This paper informs the discussion of carbon price policies by examining the potential for adverse impacts on domestic industries, with a focus on detailed sector-level analysis. The assumed policy scenario involves a unilateral economy-wide $10/ton CO2 charge without accompanying border tax...

For a host of economic, geopolitical, and environmental reasons, the security of energy supplies has moved to the forefront of U.S. policy concerns. Here, I address the extent to which the U.S. electricity sector is affected by these factors and, in turn, whether increased electricity...

Tiebout's (1956) suggestion that people "vote with their feet" to find the community that provides their optimal bundle of taxes and public goods has played a central role in the theory of local public finance over the past 50 years. Given the central importance of Tiebout's insights, there have...

Booming production of oil and gas from shale, enabled by hydraulic fracturing technology, has led to tension between hoped-for economic benefits and feared environmental and other costs, with great associated controversy. Study of how policy can best react to these challenges and how it can...

Policies to cap emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the U.S. economy could pose significant costs on the electricity sector, which contributes roughly 40 percent of total CO2 emissions in the U.S. Using a detailed simulation model of the electricity sector, we evaluate alternative ways that...

The lay of the policy land for addressing and managing environmental risk includes the hillock of the precautionary principle, the mountain of the practice and ethics of monetary valuation, and the tectonic plates of real-world innovations in markets and trading exchanges for nonmarketed...

Policies to cap emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), such as the recently announced agreement among seven northeastern states, are expected to have important effects on the electricity industry and on the market value of firms that own electricity generation assets. The economics literature finds...

The direct sale of emissions allowances by auction is an emerging characteristic of cap-and-trade programs. This study is motivated by the observation that all of the major implementations of cap-and-trade regulations for the control of air pollution have started with a generous allocation of...

The cliche in the electricity sector, the "cheapest power plant is the one we don't build," seems to neglect the benefits of the energy that plant would generate. Those overall benefits could be countered by benefits to consumers if "not building that plant" was the result of monopsony. A...

This paper provides an exhaustive review of critical issues in the design of climate mitigation policy by pulling together key findings and controversies from diverse literatures on mitigation costs, damage valuation, policy instrument choice, technological innovation, and international climate...