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...

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...

Whether or not the federal government should price carbon continues to be debated. There were several scholarly pieces examining the relative advantages and disadvantages of cap and trade v. a carbon tax at the time of Congressional Debate on the American Clean Energy and Security Act in 2010....

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...

To reach climate neutrality, carbon emissions from the production of basic materials need to be significantly reduced. For governments' support measures to be consistent with their World Trade Organization obligations, they need to be compatible with the WTO's Agreement on Subsidies and...

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...

This paper applies principles of adverse selection to overcome obstacles that prevent the implementation of Pigouvian policies to internalize externalities. Focusing on negative externalities from production (such as pollution), we consider settings in which aggregate emissions are known, but...

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...

This paper is a quasi-replication of Andersson (2019). I use the synthetic control method to estimate the effect of a carbon tax starting at $1.41 per tonne of CO2 and increased through successive reforms to $20 by 2011. The results show that, one year after the intervention, the tax reduced CO2...