I propose a new climate policy, called greenhouse gas (GHG) property, that makes atmospheric GHG stocks the unit of regulation. The initial extractor or importer of a fossil fuel would own tradable carbon property that would become carbon dioxide (CO2) property upon combustion. This CO2 property...

I generalize a benchmark model of directed technical change to allow innovations and factors of production (here energy resources) to be substitutes or complements. I show that a dominant sector is forever locked-in under substitutability but researchers' market incentives can drive a transition...

Our perception of time is both nonlinear and nonstationary, which makes preference reversals possible. I decompose the sources of dynamic inconsistency into a time acceleration effect and a time compression effect. Standard economic models focus only on the second effect. I show that when the...

Conventional wisdom holds that the efficient way to limit warming to a chosen level is to price carbon emissions at a rate that increases exponentially. We show that this "Hotelling" tax on carbon emissions is actually inefficient. The least-cost policy path takes advantage of the climate...

Energy efficiency improvements "rebound" when economic responses undercut their direct energy savings. I show that general equilibrium channels typically amplify rebound by making consumption goods cheaper but typically dampen rebound by increasing demand for non-energy inputs to production and...

Uncertainty is critical to questions about climate change policy. Recently developed recursive integrated assessment models have become the primary tools for studying and quantifying the policy implications of uncertainty. We decompose the channels through which uncertainty affects policy and...

I analyze a novel climate policy instrument that attaches a transferable asset to each unit of carbon in the atmosphere. I show that this instrument improves on an emission tax by incentivizing both optimal emission reductions and optimal removal of past emissions. Emitters post a bond equal to...

We provide the first revealed preference estimates of the benefits of routine weather forecasts. The benefits come from how people use advance information to reduce mortality from heat and cold. Theoretically, more accurate forecasts reduce mortality if and only if mortality risk is convex in...

We provide the first revealed preference estimates of the benefits of routine weather forecasts. The benefits come from how people use advance information to reduce mortality from heat and cold. Theoretically, more accurate forecasts reduce mortality if and only if mortality risk is convex in...

We provide the first revealed preference estimates of the benefits of routine weather forecasts. The benefits come from how people use advance information to reduce mortality from heat and cold. Theoretically, more accurate forecasts reduce mortality if and only if mortality risk is convex in...