The value of mortality risk reduction is an important component of the benefits of environmental policies. In recent years, the number, scope, and quality of valuation studies have increased dramatically. Revealed preference studies of wage compensation for occupational risks, on which analysts...

Over the last half decade, a variety of federal legislative proposals for limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been put forward, most of which would set a price on carbon. As of early 2013, the one politically plausible policy appears to be a carbon tax, passed as part of a larger fiscal...

Economic approaches are expected to achieve environmental goals at less cost than traditional regulations, but they have yet to find widespread application. One reason is the way these tools interact with existing institutions. The federalist nature of governmental authority assigns to...

“Cash-for-Clunkers” was a $3 billion program that attempted to stimulate the U.S. economy and improve the environment by encouraging consumers to retire older vehicles and purchase more fuel efficient new vehicles. We investigate the effects of this program on new vehicle sales and the...

Using data from Pennsylvania and an array of empirical techniques to control for confounding factors, we recover hedonic estimates of property value impacts from nearby shale gas development that vary with water source, well productivity, and visibility. Results indicate large negative impacts...

This paper reports on a preliminary analysis of performance indicators on 3,020 platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico between 1996 and 2010. Statistical analysis reveals that company-reported incidents (such as blowouts, fires, injuries, and pollution) increase with water depth, controlling...

Because conventional command-and-control environmental regulation often performs poorly in developing countries, policymakers are increasingly experimenting with alternatives, including voluntary regulatory programs. Research in industrialized countries suggests that such programs are sometimes...

This paper estimates the welfare costs of the main medium-term options for significantly reducing U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, including carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems applied economy-wide and to the power sector only, and an emissions rate standard for power...

Climate change policy analysis has focused almost exclusively on national policy and even on harmonizing climate policies across countries, implicitly assuming that harmonization of climate policies at the subnational level would be mandated or guaranteed. We argue that the design and...

Fiscal instruments are potentially among the most effective, and cost-effective, options for addressing externalities related to poor air quality, urban road congestion, and greenhouse gases. This paper takes a case study, focused on Mauritius (a pioneer in the use of green taxes) to illustrate...