Many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions. Carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices. A complete analysis requires taking both effects into account. The...

To address rising energy use and CO2 emissions, China's leadership has enacted energy and CO2 intensity targets under the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015), which are defined at both the national and provincial levels. We develop a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with global...

We analyze the distributional and efficiency impacts of different allowance allocation schemes for a national cap and trade system using the USREP model, a new recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy. We consider allocation schemes applied to a comprehensive...

Many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions. Carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices. A complete analysis requires taking both effects into account. The...

We examine the efficiency and distributional impacts of greenhouse gas policies directed toward the electricity sector in a model that links a “top-down” general equilibrium representation of the U.S. economy with a “bottom-up” electricity-sector dispatch and capacity expansion model....

We quantitatively characterize optimal carbon, capital, and labor income taxes in an economy-climate integrated assessment model that features overlapping generations and distortionary fiscal policy. First, we show that the optimal carbon tax significantly differs from the Pigouvian carbon levy...

We study whether to auction or to freely distribute emissions allowances when some firms participating in emissions trading are subject to price regulation. We show that free allowances allocated to price-regulated firms effectively act as a subsidy to output, distort consumer choices, and...

We examine the effect of biofuels mandates and climate policy on the European vehicle fleet, in particular the prospects for diesel and gasoline vehicles. Our analysis is based on a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the world economy which explicitly incorporates current generation...

Firms subject to cost-of-service regulation cannot withhold windfall profits associated with free emissions allowances. This paper examines the efficiency and distributional impacts of two approaches to transfer free allowances to consumers: output subsidies and lump-sum payments. We employ an...