A replication of Pindyck’s willingness to pay: on the efforts required to obtain results

We replicate and use more recent data to re-estimate the paper “Uncertain outcomes and climate change policy”, Pindyck, J. Environ. Econ. Manag., 2012. In several cases, verification analysis confirms the results and the associated economic interpretation. However, those results cannot be replicated in one out of five cases. The replication is, therefore, only partially successful: the numerical results for some sets of parameter values turn out to be overly sensitive to a variety of technical computational settings. This suggests that great caution is needed with regard to estimates and policy conclusions based on this model. A re-estimation of the model using more recent climate data, which suggests that temperature increase is now higher on average but less widely dispersed, does not lead to significant economic differences in the results.