In the wake of the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which if implemented would oblige the United States and other industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 2008-2012, a number of proposals have been offered to increase the incentives for emissions reductions over the nearer...

Australia’s carbon price has been in operation for two years. The electricity sector accounts for the majority of emissions covered under the scheme. This paper examines the impact of the carbon price on the electricity sector between 1 July 2012 and 30 June 2014, focusing on the National...

The inclusion of emissions trading in the Kyoto Protocol reflects an important decision to address climate change issues through flexible market mechanisms. In this paper, we address a number of policy issues that must be considered in designing and implementing an international greenhouse gas...

The Kyoto Protocol incorporates three flexibility mechanisms to help Annex I countries to meet their Kyoto targets at a lower overall cost. This paper aims to estimate the size of the potential market for all three mechanisms over the first commitment period. Based on the national communications...

Many studies have emphasized the importance of China's participation in combating global climate change, but they looked at the role of China mainly from the point of view that future, uncontrolled increases in CO2 emissions in China will offset all emissions reductions in industrialized...

The Kyoto Protocol is the first international environmental agreement that sets legally binding greenhouse gas emissions targets and timetables for Annex I countries. It incorporates emissions trading, joint implementation and the clean development mechanism. Because each of the Articles...

If the U.S. should limit carbon dioxide emissions, an allowance trading policy may offer one method of achieving that goal in a cost-effective manner. The distributional effects of such a program could be large, far in excess of the actual cost to the economy. This paper examines how two key...

The objective of this paper is to find out whether differences between the domestic permit allocation procedures of the Member States of the European Union (EU) will distort competition and lead to state aid in a European carbon trading market. This paper shows that it depends whether one takes...

This article analyzes the international emissions trading regime at the heart of the world's effort to address global warming as a means of exploring broader international governance issues. The trading regime seeks to marry two models of global governance, market liberalism, which embraces...

Some eighty years ago, economists first proposed the use of corrective taxes to internalize environmental and other externalities. Fifty years later, the portfolio of potential economic-incentive instruments was expanded to include quantity-based mechanisms -- tradeable permits. Thus,...