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...

Information-based policies play an important role in environmental protection efforts around the world. These policies use information provision and/or disclosure to shape behavior in order to meet the policy objective; for example, mandatory information disclosure requires firms to measure and...

The objective of this paper is to quantify the economic effects of the introduction of a system of tradable permits in the European Union (EU). For this purpose we use linked applied general equilibrium models (AGE) for eleven EU member countries. This method enables us to measure the change in...

The objective of this paper is to present different equity rules that can be applied to the initial allocation of greenhouse gas entitlements and to analyse the potential impacts of these rules EU-wide as well as on the level of member states. The methodological framework used in the empirical...

In this paper, a practicable scheme of SO2-emission permits for European power producers is developed. Background is the second UN-ECE Sulphur Protocol from 1994 (Protocol of Oslo). After discussing some theoretical models of spatially differentiated permit schemes, evaluating the U.S. Acid Rain...

Relative prices determine competitiveness of different locations. In this paper, we focus on the role of regulatory differences between Germany and other EU countries which affect the shadow price of carbon emissions. We calibrate a Melitz-type model, extended by firms’ emissions and abatement...

While there is some hope that the ongoing climate change negotiations will soon come up with concrete, time scheduled and binding emission reduction commitments, the question of how to achieve these targets is still unsolved. The objective of this paper is to analyse alternative settings of an...