Linkage of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Systems : Learning from Experience

Linkage is a multi-faceted policy decision that can be used by political jurisdictions to achieve a variety of objectives, and we find evidence that many economic, political, and strategic factors - ranging from geographic proximity to integrity of emissions reductions - influence the decision to link. We also identify some potentially important effects of linkage, such as loss of control over domestic carbon policies, which do not appear to have deterred real-world decisions to link