The Economic Geography of Global Warming.

The article presents a novel high-resolution spatial integrated assessment model (S-IAM) designed to evaluate the heterogeneous economic impacts of global warming across the world. The model incorporates local population growth, costly migration and trade, endogenous technological innovation, and energy use, linking fossil fuel consumption to carbon emissions and local temperature changes that affect regional productivity and amenities. Quantified at a 1°×1° spatial resolution and calibrated to IPCC Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 8.5 and 6.0 scenarios, the model predicts significant welfare losses in hot regions such as parts of Africa and Latin America (up to 20% loss), while some northern latitudes may experience gains (up to 11%), thereby increasing spatial inequality. Adaptation mechanisms like migration and innovation are shown to mitigate damages, with migration playing a crucial role in reallocating population toward less affected areas. The study also assesses environmental policies, finding that carbon taxes primarily delay fossil fuel use and flatten temperature increases, with their effectiveness greatly enhanced when combined with future abatement technologies; in contrast, clean energy subsidies alone have limited impact on emissions under the model's assumptions.