Two decades have passed since the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 launched a grand experiment in market-based environmental policy: the SO₂ cap-and-trade system. That system performed well but created four striking ironies: First, by creating this system to reduce SO₂ emissions to curb acid...

Notwithstanding great progress in scientific and economic understanding of climate change, it has proven difficult to forge international agreements because of free-riding, as seen in the defunct Kyoto Protocol. This study examines the club as a model for international climate policy. Based on...

An important source of political opposition to measures aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) arises from concerns over their negative effects on the competitiveness of domestic firms, especially those that are energy-intensive and exposed to competition from foreign producers....

The EPA will issue rules regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing steam boilers and refineries in 2012. A crucial issue affecting the scope and cost of emissions reductions will be the potential introduction of flexibility in compliance, including averaging across groups of...

Because of the global commons nature of climate change, international cooperation among nations will likely be necessary for meaningful action at the global level. At the same time, it will inevitably be up to the actions of sovereign nations to put in place policies that bring about meaningful...

Experience with existing multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) shows that trade measures agreed to within the MEAs themselves may not necessarily lead to a dispute between parties. On the contrary, there is a great chance that disputes may arise from national measures undertaken to fulfil...

It appears inevitable, absent legislative intervention, that regulation under the Clean Air Act (CAA) will move beyond mobile sources to the industrial and power facilities that emit most U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We analyze the mechanisms available to the EPA for regulating such...

This essay revisits the question of instrument choice for the regulation of externalities in the context of climate change. The central point is that the Pigouvian prescription to equate marginal control costs with the expected marginal benefits of damage reduction should guide the design of...

This paper outlines recent developments in U.S. climate policies. Although the United States does not participate in the Kyoto Mechanism, a number of climate policies are being implemented at state level as well as at the federal level. First, we report and compare the federal cap and trade...

This article examines whether a greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme has the potential to bring parties into conflict with the WTO provisions in dealing with the initial allocation of permits, non-compliance with emissions targets, emissions trading system enlargement, and trade measures...