We investigate how public opinion along with the electoral process affect the strength of environmental fiscal policies in the European Union (EU). Our analysis accounts for a set of economic, institutional, and political factors that can affect environmental taxes and expenditures. We pursue a...

For any emission trading system (ETS) with quantity-based endogenous supply of allowances, there exists a negative demand shock, e.g. induced by abatement policy, that increases aggregate supply and thus cumulative emissions. We prove this green paradox for a general model and then apply it to...

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has aimed to encourage the development of low-carbon technologies by putting a price on carbon emissions. Using a newly constructed data set that links 8.5 million European companies with their patenting history and their regulatory status...

We examine an open economy's strategy to reduce its carbon emissions by replacing its consumption of coal - very carbon intensive - with gas - less so. Unlike the standard analysis of carbon leakage, unilateral carbon-reduction policies with more than one carbon energy source may turn...

We examine an open economy’s strategy to reduce its carbon emissions by replacing its consumption of coal—very carbon intensive—with gas—less so. Unlike the standard theoretical approach to carbon leakage, we show that unilateral CO2 reduction policies generate a higher leakage rate in...

We examine an open economy's strategy to reduce its carbon emissions by replacing its consumption of coal - very carbon intensive - with gas - less so. Unlike the standard theoretical approach to carbon leakage, we show that unilateral CO2 reduction policies generate a higher leakage rate in the...

This paper presents the first empirical test of coherence (i.e., consistency of policies within a framework), efficiency (i.e., ability of policies to meet their objectives), and independence (i.e., logical priority of objectives over policies) of the overall EU environmental policy system. To...

New York is considering additional emission regulation on top of its obligations under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to achieve its State Energy Plan targets. The proposed measure is a so-called "carbon adder" on CO2 emissions from the power sector which is set as the difference...

The purpose of this article is twofold: First to discuss three misconceptions in the debate on climate policies: i) that de-growth is necessary, ii) that the market economy is part of the problem rather than part of the solution to climate change, and iii) that the only policy tool needed is to...

Carbon pricing decisions by governments are prone to time-inconsistency, which causes the private sector to underinvest in emission-reducing technologies. We show that incentives for decarbonization can be improved if complementing carbon pricing with carbon contracts for differences, where the...