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...

Emissions of greenhouse gases linked with global climate change are affected by diverse aspects of economic activity, including individual consumption, business investment, and government spending. An effective climate policy will have to modify the decision calculus for these activities in the...

Understanding the distributional impacts of market-based climate policies is crucial to design economically efficient climate change mitigation policies that are socially acceptable and avoid adverse impacts on the poor. Empirical studies that examine the distributional impacts of carbon pricing...

Countries have pledged to stabilize global warming at a 1.5 to 2°C increase. Either target requires reaching net zero emissions before the end of the century, which implies a major transformation of the economic system. This paper reviews the literature on how policymakers can design climate...

To mitigate climate change, some governments opt for instruments focused on investment, like performance standards or feebates, instead of carbon prices. We compare these policies in a Ramsey model with clean and polluting capital, irreversible investment and a climate constraint. Alternative...

The introduction of a price on carbon dioxide will have important effects on the U.S. economy, and especially important effects on the electricity sector, which currently accounts for about 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. This paper examines alternative approaches to the distribution of...

The present paper analyzes the impact of a climate coalition's border carbon adjustment on emissions from commodity production, welfare and the coalition size. The coalition implements border carbon adjustment to reduce carbon leakage and to improve its terms of trade, while the fringe abstains...

There has been intense focus on the issue of how emissions allowances might be allocated under a potential federal cap-and-trade program. What fraction of the allowances should be auctioned out, as opposed to given out free? How much free allocation would be sufficient to preserve profits in...

As governments, firms, and universities advance ambitious greenhouse gas emission goals, the demand for emission offsets – projects that reduce or remove emissions relative to a counterfactual scenario – will increase. Reservations about an offset’s additionality, permanence,...

Carbon leakage occurs when carbon-priced low-emission domestic products are replaced with high-emissions foreign products. In a trade model with endogenous emissions abatement, we investigate the impact of three policies aimed at mitigating carbon leakage: free emission allowances, Carbon Border...