Over the past two decades, the international community has struggled to deal constructively with the problem of mitigating climate change. This is considered by many to be the preeminent public policy challenge of our time, but actual policy responses have been relatively modest. This essay...

Compliance links between CO2 emission trading programs--where firms regulated under one region's tradable permit program can comply using permits from another region, and vice-versa--are beginning to arise as a vehicle to lower costs, increase liquidity, and strengthen institutions while...

The comparability of domestic actions to mitigate global climate change has important implications for the stability, equity, and efficiency of international climate agreements. We examine a variety of metrics that could be used to evaluate countries' climate change mitigation effort and...

Carbon markets are substantial and expanding. There are many lessons from experience over the past 9 years: fewer free allowances, careful moderation of low and high prices, and a recognition that trading systems require adjustments that have consequences for market participants and market...

Links between emission trading programs are not immutable, as highlighted by New Jersey's exit from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This raises the question of what to do with existing permits that are banked for future use--choices that have consequences for market behavior in advance...

Seminal work by Weitzman [Prices vs. quantities, Rev. Econ. Stud. 41 (1974) 477-491] revealed prices are preferred to quantities when marginal benefits are relatively flat compared to marginal costs. We extend this comparison to indexed policies, where quantities are proportional to an index,...