In the past few years permit trading has become a popular policy instrument to achieve emissions reductions or other environmental goals at minimal cost. There are already a number of existing regimes on firm as well as on national level in which permits for SO2, NOX and CO2 emissions but also...

Professor Dennis J. Snower, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy since 2004, addresses the riddle of persistent unemployment in free market economies, outlining first a set of popular explanations for this phenomenon (and quickly showing why they are inadequate), then the main...