This paper assesses the role of the public sector in adaptation to climate change. We first offer a definition and categorisation of climate change adaptation. We then consider the primary economic principles that can guide the assignment of adaptation tasks to either the private or the public...

We study adaptation to climate change in a federalist setting. To protect themselves against an increase in flood risk, regional governments choose among adaptation measures that vary with respect to their costs, the level of protection they offer, and the presence and nature of spillovers to...

This paper discusses techniques for measuring the incidence of carbon taxes across different household income groups and provides some cross-country estimates of these effects for selected advanced countries. The general message of this paper is that distributional concerns should not...

If a coalition of countries implements climate policies, nonparticipants tend to consume more, pollute more, and invest too little in renewable energy sources. In response, the coalition's equilibrium policy distorts trade and it is not time consistent. By adding a market for the right to...

To decarbonize the power sector policy-makers need to commit to long-term credible rules for climate and energy policy. Otherwise, time-inconsistent policy-making will impair investments into low-carbon technologies. However, the future benefits and costs of decarbonization are subject to...

It is tricky to design local regulations on global externalities, especially so if firms are mobile. We show that when costs and outside options are firms’ private information, the threat of firm relocation leads to local regulations that are stricter, not looser. This result is general and...

This paper introduces geoengineering into an optimal control model of climate change economics. Together with mitigation and adaptation, carbon and solar geoengineering span the universe of possible climate policies. Their wildly different characteristics have important implications for climate...

Linkage of cap-and-trade systems is typically advocated by economists on a general analogy with the beneficial linking of free-trade areas and on the specific grounds that linkage will ensure cost effectiveness among the linked jurisdictions. An appropriate and widely accepted specification for...

We develop a dynamic regulation game for a stock externality under asymmetric information and future market uncertainty. Within this framework, regulation is characterized as the implementation of a welfare-maximization program conditional on informational constraints. We identify the most...

Avoiding unmanageable climate change implies that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced rapidly. A significant body of literature shows that policy instruments such as carbon prices can make an important contribution to this goal. In contrast, changes in preferences or values are...