We examine a global refunding scheme for mitigating climate change. Countries pay an initial fee into a global fund that is invested in long-run assets. In each period, part of the fund is distributed among the participating countries in relation to the emission reductions they have achieved in...

We examine a global refunding scheme for mitigating climate change. Countries pay an initial fee into a global fund that is invested in long-run assets. In each period, part of the fund is distributed among the participating countries in relation to the emission reductions they have achieved in...

In this paper we survey the theoretical literature on both pollution-reducing and resource-saving technological progress. The literature can be divided into two strands. One strand deals with microeconomic models which investigate incentives to adopt and to develop environmentally more friendly...

Germany has committed itself to reducing its carbon emissions by 25 percent in 2005 as compared to 1990 emission levels. To achieve this goal, the government has recently launched an environmental tax reform which entails a continuous increase in energy taxes in conjunction with a...

The economic effects of environmental taxes depend on the market structure. Under imperfect competition with free entry and exit, environmental taxes have an impact on economies of scale by changing the number and size of firms. Whether economies of scale rise or fall in a particular industry...

Environmental tax schemes in OECD countries often involve tax rates differentiated across industrial, commercial and household sectors. In this paper, we investigate four potentially important arguments for these deviations from uniform taxation: pre-existing tax distortions, domestic equity...

In the double dividend debate following Bovenberg and de Mooij (1994) the definition of 'tax efficiency dividend' is implicitly based on the claim that by its very nature any corrective tax, and therefore any emission tax, imposes an excess burden, a claim that is also shared, e.g., by the...

The purpose of the paper is to narrow the gap between the widespread use of voluntary agreements and research on the rationale of such approaches. A typical example are voluntary agreements of many industries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of global warming. If the industry...

Conventional analysis of the economics of environmental policy usually claims that emission taxes induce a stronger incentive for an improvement in pollution abatement technologies compared to emission standards. In contrast, recent empirical studies reveal that there is no systematic...