Embodied carbon tariffs tax the direct and indirect carbon emissions embodied in trade — an idea popularized by countries seeking to extend the reach of domestic carbon regulations. We investigate their effectiveness using simulations from an applied general equilibrium model of global trade...

Unilateral carbon policies are inefficient due to the fact that they generally involve emission reductions in countries with high marginal abatement costs and because they are subject to carbon leakage. In this paper, we ask whether the use of carbon tariffs—tariffs on the carbon embodied in...

This volume was prepared by Rahel Aichele while she was working at the ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2012 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. The chapters investigate how, in a...

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...

This paper explains how, in the context of incomplete coordination among all countries, unilateral policies that might at first sight seem pro-green could actually turn out to harm the global environment. The free-riding motives and the difficulty of reaching an effective international...

Even though the EU clearly leads the global fight against climate change and despite the additional reduction in emissions due to the global crisis and European recession, the ambitious objectives flagged in the ?20-20-20 by 2020? strategy and ?climate-energy package ? may be out of reach if a...

We consider the legal and economic context for border adjustments that might be used to augment subglobal carbon abatement. Following Markusen (1975) we establish optimal border policy in the presence of cross-border environmental damages. The optimal border policy includes a strategic component...

This paper examines the cost of a range of national, regional and global mitigation policies and the corresponding incentives for countries to participate in ambitious international mitigation actions. The paper illustrates the scope for available instruments to strengthen these incentives and...

Considering the costs and risks of inaction, ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is economically rational. However, success in abating world emissions will ultimately require a least-cost set of policy instruments that is applied as widely as possible across all emission sources...

We study backstop adoption and carbon dioxide emission paths in a two-region model with unilateral climate policy and non-renewable resource consumption. The regions have an equal endowment of the internationally tradable resource and a backstop technology. We first study the case of a...