The Kyoto Protocol stipulates that industrialised countries and countries with economies in transition, i.e. the group of Annex I countries, shall reduce their overall emissions of carbon dioxide and other five greenhouse gases by at least 5 % as compared to their 1990 emission levels. This...

We investigate how the U.S. withdrawal and the amendments of the Bonn climate policy conference in 2001 will change the economic and environmental impacts of the Kyoto Protocol in its original form. Based on simulations with a large-scale computable general equilibrium model, we find that U.S....

This paper investigates the implications of U.S. withdrawal on environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, and the distribution of compliance costs taking into account market power of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) on emission permit markets. While exercise of market power on behalf of FSU...

In the absence of an international agreement on climate policy, unilateral carbon abatement creates two problems: It tends to have a detrimental effect on domestic competitiveness, and it leads to an increase in carbon emissions abroad (leakage). This paper analyses two policies that have...

Ten years after the initial Climate Change Convention from Rio in 1992, the developed world is likely to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which has been celebrated as a milestone in climate protection. Standard economic theory, however, casts doubt that Kyoto will go beyond symbolic policy. In this...

Most analyses of the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms focus on the cost effectiveness of "where" flexibility (e.g. by showing that mitigation costs are lower in a global permit market than in regional markets or in permit markets confined to Annex 1 countries). Less attention has been devoted to...

To stay within the 2êC temperature increase target for climate change calls for ambitious emission reduction targets already for the 2012-2020 compliance period. Cost-efficiency is a crucial criterion for the enforcement of such ambitious targets, requiring analyses of all possible abatement...

With coming into force of the Directive 2003/87/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the community (EU ETS) has begun in 2005. Emission trading is a flexible instrument to abate emissions within the framework of the Kyoto-Protocol. Up...

Most analyses of the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms focus on the cost effectiveness of 'where' flexibility (e.g. by showing that mitigation costs are lower in a global permit market than in regional markets or in permit markets confined to Annex 1 countries). Less attention has been devoted to...

We use a quantitative electricity market model to analyze the welfare effects of refunding a share of the emission trading proceeds to support renewable energy technologies that are subject to experience effects. We compare effects of supporting renewable energies under both perfect and...