In this article the problem of credible commitment in carbon policy is discussed. Investors favour long-term predictability of the policy, but without any external enforcement mechanisms a commitment made by a government can be withdrawn, leading to scepticism and lack of credibility. This...

A framework was devised for policy-makers to assess direct bilateral cap-and-trade linkages. A systematic analysis of the economic, political and regulatory implications indicates potential benefits along with a number of potentially negative sideeffects. Theoretically, economic benefits are...

In this paper, a difference-in-differences estimator on panel data for 30 developing and 21 industrialized countries is employed over the period 1971–2005 to examine how patterns of energy use (characterized by the consumption of primary energy carriers, sectoral energy use and carbon...

Without a comprehensive global climate agreement, carbon leakage remains a contentious issue. Consumption-based pricing of emissions—which could in practice be implemented with a full border tax adjustment (BTA)—has been forwarded as an option to increase the effectiveness of unilateral...

The implementation of mitigation policies will be complicated by several real-world imperfections ("second-best conditions") and constraints typically not included in the more idealized economies assumed in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), based on which such policies are derived. But which...

type="main" <p>We investigate how different designs of carbon offset mechanisms, like the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), affect the success of self-enforcing climate treaties. In a game-theoretic numerical model of coalition formation we find that participation in the agreement...</p>

The linking of emission trading systems (ETS) is a widely discussed policy option for future international cooperation on climate change. Benefits are expected from efficiency gains and the alleviation of concerns over competitiveness. However, from trade-theory it is known that due to general...

Models with induced technological change in the energy sector often predict a gradual expansion of renewable energies, and a substantial share of fossil fuels remaining in the energy mix through the end of our century. However, there are historical examples where new products or technologies...

In the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit, the USA announced an emissions reduction target of 17% by 2020 (relative to 2005), and the EU of 20-30% (relative to 1990). For the same time horizon, China offered to reduce the CO2-intensity of its economy by 40-45% (relative to 2005), but...

In the debate on post-Kyoto global climate policy, intensity targets, which set a maximum amount of emissions per GDP, figure as prominent alternative to Kyoto-style absolute emission targets, especially for developing countries. This paper re-examines the case for intensity targets by...