eine Wärmewende einleiten.

Gute Zusammenfassung zum #Heizungsgesetz vom dradio:

www.deutschlandfunk.de/follow-up-zu...

24.12.2024 12:23 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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The Economics of Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Governance Perspective Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is becoming an emerging topic in climate policy. We review the nascent economic literature on the governance of CDR and discuss policy design and institutions. We first as...

New Working Paper "The Economics of Carbon
Dioxide Removal: A Governance Perspective" available at CESifo now:

www.cesifo.org/en/publicati...

#CDR

04.12.2024 10:11 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Optimal Wealth Taxation When Wealth Is More Than Just Capital Optimal Wealth Taxation When Wealth Is More Than Just Capital, 10.1628/fa-2023-0011, Jahrgang 79 (2023) / Heft 3, 0015-2218 (1614-0974), Public Finance Analysis

 (9/n=9) Curious to delve deeper? Explore the full paper here:

www.mohrsiebeck.com/artikel/opti...

14.11.2023 09:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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(8/n) Higher GDP due to land taxes can be desirable, but this depends on the normative standpoint. Hence, we compare different welfare functions and show that already a very moderate level of inequality aversion is enough to make land rent taxes the best policy option.

14.11.2023 09:49 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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(7/n) Our results suggest that land rent taxes reduce inequality, increase GDP and social welfare. Capital taxes are much less desirable and a tax on both types of wealth lies somewhere in the middle.

14.11.2023 09:49 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

(6/n) How can this reduce inequality? With less capital tax & more land tax, 3 effects reduce inequality:
1) Housing prices fall (at least grow slower)
2) Increased investments -> higher GDP -> higher wages
3) More tax income for redistribution

14.11.2023 09:49 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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(5/n) With capital taxes, by contrast, investors shift finance away from capital investments and instead demand for land increases, driving up land prices, but not land supply. The capital stock decreases and GDP falls.

14.11.2023 09:49 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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(4/n) Under land rent taxes, investors redirect financial flows from land to capital investments. Importantly, while land supply is fixed, the capital stock grows, and output = GDP increases.

14.11.2023 09:49 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

(3/n) Taxing land enhances investment in productive capital. This is the so-called (asset-)portfolio effect - a classic result by Martin Feldstein 1977. Now, we examine how governments can use this effect to reduce wealth inequality. So, how does the portfolio effect work?

14.11.2023 09:48 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

(2/n) Importantly, wealth & capital aren’t equal. Often, it’s assumed that wealth consists of only one asset class: capital. In reality, there are more than that - and a very interesting one is land. So we analyze differences btw capital & land as tax base

14.11.2023 09:48 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

#inequality is on the rise across #OECD nations, but at the same wealth taxes continually fell. In a new paper w/ Ottmar #Edenhofer, we present a new solution to reduce inequality: Tax land (and other rents). Why is this fair and also efficient? 🧵

14.11.2023 09:48 👍 8 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 1