I analyze the marginal value of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (the "social cost of carbon") under uncertainty about warming, under uncertainty about how much warming reduces consumption, and under stochastic shocks to consumption growth. I theoretically demonstrate that each of these sources...

Energy efficiency improvements "rebound" when economic responses undercut their direct energy savings. I show that general equilibrium channels typically amplify rebound by making consumption goods cheaper but typically dampen rebound by increasing demand for non-energy inputs to production and...

Our perception of time is both nonlinear and nonstationary, which makes preference reversals possible. I decompose the sources of dynamic inconsistency into a time acceleration effect and a time compression effect. Standard economic models focus only on the second effect. I show that when the...

An increasingly common type of environmental policy instrument regulates the carbon intensity of transportation and electricity markets. In order to extend the policy's scope beyond point-of-use emissions, regulators assign each competing fuel an emission intensity rating for use in calculating...

Conventional wisdom holds that the efficient way to limit warming to a chosen level is to price carbon emissions at a rate that increases exponentially. We show that this "Hotelling" tax on carbon emissions is actually inefficient. The least-cost policy path takes advantage of the climate...

Resource markets are linked over time through extraction, storage, and durable demand-side investments. I show that an anticipated strengthening of environmental policy can increase emissions today through the first two linkages and can decrease them through the third. I then use a unique...