The current EU proposal on greenhouse gas emission reduction has 28 targets for 2020: an EU-wide one for carbon dioxide emissions covered by the European Trading System, and one target for non-ETS emission per Member State. Implementation is necessarily more expensive than needed. I consider...

The European Commission did not publish a cost-benefit analysis for its 2020 climate package. This paper fills that gap, comparing the marginal costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction. The uncertainty about the marginal costs of climate change is large and skewed, and estimates...

The EU has proposed four flexibility mechanisms for the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in the period 2013-2020: (1) the Emissions Trade Scheme (ETS), a permit market between selected companies; (2) trade in non-ETS allotments between Member States; (3) the Clean Development Mechanism...

This paper sets out a methodology for updating an economic appraisal model to ensure that it takes appropriate account of costs arising from greenhouse gas emissions. While the analysis is based on the appraisal model used in Ireland, it should be broadly applicable to circumstances in any EU...

This paper considers the question under what conditions domestic markets of emission permits would and should merge to become an international market. Emission permits are licenses, and so governments would need to recognize other countries' permits. In a two-county model, we find that it is in...

I review the literature on the economic impacts of climate change, an externality that is unprecedentedly large, complex, and uncertain. Only 14 estimates of the total damage cost of climate change have been published, a research effort that is in sharp contrast to the urgency of the public...