We examine the extent to which various environmental policy instruments meet major evaluation criteria, including cost-effectiveness, distributional equity, minimization of risk in the presence of uncertainty, and political feasibility. Instruments considered include emissions taxes, tradable...

Economists have tended to view emissions pricing (e.g., cap and trade or a carbon tax) as the most cost-effective approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This paper offers a different view. Employing analytical and numerically solved general equilibrium models, the paper indicates...

Nearly all discussions about the appropriate consumption discount rate for climate change policy evaluation assume that a single discount rate concept applies. We argue that two distinct concepts and associated rates apply. We distinguish between a social-welfare-equivalent discount rate...

Carbon taxes are a potential revenue source that could play a key role in major tax reform. This paper employs a numerical general equilibrium model of the United States to evaluate alternative tax reductions that could be financed by the revenues from a carbon tax. We consider a carbon tax that...

Global climate change poses a threat to the well-being of humans and other living things through impacts on ecosystem functioning, biodiversity, capital productivity, and human health. Climate change economics attends to this issue by offering theoretical insights and empirical findings relevant...

This paper is about net national product (NNP). The authors are concerned with what NNP means, what it should include, what it offers us and, therefore, why we may be interested in it. They show that NNP, properly defined, can be used as a gauge for project evaluation, but they also show that it...

This paper is about measuring social well-being and evaluating policy. Section 1 concerns the links between the two, while Sections 2 and 3, respectively, are devoted to the development of appropriate methods for measuring and evaluating. In Section 2 I identify a minimal set of indices for...

In September 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency asked 12 economists how the benefits and costs of regulations should be discounted for projects that affect future generations. This paper summarizes the views of the panel on three topics -- the use of the Ramsey formula as an organizing...