The economic prescription for climate change is clear: price carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions to internalize climate damages. In practice, a variety of political economy constraints prevent the introduction of a carbon price equal to the full social cost of emissions. This...

For any emission trading system (ETS) with quantity-based endogenous supply of allowances, there exists a negative demand shock, e.g. induced by abatement policy, that increases aggregate supply and thus cumulative emissions. We prove this green paradox for a general model and then apply it to...

This paper examines the prices versus quantities issue, originally raised by Weitzman [8], in the context of carbon dioxide emissions and with a special focus on electricity generation. Within a simpli ed model of the electricity market, in which we explicitly allow for a monopolistic gas...

If a coalition of countries implements climate policies, nonparticipants tend to consume more, pollute more, and invest too little in renewable energy sources. In response, the coalition's equilibrium policy distorts trade and it is not time consistent. By adding a market for the right to...

China has realized that for its own sake and from the international community’s perspective, it cannot afford to continue along the conventional path of encouraging economic growth at the expense of the environment. Accordingly, the country has placed ecological goals at the same level of...

The Chinese central government has approved the seven pilot carbon trading schemes. These seven pilot regions are deliberately selected to be at varying stages of development and are given considerable leeway to design their own schemes. These pilot trading schemes have features in common, but...

An important source of political opposition to measures aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) arises from concerns over their negative effects on the competitiveness of domestic firms, especially those that are energy-intensive and exposed to competition from foreign producers....

We study optimal climate policy for a "policy bloc" of countries facing a market where emissions offsets can be purchased from a non-policy "fringe" of countries (such as for the CDM). Policy-bloc firms benefit from free quota allocations whose quantity is updated according to firms' past...

This paper calculates, for the top twenty emitting countries, how much pricing of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is in their own national interests due to domestic co-benefits. On average, nationally efficient prices are substantial, $ 57.5 per ton of CO2 (for year 2010), reflecting primarily...

Putting a price on carbon is considered a crucial step for China's endeavor of harnessing the market forces to reduce its energy consumption and carbon emissions. Indeed, aligned with China's grand experiment with low-carbon provinces and low-carbon cities in six provinces and thirty-six cities,...