We study how international agreements can take advantage of domestic time-inconsistency problems in the context of environmental policies. For example, policymakers will prefer future policies to be sustainable, but find it tempting to raise consumption when being in office. We find the...

As billions of people in the developing world seek to increase their living standards, their aspirations pose a challenge to global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The emerging middle class are buying and operating energy intensive durables ranging from vehicles to air conditioners to...

This paper provides stated preference (SP) estimates of the average social cost of carbon (ASCC) for use in evaluation of the benefits and costs of climate policy. Based on a U.S. nationally representative survey, we find an average individual willingness-to-pay (WTP) of $1,116 per year to keep...

Climate policies vary widely across countries, with some countries imposing stringent emissions policies and others doing very little. When climate policies vary across countries, energy-intensive industries have an incentive to relocate to places with few or no emissions restrictions, an effect...

The economic effects of climate change vary across both time and space. To study these effects, this paper builds a global economy-climate model featuring a high degree of geographic resolution. Carbon emissions from the use of energy in production increase the Earth's (average) temperature and...

I study how policymakers can access and act on the information about climate change damages that is dispersed throughout the economy. I analyze a new dynamic deposit-refund instrument (called "carbon shares") that I show can: i) efficiently price emissions conditional on information, ii)...

Economists have for decades recommended that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases be taxed--or otherwise priced--to provide incentives for their reduction. The United States does not have a federal carbon tax; however, many state and federal programs to reduce carbon emissions effectively...

We study how the implementation of emissions trading systems (ETS) impacts emissions reductions and the usage of renewable energy using a panel sample of the largest 100 countries worldwide. Exploiting the cross-country variations in ETS implementations, we show that ETS adoption materially...

Using new surveys on more than 40,000 respondents in twenty countries that account for 72% of global CO2 emissions, we study the understanding of and attitudes toward climate change and climate policies. We show that, across countries, support for climate policies hinges on three key perceptions...

Jurisdictions adopt heterogeneous climate policies that vary both in terms of ambition and in terms of policy approach, with some jurisdictions pricing carbon and others subsidizing clean production. We distinguish two types of policy spillovers associated with diverse policy approaches to...