Magnitude and direction of technological transfers for mitigating GHG emissions

This paper discusses the issues of technological transfers aimed at reducing GHG mitigation costs under various assumptions. In a new version of RICE model, we introduce technological transfer mechanism that donors' monetary transfers go to recipients' GHG mitigation. Through such transfer mechanism, we examine the relationships between magnitude/direction of transfers and choice of social welfare weights in the model. Our simulations show that different social welfare weights may lead to significant shifts on magnitudes even directions of technological transfers. The results suggest that proposing policies of technological transfers should be mindful of distributional aspects and modeling assumptions.