China had been singled out by Western politicians and media for dragging its feet on international climate negotiations at Copenhagen, the accusations previously always targeted on the U.S. To put such a criticism into perspective, this paper provides some reflections on China’s stance and...

It can be argued that one way to reduce the dependence from external energy sources, is simply to reduce the demand for energy. Energy savings may thus be considered a policy priority when concerns for energy security are particularly strong. Drawing on an original econometric approach, we check...

Global climate change mitigation will require the development and diffusion of a large number and variety of new technologies. How will patent protection affect this process? In this paper we first review the evidence on the role of patents for innovation and international technology transfer in...

Global Emissions Trading: Prospects and Pitfalls

The next major round of international negotiations on controlling global climate change is to be held later this year in Kyoto. The focus of talks to date has been on policies to reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels and hold them there. A proposal by the United States would...

We give theoretical, partial equilibrium comparisons of a tax with thresholds, tradable targets ('emissions trading' or ET), and non-tradable targets, as mechanisms to abate well-mixed ('global') emissions from many parties, under independent uncertainties in both future business-as-usual...

The next major round of international negotiations on controlling global climate change is to be held later this year in Kyoto. The focus of talks to date has been on policies to reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels and hold them there. A proposal by the United States would...

In a number of papers, McKibbin and Wilcoxen (1997a,1997b,1999) have proposed to tackle rising greenhouse emissions by using an internationally coordinated system of domestic permit trading schemes with a fixed price rather than a fixed cap on greenhouse emissions. This paper argues that early...

We use an econometrically estimated multi-region, multi-sector general equilibrium model of the world economy to examine the effects of the tradable emissions permit system proposed in the 1997 Kyoto protocol, under various assumptions about that extent of international permit trading. We focus,...

Permit Trading Under the Kyoto Protocol and Beyond