The initial allocation of pollution permits is an important aspect of emissions trading schemes. We generalize the analysis of Böhringer and Lange (2005, Eur Econ Rev 49(8): 2041–2055) to initial allocation mechanisms that are based on inter-firm relative performance comparisons (including...

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the initial allocation of pollution permits in a dynamic tradeable market. Tradeable pollution permit markets are an increasingly common method of environmental regulation and it is apparent that future schemes may have a number of repeated...

In this paper we advocate a new initial allocation mechanism for a tradable pollution permit market. We outline a Permit Allocation Contest (PAC) that distributes permits to firms based on their rank relative to other firms. This ranking is achieved by ordering firms based on an observable...

Contests are a common method to describe the distribution of many different types of rents. Yet in many of these situations the utilisation of the prize plays an important role in determining agents payoffs and incentives. In this paper, we investigate the incentives to expend effort for a prize...

The establishment of a tradable permit market requires the regulator to select a level of aggregate emissions and then distribute the associated permits (rent) to specific groups. In most circumstances, these decisions are often politically contentious and frequently influenced by rent seeking...

As carbon sinks, forests play a critical role in helping to mitigate the growing threat from anthropogenic climate change. Forest carbon offsets transacted between GHG emitters in industrialised countries and sellers in developing countries have emerged as a useful climate policy tool. A model...

Project-based emissions trading schemes, like the Clean Development Mechanism, are particularly prone to problems of asymmetric information between project parties and the regulator. In this paper, we extend the general framework on incomplete enforcement of policy instruments to reflect the...

We investigate the efficiency of Coasean bargaining when restrictions are placed on the set of feasible bargaining outcomes. When property rights are costly to (defend) appropriate, we find bargaining restrictions may be Pareto superior to unconstrained voluntary exchange. Under cost uncertainty...

In this paper we challenge the conventional view that strikes are caused by asymmetric information regarding firm profitability such that union members are uninformed. Instead, we build an expressive model of strikes where the perception of unfairness provides the expressive benefit of voting...