New car fleet fuel economy, weight and engine power have changed drastically since 1980. These changes represent both movements along and shifts in the "fuel economy/weight/engine power production possibilities frontier". This paper estimates the technological progress that has occurred since...

From 1864 to 1972, the real price of oil fell by, on average, over one percent per year. This trend dramatically broke when prices for crude increased by over 650 percent from 1972 to 1980. Policy makers adopted several policies designed to keep oil prices in check and reduce consumption....

The United States consumed more petroleum-based liquid fuel per capita than any other OECD-high-income country - 30 percent more than the second-highest country (Canada) and 40 percent more than the third-highest (Luxemburg). This paper examines the main channels through which reductions in U.S....

This paper examines the impact of individual human operators on the fuel efficiency of power plants. Although electricity generation is a fuel and capital intensive enterprise, anecdotal evidence, interviews, and empirical analysis support the hypothesis that labor, particularly power plant...

This paper considers the efficiency of various types of environmental regulations when they are applied locally to pollutants whose damages extend outside the jurisdiction of the local regulator. We draw on examples from state- and city-level efforts to address climate change by enacting...

Beginning in the late 1990s, electricity markets in many US states were deregulated, and almost half of the nation's 103 nuclear power reactors were sold to independent power producers. Deregulation has been accompanied by substantial market consolidation, and today the three largest companies...

<DIV>Economic research on climate change has been crucial in advancing our understanding of the consequences associated with global warming as well as the costs and benefits of the various policies that might reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. As nations work to develop climate policies, economic...</div>

As with other commodities, electricity is often traded on both forward and spot markets. This was initially true in the restructured California electricity industry from 1998 to 2000. Though the power traded in the forward and spot markets was for delivery at the same times and locations, prices...

Most of the medium-run growth in energy demand is forecast to come from the developing world, which consumed more total units of energy than the developed world in 2007. We argue that the main driver of the growth is likely to be increased incomes among the poor and near-poor. We document that...

While economic models have already proven useful to analyze big picture questions about climate policy such as the choice between a carbon tax or cap-and-trade permit system, the 19 chapters in this book show how economic models also are useful to address the many remaining smaller questions...