This paper postulates the conceptually useful allegory of a futuristic "World Climate Assembly" (WCA) that votes for a single worldwide price on carbon emissions via the basic democratic principle of one-person one-vote majority rule. If this WCA framework can be accepted in the first place,...

It is difficult to resolve the global warming free-rider externality problem by negotiating many different quantity targets. By contrast, negotiating a single internationally-binding minimum carbon price (the proceeds from which are domestically retained) counters self-interest by incentivizing...

With few exceptions, economic analyses of "cap-and-trade" permit trading mechanisms for climate change mitigation have been based on first-best scenarios without pre-existing distortions or regulations. The reason is obvious: interactions between permit trading and other regulations will be...

Many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions. Carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices. A complete analysis requires taking both effects into account. The...

The transportation sector accounts for nearly one third of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions. While over the past number of decades, policy makers have avoided directly pricing the externalities from vehicles, both in terms of global and more local pollutants and Corporate Average Fuel...

Thus far, most approaches to resolving the global warming externality have been quantity based. With n different national entities, a meaningful comprehensive treaty involves negotiating n different binding emissions quotas (whether tradeable or not). In post-Kyoto practice this n-dimensional...

Because of the global commons nature of climate change, international cooperation among nations will likely be necessary for meaningful action at the global level. At the same time, it will inevitably be up to the actions of sovereign nations to put in place policies that bring about meaningful...

Emissions of greenhouse gases linked with global climate change are affected by diverse aspects of economic activity, including individual consumption, business investment, and government spending. An effective climate policy will have to modify the decision calculus for these activities in the...

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US have relied on Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards and Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS). Economists often argue that these policies are inefficient relative to carbon pricing because they ignore existing vehicles and do not...

In this paper, we explore the implications of these richer preference specifications for the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), the expected discounted damage of each marginal ton of carbon emissions at an optimal emissions reductions pathway. We develop a simple discrete-time model in which the...