In 2020, the European Commission announced its intention to table a legislative proposal for a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), as part of a wider package of laws aimed at implementing the EU Green Deal. It furthermore stated that it would explore various options, such as a so-called...

Border tax adjustments (BTAs) may be able to alleviate concerns of reduced competitiveness for countries introducing environmental taxes and standards, while limiting the risk of companies relocating to developing countries to exploit lax environmental regimes - known as leakage. However, the...

In light of the UK Coalition Government's announced intention to reform APD (Air Passenger Duty), this article examines the design flaws making APD an inadequate environmental tax. By identifying the misconceived consequences and environmental inefficiencies of this blunt instrument, the need...

Industrialised countries are often required to make unpopular policy choices in order to efficiently tackle climate change. On the one hand, domestic industries might consider national climate measures as an excessive burden that may damage their competitiveness. On the other hand, the public...

Scholarly and policy interest in carbon pricing coalitions is growing. Existing research analyzes design features that can increase the environmental effectiveness and political resilience of coalitions centered around carbon taxes and carbon markets (i.e. explicit carbon pricing). This article...

As global climate change and its adverse effects have caused serious consequences, the Chinese Government is speeding up on energy saving and emissions reductions, becoming much more active on the climate and environment front. According to the work schedule of the Ministry of Finance,...

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...

We examine the impact of a unilateral carbon tax in developed countries focusing on the expected size of carbon leakage (an increase in emissions in non-taxing regions as a result of the tax) and the effects on leakage of border tax adjustments. We start by analyzing the problem using a simple...

In a parsimonious two-sector general equilibrium model, we challenge the widely-held tenet that within a cap-and-trade system renewable energy policies have no effect on carbon emissions. If the cap does not capture all sectors, we demonstrate that variations of a renewable energy subsidy change...

When it was launched in 2005, the European Union emissions trading system (EU ETS) was projected to have prices of around €30/ton CO2 and to be a cornerstone of the EU's climate policy. The reality was a cascade of falling prices, a ballooning privately held emissions bank, and a decade of low...