This paper investigates the economic implications of a comprehensive approach to sustainable greenhouse policies that strives to stabilise the atmospheric concentration of the five major greenhouse gases at an ecologically determined threshold level. In a theoretical optimisation model...

This paper concerns optimal emissions of greenhouse gases when catastrophic consequences are possible. A numerical model is presented which takes into account both continuous climate-feedback damages as well as the possibility of a catastrophic outcome. The uncertainty in the model concerns...

The goal of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) is to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at levels which avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate (United Nations, 1992). This paper examines the performance and cost characteristics...

Policy makers and analysts are often faced with situations where it is unclear whether market-based instruments hold real promise of reducing costs, relative to conventional uniform standards. We develop analytic expressions that can be employed with modest amounts of information to estimate the...

The 1998 Kyoto protocol signalled a new earnestness of international intent toward addressing the perceived risk of climate change. Kyoto demands that developed nations turn their economies so as to hit differentiated, sub-1990 level carbon emission targets within the next decade or so. But when...

This paper shows in an empirical context that substantial cost reductions can be achieved in the implementation of Dutch national climate policy by (i) targeting the policy at the stock of greenhouse gases, thus allowing polluters flexibility in their timing of emission reductions; and (ii)...

This paper analyses the policy relevance of the dominant uncertainties in our current scientific understanding of the terrestrial climate system, and provides further evidence for the need to radically transform - this century - our global infrastructure of energy supply, given the global...

Recent environmental economics literature regarding global problems, like for example those associated with greenhouse gases, focuses on the emergence of international co-operation and underlying incentives. International co-operation among countries is necessary in the case of global pollution,...

In this paper, we use the two region CETA-M model to explore some related issues raised by the current interest in CO2 concentration targets as a possible climate change policy objective. First, we identify possible cost and benefit assumptions that would make particular concentration ceilings...

One of the most important reasons by which Kyoto negotiations had suffered a setback at the COP 6 conference may be the unsatisfactory state about the previsions of Global Warming. This lack of knowledge may have such an influence on the formation of human opinion that we cannot to be amazed if...