Intertemporal tradability allows an emissions market to reduce abatement costs. We study intertemporal trading of nitrogen oxides permits in the RECLAIM program in Southern California. A theoretical model captures the program's key intertemporal features: two overlapping permit cycles, two...

Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 created a market for electric utility emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2). Recent papers have argued that flaws in the design of the auctions that are part of this market have adversely affected its performance. These papers incorrectly assume that...

Electric utilities can reduce sulfur dioxide emissions through a variety of strategies such as adding scrubbers, switching to low- sulfur coal, or shifting output between generating plants with different emissions. The cost of achieving a given emission target can be minimized using a market for...

We conduct the first study on the impacts of prenatal exposure to a uniquely identified large polluter, a coal-fired power plant located near the border of two states, on the birth outcomes of the downwind state. For mothers who live as far as 20 to 40 miles away but downwind of the power plant,...

We compare the spatial distribution of emissions from Southern California's pollution-trading program with that of a counterfactual command-and-control policy. We develop a normatively significant metric with which to rank the various distributions in a manner consistent with an explicit...

A sizeable number of papers beginning with Roberts and Spence (1976) have studied the use of price floors and ceilings (or "collars") to manage prices in tradable permit markets. In contrast, economists have only recently begun examining polices to manage quantities under a pollution tax....

Carbon control policies in OECD countries commonly differentiate emission prices in favor of energy-intensive industries. While leakage provides a efficiency argument for differential emission pricing, the latter may be a disguised beggar-thy-neighbor policy to exploit terms of trade. Using an...

The allocation of emissions allowances is among the most contentious elements of the design of cap-and-trade systems. In this paper we develop a detailed representation of the US western electricity market to assess the potential impacts of various allocation proposals. Several proposals involve...

A perceived advantage of cap-and-trade programs over more prescriptive environmental regulation is that enhanced compliance flexibility and cost effectiveness can make more stringent emissions reductions politically feasible. However, increased compliance flexibility can also result in an...

Cap-and-trade systems have emerged as the preferred national and regional instrument for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases throughout the industrialized world, and the Clean Development Mechanism -- an international emission-reduction-credit system -- has developed a substantial...