This paper presents the first empirical test of the green paradox hypothesis, according to which well-intended but imperfectly implemented policies may lead to detrimental environmental outcomes due to supply side responses. We use the introduction of the Acid Rain Program in the U.S. as a case...

Implementing an effective climate policy is one of the main challenges for our future. Even though ambitious mitigation targets are necessarily costly, curbing GHG emissions can prevent future irreversible impacts of climate change on human kind and the environment. Climate policy is therefore...

That climate policies are costly is evident and therefore often creates major fears. But the alternative (no action) also has a cost. Mitigation costs and damages incurred depend on what the climate policies are; moreover, they are substitutes. This brings climate policies naturally in the realm...

Megacities already account for a major part of global energy-related CO2 emissions with a strong tendency to increase; hence, future climate policy has to put a special emphasis on reducing big cities' energy consumption, especially in a world, where global climate negotiations are deadlocked....

Impure public goods represent an important group of goods. Almost every public good exerts not only effects which are public to all but also effects which are private to the producer of this good. What is often omitted in the analysis of impure public goods is the fact that – regularly –...

The 'Climate action and renewable energy package' proposed by the European Commission in the beginning of 2008 suggests auctioning as basic principle for allocation for the upcoming third trading phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme that runs from 2013 to 2020. Overall, it is estimated that...

Climate protection should use environmental policy instruments that raise revenues, which can be used, for instance, to cut labour taxes to alleviate unemployment in economies suffering from high and persistent unemployment. This paper elaborates the possibilities of an employment dividend of...

In this paper, we extend the Fehr and Schmidt model of inequality aversion to a situation where the players differ with respect to their benefits and costs from contributions to a non-linear public good. A necessary condition for contributing to the public good is that the players' benefit...

The social cost of carbon - or marginal damage caused by an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions - has been estimated by a U.S. government working group at $21 in 2010. That calculation, however, omits many of the biggest risks associated with climate change, and downplays the impact of...

Carbon budgets have emerged as a robust metric of warming, but little is known about the usefulness of regional carbon budgets as indicators of policy. This article explores the potential of regional carbon budgets to inform climate policy. Using the large database of scenarios from IPCC AR5...