Ž . This paper investigates the significance of induced technological change ITC for the attractiveness of CO abatement policies. We use analytical and numerical general equilib2 rium models in which technological change results from profit-maximizing investments in R&D. We show that carbon abatement policies have very different impacts on R&D across industries, and do not necessarily raise the...

In this paper, we examine the design of permit trading programs when the objective is to minimize the cost of achieving an ex ante pollution target, that is, one that is defined in expectation rather than an ex post deterministic value. We consider two potential sources of uncertainty, the presence of either of which can make our model appropriate: incomplete information on abatement costs and ...

BACKGROUND Lead poisoning is associated with physical, cognitive and neurobehavioral impairment in children and many household interventions to prevent lead exposure have been trialled. OBJECTIVES To determine the effectiveness of household interventions in preventing or reducing lead exposure in children as measured by reductions in blood lead levels and/or improvements in cognitive developm...

By constructing a dynamic general equilibrium model this paper studies the optimal pollution emission and abatement policies for a small economy. We show that in autarky government issues an optimal level of emission permits but its optimal abatement level is zero at the unique steadystate equilibrium. On the other hand, government employs an optimal two-dimensional policy with free trade if th...

A major concern with tradable emission permits is that stochastic permit prices may reduce a firm’s incentive to invest in abatement capital or technologies relative to other policies such as a fixed emissions charge. However, under efficient permit trading, the permit price uncertainty is caused by abatement cost uncertainties which affect investment under both permit and charge policies. We d...

Cap and trade (CAT) results in lower abatement costs relative to command and control, but might increase industry marginal abatement cost, resulting in higher equilibrium emissions. With lumpy investment, command and control leads to multiple investment equilibria and “regulatory uncertainty”. CAT, a first best policy, eliminates this uncertainty. Command and control policies cause firms to imi...

Global climate change presents a classic problem of decision making under uncertainty with learning. We provide stochastic dominance theorems that provide new insights into when abatement and investment into low carbon technology should increase in risk. We show that R&D into low-carbon technologies and near-term abatement are in some sense opposites in terms of risk. Abatement provides insuran...

Marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs) are a favorite instrument to analyze international emissions trading. This paper focusses on the question of how to define MACCs in a general equilibrium context where the global abatement level influences energy prices and in turn national MACCs. We discuss the mechanisms theoretically and then use the CGE model DART for quantitative simulations. The resu...

The approximated cost-benefit function of pollution abatement from two integrated assessment models are employed in constructing of social welfare functions (SWF). Following a normative approach and evaluating equally the environmental goods in rich and poor countries, furthermore using distributional weights, a relation between elasticity of marginal utility e and inequality aversion parameter...

This paper examines how enforcement affects the structure and performance of emissions trading programs with price controls under uncertainty about firms’ abatement costs. The analysis highlights how an enforcement strategy can cause abatement-cost risk to be transmitted to enforcement costs via the price of permits. When this occurs, accommodating the effect of abatement-cost risk with an opti...