We empirically investigate the responsiveness of international trade to the stringency of environmental regulation. Stringent environmental regulation may impair the export competitiveness of ‘dirty’ domestic industries, and as a result, ‘pollution havens’ emerge in countries where...

This paper studies patenting decisions by firms in relation to the negotiation and signing of the Helsinki and Oslo protocol as part of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. We use a uniquely constructed patent data set on SO2 abatement technologies filed in 15 signatory and...

The effects of climate policies are often studied under the assumption of perfectly competitive markets for fossil fuels. In this paper, we allow for monopolistic fossil fuel supply. We show that, if fossil and renewable energy sources are perfect substitutes, a phase will exist during which the...

The objective of this paper is to critically assess the use simple rules for the social cost of carbon (SCC) employing a rudimentary form of the Ramsey rule. Two interrelated caveats apply. First, if climate change poses a serious problem, it is hard to justify an exogenous constant growth rate...

In the standard setting a system of tradable permits is effective and cost-efficient in attaining the policy objective of pollution reduction. This outcome is challenged in case of a tradable permit system in a federal system/constitution with individual states having discretionary power...

The Green Paradox states that, in the absence of a tax on CO2 emissions, subsidizing a renewable backstop such as solar or wind energy brings forward the date at which fossil fuels become exhausted and consequently global warming is aggravated. We shed light on this issue by solving a model of...

In the Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz model of capital accumulation and resource depletion we show the following equivalence: If an efficient path has constant (gross and net of population growth) savings rates, then population growth must be quasi-arithmetic and the path is a maximin or a...

Optimal climate policy is studied. Coal, the abundant resource, contributes more CO2 per unit of energy than the exhaustible resource, oil. We characterize the optimal sequencing oil and coal and departures from the Herfindahl rule. 'Preference reversal' can take place. If coal is very dirty...

This paper extends the classical exhaustible-resource/stock-pollution model with the irreversibility of pollution decay. Within this framework, we answer the question how the potential irreversibility of pollution affects the extraction path. We investigate the conditions under which the economy...

Our main message is that it is optimal to use less coal and more oil once one takes account of coal being a backstop which emits much more CO2 than oil. The way of achieving this is to have a steeply rising carbon tax during the initial oil-only phase, a less-steeply rising carbon tax during the...