Greenhouse gas abatement is a public good, so climate policy is a public-goods game and suffers from the free-rider incentives that make the outcome of such games notoriously uncooperative. Adopting an international agreement can change the nature of the game, reducing or exacerbating the...

The possibility of low-probability extreme events has reignited the debate over the optimal intensity and timing of climate policy. In this paper we therefore contribute to the literature by assessing the implications of low-probability extreme events on environmental policy in a continuous-time...

Right now, governments around the world are spending record amounts of money to kick-start their economies in response to the financial crisis. Fortunately, a great opportunity exists for this fiscal stimulus to be directed towards "green" economic growth, which can not only provide the new...

We examine an implication of the “Coase Theorem” which has had an important impact both on environmental economics and on public policy in the environmental domain. Under certain conditions, the market equilibrium in a cap-and-trade system will be cost-effective and independent of the...

China, from its own perspective cannot afford to, and from an international perspective, is not allowed to continue on the conventional path of encouraging economic growth at the expense of the environment. The country needs to transform its economy to effectively address concern about a range...

More and more firms tend nowadays to adopt environment-friendly attitudes. Their motivation originates in local environmental regulations or requirements of foreign markets to which firms export (both induced by consumers and investors´ valuation of pro-environment initiatives). There is a...

This paper tests whether adopting the international norm ISO 14001 significantly impacts environmental performance in Quebec's pulp and paper industry. Using monthly data collected from 37 plants between 1997 and 2003, we show that: i) ISO certification does not lead to a reduction in total...

The climate change debate raises the issue of often identified, but as yet little explored, requirement to incorporate climate policy into other policy sectors, often termed climate “mainstreaming” or climate policy integration (CPI). This paper explores the imperative for CPI, the state of...

This paper uses Nevada data to conduct regression analyses of the relationship between sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) population sizes and potential causal factors. This is policy-relevant because of current petitions for listing this species under the Endangered Species Act. A key...

In this paper we present the economic determinants of the optimal length of a carbon offset contract. We find that because of a declining capacity of the soil to sequester carbon, the optimal length of the carbon contract is finite (the marginal benefit of remaining in the contract is declining...