In this paper targets, institutions and policy measures for describing and implementing sustainable development are evaluated in terms of their conformity with the economic framework of a market system. Firstly, from the viewpoint of neo-liberal economic thinking as conceived by the German...

When confronted with market weaknesses and failures determining sustainability problems for environmental common-pool resources, economic analysis has proposed government intervention as the only alternative available. Elinor Ostrom showed that this dichotomy between market and government is not...

Macroeconomics deals with economics at the aggregate level. This could be at a national level or the interaction between nations. Production of output necessarily involves pollution and degrading the environment. Therefore, environmental issues enter inevitably. Some problems that have been...

That climate policies are costly is evident and therefore often creates major fears. But the alternative (no action) also has a cost. Mitigation costs and damages incurred depend on what the climate policies are; moreover, they are substitutes. This brings climate policies naturally in the realm...

We introduce a "smart" cap and trade system that eliminates the welfare costs of asymmetric information (“uncertainty”). This cap responds endogenously to technology or macroeconomic shocks, relying on the market price of certificates to aggregate information. It allows policy makers to...

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 theoretical approach to carbon leakage, we show that unilateral CO2 reduction policies generate a higher leakage rate in the...

Unilateral climate policy suffers from carbon leakage, i.e. the (partial) offset of the initial emission reduction by increases in other countries. Different than most typically discussed climate policies, degrowth not only aims at reducing the fossil fuel use in an economy, but rather at a...