Cap and Trade Legislation for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The Economic Effects of Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

Population under a Cap on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

A cap on greenhouse gas emissions makes total emissions a fixed commonproperty resource. Population increases under a cap are therefore self-limiting: a population increase raises labor and reduces emissions per unit of labor, which lowers incomes and fertility. Because a marginal birth under a cap lowers all incomes, a cap induces a negative population externality. The externality is substanti...

Coalition Formation and International Trade in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The success of any international climate change agreement depends on abatement targets and the incentives for countries to participate. International emissions trading is frequently cited in the policy literature as a means to making headway on both issues. With trading, more stringent targets become less costly, and agreements can be profitable for the developing world by allowing them to capt...

Cap-and-Trade, Emissions Taxes, and Innovation

Emissions taxes and carbon caps can both lead to e cient production of energy, in the sense of controlling carbon emissions to the extent that is e cient with existing technologies. However, the regulatory policy has a second objective, which is to create incentives to develop lower-carbon technologies. With both objectives in mind, does one policy dominate the other? I address this question in...

Quantifying greenhouse-gas emissions from atmospheric measurements: a critical reality check for climate legislation.

Emissions reduction legislation relies upon 'bottom-up' accounting of industrial and biogenic greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions at their sources. Yet, even for relatively well-constrained industrial GHGs, global emissions based on 'top-down' methods that use atmospheric measurements often agree poorly with the reported bottom-up emissions. For emissions reduction legislation to be effective, it is...