In this paper, we examine the design of permit trading programs when the objective is to minimize the cost of achieving an ex ante pollution target, that is, one that is defined in expectation rather than an ex post deterministic value. We consider two potential sources of uncertainty, the...

The optimal pollution permit trading system is examined when the regulator, faced with incomplete information on firms’' abatement costs and delivery coefficients, seeks to minimize expected total abatement costs to meet an ex ante pollution target. Intuitively, we find that the optimal trading...

Over the past several decades, market-based approaches to natural resource management have received increased attention as a means to cost-effectively achieve environmental quality goals. Following on what has been hailed a success for reducing air pollution, water quality trading (WQT) has more...

It is well known from the compliance literature that whenever it costly tomonitor agents' compliance to contract terms, compliance is likely to beincomplete. This paper goes one step further by examining the implications ofincomplete monitoring on agent's sales offers in auctions for...

Tackling the problem of ecosystem services degradation is an important policy challenge. Different types of economic instruments have been employed by conservation agencies to meet this challenge. Notable among them are Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes that pay private landowners to...

Healthy growth towards sustainability requires evaluation methods that incorporate ecological and economic effects. Evaluating ecological effects in monetary terms would permit the use of Cost-Benefit Analysis. Major methodological difficulties hamper use of this approach. In this paper an...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was originally seen as an instrument with a bilateral character where an entity from an industrialised country invests in a project in a developing country (DC). Also, multilateral funds were envisaged that would bundle investments to spread project risks....

The countries wishing to join the EU have a high potential for low cost greenhouse gas emission reduction. As they cannot join the "bubble" agreement for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, project-based Joint Implementation (JI) could be a powerful strategy to integrate accession...

The Milan conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has established two types of emission offsets under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), valid for afforestation and reforestation activities. In order to account for the non-permanent nature of carbon storage in forests,...

The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol could create a great chance for developing countries to profit from projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the economic and environmental situation in the host country. The project cycle for the CDM differs from a usual...