Congress is likely to consider domestic climate change legislation during 2009, with a cap-and-trade system continuing to draw support from the Obama Administration and many leaders in Congress. Yet cap-and-trade regulations would take years for EPA to develop and implement, the desired price...

We analyze a model where firms chose a production technology which, together with some random event, determines the final emission level. We consider the coexistence of two alternative technologies: a "clean" technology, and a "dirty" technology. The environmental regulation is based on taxes...

We consider a model of polluting firms subject to tax on emissions, monitoring, and penalties in case of underreporting and which face a choice between a more expensive clean and a less expensive dirty technology. Moreover, emissions are subject to random events.We show that the optimal...

We consider a model of polluting firms subject to tax on emissions, monitoring, and penalties in case of underreporting and which face a choice between a more expensive clean and a less expensive dirty technology. Moreover, emissions are subject to random events.We show that the optimal...

In a market where firms with different characteristics decide upon both the level of emissions and their reports, we study the optimal audit policy for an enforcement agency whose objective is to minimize the level of emissions. We show that it is optimal to devote the resources primarily to the...

This chapter briefly describes the use and usefulness of behavioral and psychological instruments in environmental regulation. Behavioral instruments — tools for regulating behavior that build on empirical research about how people actually behave — can contribute to environmental law in at...

We study resource extraction by a non-renewable resource supplier who faces demand from two regions, one of which employs a tax on the imported resource and a subsidy on the available backstop technology, and one that has no environmental policy in place. The resource extraction path possibly...

The paper derives the optimal carbon tax in closed-form from an integrated assessment of climate change. The formula shows how carbon, temperature, and economic dynamics quantify the optimal mitigation effort. The model's descriptive power is comparable to numeric models used in policy advising....

This paper discusses techniques for measuring the incidence of carbon taxes across different household income groups and provides some cross-country estimates of these effects for selected advanced countries. The general message of this paper is that distributional concerns should not...