There is growing impetus for a domestic U.S. climate policy that can provide meaningful reductions in emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. I describe and analyze an up- stream, economy-wide CO2 cap-and-trade system which implements a gradual trajectory of emissions reductions (with...

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...

Cooperation in international environmental agreements appears difficult to attain because of strong free riding incentives. This paper explores how different technology spillover mechanisms among regions can influence the incentive structures to join and stabilize an international agreement. We...

The need for a domestic U.S. policy that seriously addresses climate change is increasingly apparent. A cap-and-trade system is the best approach in the short to medium term. Besides providing certainty about emissions levels, cap-and-trade offers an easy means of compensating for the inevitably...

Momentum may be building for federal climate change policy in the United States. Assuming this leads to mandatory greenhouse gas regulations, the door will be open for the United States to constructively re-engage other countries concerning an international climate regime. Such a regime will...

A Climate Change Damage Function (CCDF) is a reduced form relationship linking macroeconomic aggregates (e.g., potential GDP) to climate indicators (e.g., average temperature levels). This function is used in a variety of studies about climate change impacts and policy analysis. However, despite...

We build a system dynamics model to evaluate the potential dynamics of consumer adoption of “Smart Energy Behaviour”. Within this term we include different levels of: i) shift in electricity consumption towards less costly-less polluting and congestioning hours; ii) the reduction of mainly...

Social norms have been included in the theory of collective action to overcome difficulties in explaining why commons may perform better when self-regulated. The role of trust has been identified in several contexts of local social dilemmas, but only recently has been extended to global commons,...

Our purpose is to analyse the effectiveness and efficiency of a Partial Climate Agreement with open entry under a non-cooperative Nash-Equilibrium framework. We evaluate a partial agreement policy in which non-signatory countries can decide to join or to leave a coalition of the willing at any...

We couple a spatially homogeneous energy balance climate model with an economic growth model which incorporates two potential policies against climate change: mitigation, which is the traditional policy, and geoengineering. We analyze the optimal policy mix of geoengineering and mitigation in...