The authors' 15 years of experience with the Acid Rain Program suggests that for regional or larger-scale air pollution problems, such as acid rain and pollution transport, a well-designed cap-and-trade program can be cost-effective, flexible, and easy to implement with clear benefits that can...

A growth-decomposition (scale, technique and composition effect) covering 62 countries and 7 manufacturing sectors over the 1990-2000 period shows that trade, through reallocations of activities across countries, has contributed to a 2-3 percent decrease in world SO2 emissions. However, when...

This study evaluates a novel scheme to trade sulfur dioxide emission permits subject to non-uniform rates. These rates are based on generators' marginal costs of compliance with environmental policy in a hypothesized least social-cost solution. This scheme is compared against the existing...

Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 created a market for electric utility emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2). Recent papers have argued that flaws in the design of the auctions that are part of this market have adversely affected its performance. These papers incorrectly assume that...

Electric utilities can reduce sulfur dioxide emissions through a variety of strategies such as adding scrubbers, switching to low- sulfur coal, or shifting output between generating plants with different emissions. The cost of achieving a given emission target can be minimized using a market for...

The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act created a trading program in sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions that has served as the seminal example of how an emissions trading program could be designed. Yet despite its success, the trading program was essentially brought to an end by a series of...

Title IV of the 1990 U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments offers firms facing high marginal costs for pollution abatement the chance to purchase the right to emit sulfur dioxide from firms with lower costs. In the long run such allowance trading may achieve substantial cost savings over an...