The threat of climate change and other risks for ecosystems and human health require a transition of the energy system from fossil fuels towards renewable energies and higher efficiency. The European geographical periphery, and specifically Southern Europe, has considerable potential for...

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This paper presents a model of international environmental agreements in which cooperation between asymmetric countries can arise through pure self-interest. It demonstrates how emissions trading creates economic surplus by exploiting asymmetries. This surplus can be distributed via the...

The linking of emission trading systems (ETS) is a widely discussed policy option for future international cooperation on climate change. Benefits are expected from efficiency gains and the alleviation of concerns over competitiveness. However, from trade-theory it is known that due to general...

The central pillar of European climate policy, the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), is currently under scrutiny, as the allowance price is persistently low at around 5€/tCO2. The cap was met and emissions actually declined in recent years, ensuring the environmental effectiveness of...

Emission inequality across countries and the contribution of the energy mix and the sectoral composition of a country s energy use are of central importance to the climate debate. We analyze the evolution of inequality in global CO2 per capita emissions using both historical data on...

This paper analyses the optimal type and degree of commitment to a future climate policy when damage costs from climate change are uncertain. Taking uncertainty into account, it is shown within the framework of a sequential game between firms and a regulator that commitment to an emission...

Without a comprehensive global climate agreement, carbon leakage remains a contentious issue. Consumption-based pricing of emissions—which could in practice be implemented with a full border tax adjustment (BTA)—has been forwarded as an option to increase the effectiveness of unilateral...

Although market-based environmental policy instruments feature prominently in economic theory and are widely employed, they often meet with public resistance. We argue that such resistance may be driven by a feeling of moral responsibility where citizens prefer to tackle environmental problems...

Introducing a price on greenhouse gas emissions would not only contribute to reducing the risk of dangerous anthropogenic climate change, but would also generate substantial public revenues. Some of these revenues could be used to cover investment needs for infrastructure providing access to...