Isolationism and the equal per capita view

Assessing common(s) arguments for an equal per capita allocation

Emissions rights are commodities and many hold that these commodities (or alternatively the revenue from their auction) should be allocated to (adult) individuals on an equal per capita basis. Proponents of this equal per capita allocation (EPCA) often argue for it on the grounds that the atmosphere or greenhouse gas emissions sinks are a “commons”. But how can we assess the strength of these “...

Equal Emissions per Capita over Time – A Proposal to Combine Responsibility and Equity of Rights

After Future climate policy regimes may be based on the Kyoto-Protocol or on other policy instruments such as carbon-taxes. Any effective regime based on the Protocol requires the determination of the concrete contributions by each Party. This involves namely the time of contribution and the quantification of the contribution itself. By now many proposals exist for the two issues, as for exampl...

Per Capita Income and the Quality and Variety of Imports

We investigate how the division of aggregate income into per capita income and population affects the margins of imports. In the first part, we use data on imports of 123 countries to document a positive relationship between per capita income and both the extensive and quality margin of imports, for a given level of aggregate GDP. These relations hold at various levels of disaggregation. While ...

Distribution of per Capita Income in Georgia

Convergence in Carbon Emissions per Capita

Convergence in cross country per capita carbon emission rates is an important concept in the climate change debate. This paper provides an empirical analysis of emissions per capita convergence. This analysis is crucial to the assessment of projection models that generate convergence in emission per capita rates and to the assessment of policy proposals that advocate imposing convergence in emi...