Over the past decade, concern over potential global warming has focused attention on the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and there is an active debate concerning the desirability of reducing emissions. At the heart of this debate is the future path of both greenhouse gas...

We examine the real effects of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) on electric power plants in the United States. Starting in 2010, the GHGRP requires both the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by facilities emitting more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year to the...

Urban public transit agencies spend billions of dollars each year on workers, durable capital and energy to supply transportation services. During a time of rising concern about climate change, the urban public transit sector has not significantly reduced its carbon footprint. Using data for the...

The US has been a global leader in regulating local air pollution and a global laggard in regulating greenhouse gases (GHGs). For decades, critics of US policy have expressed fears that stringent US regulations on local air pollution would lead to pollution havens overseas. Prior research,...

Ground-level ozone has been shown to have significant negative health externalities from short-term exposure, and as such has been regulated by the U.S. Clean Air Act since the 1970s. Ozone is not emitted directly; instead formation occurs due to a complex Leontief-like combination of air...

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....

To understand the impacts of support programs on global emissions, this paper considers the impacts of domestic subsidies, price distortions at the border, and investments in emission-reducing technologies on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. In a step towards a full...

This paper develops and tests a model in which 1) purpose-driven firms emerge as an optimal organizational form even for profit-maximizing entrepreneurs; and 2) CSR arises endogenously as a response to imperfect regulatory oversight. Purpose-driven organizations allow entrepreneurs to create...

The geographical location of economic activity within the United States has important implications for carbon mitigation. If households clustered in California's cities rather than in more humid southern cities such as Memphis and Houston, then the average household carbon footprint would be...