This research analyses the firms' strategic choice of adopting an abatement technology in an environment with pollution externalities when the government levies an emission tax to incentivise firms undertaking emission-reducing actions. A set of different Nash equilibria - ranging from dirty to...

Swiss climate policy consists of three regulatory instruments for greenhouse gas emissions reduction: A CO 2 levy, the Swiss Emissions Trading System (CH EHS), and an additional nonEHS" program for medium-sized plants that consists of command-and-control elements plus a sizeable abatement...

One of the biggest obstacles in cross-country empirical research in the area of environmental economics is the absence of a sound indicator quantifying environmental policy stringency. A variety of indicators have been proposed and are currently used. Almost none of them rely on an explicitly...

This is the online appendix to the paper “How should we measure environmental policy stringency? A new approach” (Sauter, 2014). The main paper outlines the general methodology proposed to construct environmental policy indexes and proposes a first implementation of a CO2 input index and a...

As an important step towards building a "harmonious society" through "scientific development", China has incorporated for the first time in its five-year economic plan an energy input indicator as a constraint. While it achieved a quadrupling of its GDP while cutting its energy intensity by...

Just prior to the Copenhagen climate summit, China pledged to cut its carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020 relative to its 2005 levels to help to reach an international climate change agreement at Copenhagen or beyond. This raises the issue of whether such a pledge is ambitious or just represents...

China's capital-intensive, export-oriented, spectacular economic growth since launching its open-door policy and economic reforms in late 1978 not only has created jobs and has lifted millions of the Chinese people out of poverty, but also has given rise to unprecedented environmental pollution...

China has realized that for its own sake and from the international community’s perspective, it cannot afford to continue along the conventional path of encouraging economic growth at the expense of the environment. Accordingly, the country has placed ecological goals at the same level of...

This paper by using Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP) constructs four different renewable energy scenarios for the Greek transport, energy, and industry sectors. By projecting the demand for renewable energy and the associated resulting carbon dioxide emissions up to the...

Vehicle taxation based on CO2 emissions is increasingly being adopted worldwide in order to shift consumer purchases to low-carbon cars, yet little is known about the effectiveness and overall economic impact of these schemes. We focus on feebate schemes, which impose a fee on high-carbon...