With few exceptions, economic analyses of "cap-and-trade" permit trading mechanisms for climate change mitigation have been based on first-best scenarios without pre-existing distortions or regulations. The reason is obvious: interactions between permit trading and other regulations will be...

The European Union's Emissions Trading System is the largest system in the world for trade in greenhouse gases. It used to be a cap-and-trade scheme with a fixed supply of permits. However, a recent reform of the system "punctures the waterbed" by making the supply of permits endogenous. The...

The details on rules and modalities for the inclusion of forestry projects in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are one of the last non resolved implementation issues of the Kyoto Protocol. We examine in detail the implications of different policy decisions concerning the inclusion of CDM...