Calculations for the Greenhouse Development Rights Calculator

The document details the calculations for the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDRs) calculator, a tool designed to explore burden-sharing for climate change. It establishes a methodology that uses the individual as the unit of analysis, assuming lognormal income distributions within countries. The paper defines how to calculate individual and national 'capacity' (financial ability to pay) and 'responsibility' (based on emissions), which are then combined into a Responsibility-Capacity Indicator (RCI) to allocate a global tax. It also describes the use of the Suits index to measure the progressivity of this tax system on a global scale.

• The GDRs framework utilizes the individual as the primary unit of analysis, requiring data on instantaneous income distributions within countries to calculate burden-sharing.
• Income within countries is assumed to follow a lognormal distribution, characterized by mean income and the standard deviation of the log of income, the latter of which relates to the Gini coefficient.
• The calculator assumes that individual per capita emissions vary with income according to a specific elasticity (gamma), which is consistent across all countries and typically ranges between 0.7 and 1.0.
• Capacity and responsibility are calculated using income thresholds; income below a lower threshold (yl) is exempt from both contributing to the capacity to pay and the responsibility for emissions.
• The Responsibility-Capacity Indicator (RCI) is the central metric for allocating burden-sharing, calculated as a weighted sum of a nation's share of global responsibility and its share of global capacity.
• Burden-sharing is modeled as a tax (T) representing a fraction of the gross world product (GWP), with national and individual tax obligations determined by the RCI.
• The calculator can optionally employ the Suits index to evaluate the progressivity or regressivity of the resulting global tax system by comparing the cumulative share of total tax against cumulative income.

APA

Kemp-Benedict, E. (2008). Calculations for the Greenhouse Development Rights Calculator. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/calculations-gdr-calculator.pdf

Chicago

Kemp-Benedict, Eric. Calculations for the Greenhouse Development Rights Calculator. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2008. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/calculations-gdr-calculator.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Kemp-Benedict |first1=Eric |title=Calculations for the Greenhouse Development Rights Calculator |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=24 September 2008 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/calculations-gdr-calculator.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{kempbenedict2008calculations, author = {Kemp-Benedict, Eric}, title = {{Calculations for the Greenhouse Development Rights Calculator}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2008}, month = sep, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/calculations-gdr-calculator.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }