China started seven carbon cap-and-trade pilot programs in order to inform the development of a future national cap-and-trade market. This paper assesses the design of three of the longer-running cap-and-trade pilot programs in Guangdong, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Based on extensive stakeholder...

Virtually every analysis of cap-and-trade programs assumes that firms must surrender permits as they pollute. However, no program, existing or proposed, requires such continual compliance. Some (e.g. the Acid Rain Program limiting SO2 emissions) require compliance once a year; others (e.g. the...

In 2005, the European Union introduced the largest and most ambitious emissions trading program in the world to meet its Kyoto commitments for the containment of global climate change. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has some distinctive features that differentiate it from the more...

Previous analyses of cap-and-trade programs regulating carbon emissions assumed that firms must surrender permits as they pollute. If so, then the price of permits may remain constant over measurable intervals if the government injects additional permits at a ceiling price or may even collapse...

Price collars have frequently been advocated to restrict the price of emissions permits. Consequently, collars were incorporated in the three bills languishing in Congress as well as in California?'s AB-32; Europeans are now considering price collars for EU ETS. In advocating collars, most...

The uncertainty surrounding both costs and benefits associated with global climate change mitigation creates enormous hurdles for scientists, stakeholders, and decisionmakers. A key issue is how policy choices balance uncertainty about costs and benefits. This balance arises in terms of the time...

Tradable black (CO2) and green (renewables) quotas gain in popularity and stringency within climate policies of many OECD countries. The overlapping regulation through both instruments, however, may have important adverse economic implications. Based on stylized theoretical analysis and...

Allocation of emission allowances may affect firms' incentives to invest in clean technologies. In this paper we show that so-called output-based allocation tends to stimulate such investments as long as individual firms do not assume the regulator to tighten the allocation rule as a consequence...

We analyze non-cooperative international climate policy in a setting of political competition by national interest groups. In the first stage, countries decide whether to set up an international emission permits market, which only forms if it is supported by all countries. In the second stage,...

The 1999 National Telecommuting and Air Quality Act created pilot programs in five metropolitan areas in the United States to examine whether a particular type of economic incentive, tradable emissions credits created from telecommuting, represents a viable strategy for reducing vehicle miles...