A carbon tax will interact with other policies that are intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and encourage clean sources of energy and energy efficiency. This paper examines these policy interactions. A well-designed carbon tax can be an efficient instrument for reducing emissions, yet...

This paper studies how changes in welfare benefit levels affect welfare recipients' residential choices. Although several empirical studies have stressed that welfare policy may affect residential choices of welfare recipients, few studies have simultaneously taken into account that residential...

We propose a theory of tax centralization in politico-economic equilibrium. Taxation has dynamic general equilibrium implications which are rationally internalized at the federal, but not at the regional level. The political support for taxation therefore differs across levels of government....

China and India increasingly provide aid and credit to developing countries. This paper explores whether India uses these financial instruments to compete for geopolitical and commercial in uence with China (and vice versa). To do so, we build a new geocoded dataset of Indian government-financed...

Jurisdictions have overlapping authority regarding electricity restructuring when a national authority and subnational regional governments—for example, states—both have a say. The initial sections of the paper review the division of regulatory authority over electricity markets in the...

This paper provides evidence that China's system of tax revenue sharing is an important explanation for differences in the rate of sewage treatment plant construction among its cities. As a result of the 1994 tax reform, Chinese cities retained different shares of their value-added tax (VAT)....

Economic approaches are expected to achieve environmental goals at less cost than traditional regulations, but they have yet to find widespread application. One reason is the way these tools interact with existing institutions. The federalist nature of governmental authority assigns to...

The parsimony of economic theory provides general insights into an otherwise complex world. However, the most straightforward organizing principles from theory have not often taken hold in environmental policy or in the decentralized climate policy regime that is unfolding. One reason is...

National and subnational economies have started implementing carbon pricing systems unilaterally, from the bottom up. Therefore, the potential linking of individual cap-and-trade programs to capture efficiency gains and other benefits is of keen interest. This paper introduces a two-tiered...

In 2009, President Obama pledged that, by 2020, the United States would achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of 17 percent from 2005 levels. With the failure of Congress to adopt comprehensive climate legislation in 2010, the feasibility of the pledge was put in doubt. However, we find...