The international aviation and maritime sectors today enjoy relatively favorable tax treatment, as their fuels are not taxed and the sectors are not subject to any value-added tax or turnover tax. Nor are these fuel uses subject to any global measures to reduce their associated CO2 emissions,...

This paper provides a primer on the fiscal implications of climate change, in particular the policies for responding to it. Many of the complicated challenges that arise in limiting climate change (through greenhouse gas emissions mitigation), and in dealing with the effects that remain (through...

Investments in large, long-lived, energy-intensive infrastructure investments using fossil fuels increase longer-term energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, unless the plant is shut down early or undergoes costly retrofit later. These investments will depend on expectations of retrofit costs...

This paper provides a first analysis of optimal offset policies by a "policy bloc" of fossil fuel importers implementing a climate policy, facing a (non-policy) fringe of other importers, and a bloc of fuel exporters. The policy bloc uses either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme, jointly...

Heterogeneity of public utility services is common in developing countries. In a "high-level" equilibrium, the quality of utility services is high, consumer willingness to pay for services is high, the utility is well funded and staff well paid in order to induce high quality of performance. In...

This paper provides counterexamples to the idea that mitigation of greenhouse gases causing climate change, and adaptation to climate change, are always and everywhere substitutes. The author considers optimal policy for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions when climate damages follow a geometric...

This paper uses some simple conceptual models to draw out various implications of infrastructure investments with long lifetimes for the ability of societies to reduce their future greenhouse gas emissions. A broad range of such investments, related both to energy supply and demand systems, may...

Interests in obtaining carbon offsets in host countries for Clean Development Mechanism projects may serve as an obstacle to implementing more stringent general environmental policies in the same countries. A relatively lax environmental policy, whereby carbon emissions remain high, can be...

When a groundwater basin is exploited by a large number of farmers, acting independently, each farmer has little incentive to practice conservation that would primarily benefit other farmers. This can lead to excessive groundwater extraction. When farmers pay less than the full cost of...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an offset mechanism designed to reduce the overall cost of implementing a given global target for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in industrialized "Annex B" countries of the Kyoto Protocol. This paper discusses various ways in which CDM projects do not...