Environmental economics has traditionally fallen in the domain of microeconomics, but recently approaches from macroeconomics have been applied to studying environmental policy. We focus on two macroeconomic tools and their application to environmental economics. First, real business cycle...

We develop a microeconomic model of endogenous growth where clean and dirty technologies compete in production and innovation--in the sense that research can be directed to either clean or dirty technologies. If dirty technologies are more advanced to start with, the potential transition to...

Policies to address environmental and natural resource management are often implemented at the group level. The defining feature of such policies is that penalties or rewards are based on group rather than individual performance, or rights are allocated to a group rather than to individuals....

Climate policy is complicated by the considerable compounded uncertainties over the costs and benefits of abatement. We don't even know the probability distributions for future temperatures and impacts, making cost-benefit analysis based on expected values challenging to say the least. There are...

This article provides an overview of the economics of environmental policy, including the setting of goals and targets, notably the Kaldor-Hicks criterion and the related method of assessment known as benefit-cost analysis. Also reviewed are the means of environmental policy, that is, the choice...

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. This paper briefly surveys recent research on the economics of climate change, including theoretical insights...

A two-region model is presented in which an imperfectly competitive firm produces a good with increasing returns at the plant level, and in which shipping costs exist between the two markets. Production of the good causes local pollution, and regional governments can levy pollution taxes or...

This paper examines the application of quasi-experimental methods in environmental economics. We begin with two observations: i) standard quasi-experimental methods, first applied in other microeconomic fields, typically assume unit-level treatments that do not spill over across units; (ii)...