After the failure of the United Nations climate change conference at Copenhagen the EU is under domestic pressure to justify ambitious unilateral emissions reduction targets. Cost efficiency of EU-wide emission abatement becomes increasingly important in order to sustain EU leadership in climate...

We consider an international emissions trading scheme with partial sectoral and regional coverage. Sectoral and regional expansion of the trading scheme is beneficial in aggregate, but not necessarily for individual countries. We simulate international CO2 emission quota markets using marginal...

Unilateral emission reduction commitments raise concerns on international competitiveness and emission leakage that result in preferential regulatory treatment of domestic energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries. Our analysis illustrates the potential pitfalls of climate policy design...