Many US states have set ambitious renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that require utilities to switch from fossil fuels toward renewables. RPS increases the renewables capacity, bond issuance, maturity, and yield spreads of investor-owned utilities compared to municipal producers that are...

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...

This paper shows that unilateral decarbonization pays for itself in large economies. We estimate economic damages from global temperature shocks and combine them with a climate-economy model to construct Domestic Costs of Carbon: $226 per ton for the United States and $216 per ton for the...

This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are six times larger than previously thought. We exploit natural variability in global temperature and rely on time-series variation. A 1°C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world GDP. Global...

Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are a global public good, which makes it efficient to act globally when addressing this challenge. We lay out several reasons that high-income countries seeking to mitigate climate change might have greater impact if they invest their resources in...

There are often conflicts between proponents of trade and environmental activists. This paper shows, however, how trade agreements can be designed so as to motivate environmental conservation. I first analyze a standard trade model, where resource exploitation (e.g., deforestation) is a...

We study the role of trade policy in one of the most pressing climate policy challenges that developing countries face: meeting voluntary emission restraints (VERs). To do so, we develop a general equilibrium trade model that extends Caliendo and Parro (2015) in three dimensions. First, we model...

Many governments and businesses would like to minimize or eliminate the greenhouse gases that result from their purchases of power from electricity grids. Because electricity flows cannot be traced from purchasers back to specific generators, some regulators and users have proposed an...

One concern with subsidies for low-carbon technologies is that they tend to go predominantly to high-income households. Previous research has shown, for example, that the top income quintile receives 60% of subsidies for rooftop solar and 90% of subsidies for electric vehicles. This paper finds...

The phasedown of coal for electricity generation is considered vital to meeting global climate targets. Many countries have pledged to stop using coal, with some as early as 2030. While the United States has no target currently in place, several states do. In this paper, we examine the...