The UK will introduce in 2004 a system of tradable permits for the landfill of municipal waste, in response to an EU directive setting limits on such activity. Tradable permits are becoming an increasingly popular method of dealing with some environmental issues — for example, sulphur dioxide...

The research examined how to use economic instruments to reduce carbon emissions from the UK housing sector without causing negative impacts on the poorest households. Carbon taxes would worsen the problem of fuel poverty. Compensation mechanisms involving the tax and benefit system were...

This paper inverts the usual logic of the applied optimal income taxation literature. Standard practice analyzes the shape of the optimal tax schedule that is consistent with a given social welfare function, a statistical distribution of individual productivities that fits available data on...

The history of turnpikes from their first deployment in the 17th century through their decline in the 19th century, and some restoration in the 20th century is analyzed with a view to understanding the systematic causes of these changes. Key factors posited to explain both the rise and decline...

In the literature, the local dimension of technology policies is often analysed from one dominant point of view, that of the localised character of knowledge externalities. It is nonetheless widely acknowledged that the globalisation process in the ‘knowledge economy’ has implicitly taken on...

Nous présentons un modèle "prospectif" avec deux économies à générations imbriquées : L'une, riche, a stabilisé son stock de gaz à effet de serre dans un passé récent, alors que l'autre, pauvre, entâme une phase d'émissions croissantes sans moyen de lutter contre. Ces externalités...

Economists generally hold that environmental regulations impose constraints on the production possibilities set and are therefore potentially harmful to economic growth. In recent years, however, it has been recognized that environmental regulation can enhance the prospects for growth if...

Environmental policies are discussed when two countries differ in their ability to abate pollution. Northern eco-industries (the industry supplying abatement activities) are more efficient than Southern ones. Segmented environmental markets and a Northern monopoly yield identical second-best...

This paper studies energy bias in technical change. For this purpose, we develop a computable general equilibrium model that builds on endogenous growth models. The model explicitly captures links between energy, the rate and direction of technical change, and the economy. We derive the...

Recent growth in carbon dioxide emissions from China’s energy sector has exceeded expectations. In a major US government study of future emissions released in 2007 (1), participating models appear to have substantially underestimated the near-term rate of increase in China’s emissions. We...