We provide ex-post empirical analysis of the effects of climate policies on carbon dioxide emissions at the aggregate national level. Our results are based on a comprehensive database of 121 countries. As climate policies we examine carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETS), as well as...

The objective of this paper is to critically assess the use simple rules for the social cost of carbon (SCC) employing a rudimentary form of the Ramsey rule. Two interrelated caveats apply. First, if climate change poses a serious problem, it is hard to justify an exogenous constant growth rate...

This paper highlights the importance of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies for climate policy. We first describe their role in iconic transformation pathways and discuss removal costs and storage duration of different technologies. Based on economic principles, we characterize optimal...

Creativity is often highly concentrated in time and space, and across different domains. What explains the formation and decay of clusters of creativity? We match data on notable individuals born in Europe between the XIth and the XIXth century with historical city data. The production and...

This paper first reviews the conceptual case for, and appropriate design of, fiscal policies to address major externalities associated with energy use-global warming, local air pollution, and various side effects (e.g., congestion) from motor vehicles. Techniques for (roughly) estimating the...

This paper estimates fossil fuel subsidies and the economic and environmental benefits from reforming them, focusing mostly on a broad notion of subsidies arising when consumer prices are below supply costs plus environmental costs and general consumption taxes. Subsidies are $4.9 trillion...

I examine a policy-making game among countries that must choose both a policy instrument (e.g., a tax or a quota) and its intensity (i.e., the tax rate or the quota level) to price pollution. When countries price pollution non-cooperatively, they not only set the intensity inefficiently, they...

For any emission trading system (ETS) with quantity-based endogenous supply of allowances, there exists a negative demand shock, e.g. induced by abatement policy, that increases aggregate supply and thus cumulative emissions. We prove this green paradox for a general model and then apply it to...

Governments support the green transition through green public procurement. Using US data, this paper provides the first empirical analysis of the causal effects of green contracts on corporate greenhouse gas emissions and economic performance. We focus on an affirmative program for sustainable...