While a carbon tax is widely acknowledged as an efficient policy to mitigate climate change, adoption has lagged. Part of the challenge resides in the distributional implications of a carbon tax and a belief that it tends to be regressive. Even when not regressive, poor households could be hurt...

We identify structural breaks in economic growth in 140 countries and use these to define ""growth spells:"" periods of high growth preceded by an upbreak and ending either with a downbreak or with the end of the sample. Growth spells tend to be shorter in African and Latin American countries...

This paper assesses the implications of the use of oil revenue for public investment on growth and fiscal sustainability in Cameroon. We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of such investment on growth and on the path of key fiscal indicators, such as...

This paper explores the role of trade instruments in globally efficient climate policies, focusing on the central issue of whether some form of border tax adjustment (BTA) is warranted when carbon prices differ internationally. It shows that tariff policy has a role in easing cross-country...

This paper recommends a system of upstream taxes on fossil fuels, combined with refunds for downstream emissions capture, to reduce carbon and local pollution emissions. Motor fuel taxes should also account for congestion and other externalities associated with vehicle use, at least until...

We measure the gains from phasing out coal as the average social cost of carbon times the quantity of avoided emissions. By comparing the present value of benefits from avoided emissions against the present value of costs of ending coal and replacing it with renewables, our conservative baseline...

Carbon pricing is considered the most efficient policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but it has also been conjectured that other policies need to be implemented first to remove certain economic and political barriers to stringent climate policy. Here, we examine empirical evidence on the...

What is the effect of carbon pricing on inflation? This paper shows empirically that the consequences of the European Union's Emission Trading System (ETS) and national carbon taxation on inflation have been limited in the euro area, so far. This result is supported by analysis based on a panel...

This paper assesses the economic effects of climate policies on different regions and countries with a focus on external adjustment. The paper finds that various climate policies could have substantially different impacts on external balances over the next decade. A credible and globally...

France has taken a leadership role in global mitigation and made significant progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but further efforts will be needed to meet domestic mitigation targets. Accelerating emissions reductions from road transportation will be a key part of this strategy,...