Global impact assessment of unilateral climate policies is commonly based on multi-sector, multi-region computable general equilibrium (CGE) models that are calibrated to consistent accounts of production, consumption, and bilateral trade flows. However, global economic databases such as GTAP...

Over the last decade Germany has boosted renewable energy in power production by means of massive subsidies. The flip side are very high electricity prices which raises concerns that the transition cost towards a renewable energy system will be mainly borne by poor households. In this paper, we...

Computable general equilibrium models play an important role in applied economic research. These models accommodate the micro-consistent systematic analysis of complex economic problems where analytical solutions are either not available or do not provide adequate information. However, the...

This paper deals with a special type of voluntary approach to protect the environment, for example, that we would like to term voluntary commitment. Its major characteristic is that it represents a unilateral declaration without a decisively active role of regulators. In other words, voluntary...

Shoven und Whalley, die Wegbereiter der angewandten Gleichgewichtsanalyse, haben in ihrem bekannten JEL-Übersichtsartikel von 1984 das Los der Gleichgewichtsmodellierer als ?jack of all trades? beklagt. Ziel unseres Beitrags ist es, angenehmere ?Wege zum Gleichgewicht? aufzuzeigen. Unser...

Political feasibility of emission trading systems may crucially depend on the free initial allocation of emission allowances to energy-intensive industries in order to ameliorate adverse production and employment effects. We investigate the potential trade-off between such compensation and...

International concern about climate change has led to the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in 1997, which contains legally binding emission targets for industrialized countries to be achieved during the commitment period 2008-2012. While proponents of the Protocol celebrate it as a breakthrough in...

International climate policy has assigned the leading role in emissions abatement to the industrialized countries while developing countries remain uncommitted to binding emission reduction targets. However, cooperation between the industrialized and the developing world through joint...

In 2005, an EU-wide emissions trading scheme covering major CO2 producing sites shall come into power. The key objective of the trading scheme is to promote cost-efficiency of carbon reduction within the EU. We identify policy-relevant tradeoffs between overall efficiency, compensation and...

Starting in 2005, the EU will implement a CO2 emissions trading scheme. In this paper we show that the outspoken goals of economic efficiency and free allocation of allowances are incompatible with harmonized allocation rules. In general, the assignment of allowances is endogenous and differs...