Many countries have pledged targets or actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; these have been listed in the Appendices to the Copenhagen Accord and, at the time of writing, are being transferred to the UNFCCC Cancún Agreements. This analysis examines the costs and effectiveness of these...

We develop a 2-period emission trading model for a stock pollutant with demand shocks resolving over time. We find precise conditions for efficiency of a stabilization mechanism where cumulative available permits decrease with excess supply in early periods. Our model describes the stabilization...

We develop a dynamic regulation game for a stock externality under asymmetric information and future market uncertainty. Within this framework, regulation is characterized as the implementation of a welfare-maximization program conditional on informational constraints. We identify the most...

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...

We study how public policies affects an economy where production emits pollutants and investment in productive assets raises the economy’s overall productivity. We explore two hypotheses about how the accumulation of pollutants affects human well-being. Under the first one, there is no limit...

Voluntary participation can improve multilateral environmental governance. We develop a theory of voluntary participation in federal environmental policy by states of differing wealth. Using a general equilibrium model, we formalize voluntary participation by a Pareto-improving federal emission...

We consider international negotiations on the level of global pollution, and examine the Lindahl solution which determines the distribution of the pollution permits with unanimous agreement. We show various properties to clarify difficulties to achieve a Pareto efficient allocation as an...

We consider international negotiations on the level of global pollution, and examine the Lindahl solution which determines the distribution of the pollution permits with unanimous agreement. We show various properties to clarify difficulties to achieve a Pareto efficient allocation as an...

This study comprehensively assesses the immediate effects of extreme weather conditions and high concentrations of ambient air pollution on population health. For Germany and the years 1999 to 2008, we link the universe of all 170 million hospital admissions, along with all 8 million deaths,...

This study comprehensively assesses the immediate effects of extreme weather conditions and high concentrations of ambient air pollution on population health. For Germany and the years 1999 to 2008, we link the universe of all 170 million hospital admissions, along with all 8 million deaths,...