The literature on trade liberalization and environment has not considered federal structures. This paper shows how the design of environmental policy in a federal system has implications for the effects of trade reform. Trade liberalization leads to a decline in pollution taxes regardless of...

While prior literature has identified various effects of environmental policy, this note uses the example of a proposed carbon permit system to illustrate and discuss six different types of distributional effects: (1) higher prices of carbon-intensive products, (2) changes in relative returns to...

One country that tries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may fear that other countries get a competitive advantage and increase emissions (“leakage”). Estimates from computable general equilibrium (CGE) models such as Elliott et al (2010a,b) indicate that 15% to 25% of abatement might be...

We examine an open economy's strategy to reduce its carbon emissions by replacing its consumption of coal - very carbon intensive - with gas - less so. Unlike the standard analysis of carbon leakage, unilateral carbon-reduction policies with more than one carbon energy source may turn...

We borrow standard assumptions from the non-renewable-resource-taxation and from the directed-technical-change literatures, to take a full account of the incentives to perform R&D activities in a dirty-resource sector and in a clean-resource-substitute sector. We show that a gradual rise in the...

In our analytical general equilibrium model where two polluting inputs can be substitutes or complements in production, we study the effects of a tax on one pollutant in two cases: one where both pollutants face taxes and the second where the other pollutant is subject to a permit policy. In...

Unintended consequences of a pre-announced climate policy have been studied in a variety of situations. We show that early announcement of a carbon tax gives rise to a “Green-Paradox,” in that it increases polluting emissions in the interim period (between announcement and actual...

This paper analyzes whether changes in the timing of equalizing transfers to state governments necessitate an adjustment in federal corrective policy. According to the existing literature (assuming an ex-ante choice of transfers), the corrective grant is equal to the marginal damage/benefit...

Taking a political economy perspective this paper proposes an alternative carbon abatement policy instrument with significant advantages over existing policy instruments. The key feature of the proposed carbon securities is that they entitle their owners to a fixed proportion of ex ante unknown...

We propose a development-compatible refunding system designed to mitigate climate change. Industrial countries pay an initial fee into a global fund. Each country chooses its national carbon tax. Part of the global fund is refunded to developing and industrial countries, in proportion to the...