Economists tend to view a uniform emissions price as the most cost-effective approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This paper offers a different view, focusing on economies where society values the well-being of future generations more than private actors. Employing analytical and...

In the context of tight public budgets and increasingly ambitious climate objectives, the performance of the support policies for residential energy conservation works needs to be assessed. We compare the performance of four types of support schemes in France, namely the income tax credit, a...

This paper examines the distributional impacts from (i) harmonizing prices for carbon dioxide emissions across sectors and EU countries and (ii) using alternative rules for carbon revenue distribution. We develop a numerical multi-country multi-sector general equilibrium model of the EU-27...

We study Germany's photovoltaic (PV) subsidy program, estimating a dynamic model of new technology adoption which accounts for heterogeneity in residential ownership structures. We find that homeowner and landlord investors heavily discount future benefits, highlighting the suboptimality of the...

In this paper, we compare the economic and welfare implications of two carbon pricing policies, namely the European Cap and Trade (CaT) regime and the Chinese Tradeable Performance Standard (TPS). The former sets an economy-wide emissions target and forces firms to purchase sufficient...

This paper analyzes the impact of declining extraction costs of shale oil producers on the choice of the policy instrument of a climate coalition in the presence of a monopolistic oil supplier such as OPEC. Shale oil producers' extraction costs represent an upper bound for the oil price OPEC can...

The allocation of free allowances for firms belonging to the carbon leakage list of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) was found to lead to substantial overcompensation, which is why some stakeholders recently have called for a phasing out of free allowances in the near term....

International carbon markets are frequently propagated as an efficient instrument for reducing CO2 emissions. We argue that such markets, despite their desirable efficiency properties, might not be in the best interest of governments who are guided by strategic considerations in negotiations. We...

It is widely believed that an environmental tax (price regulation) and cap-and-trade (quantity regulation) are equally efficient in controlling pollution when there is no uncertainty. We show that this is not the case if some consumers (firms, local governments) are morally concerned about...

Technology policy is the most widespread form of climate policy and is often preferred over seemingly efficient carbon pricing. We propose a new explanation for this observation: gains that predominantly accrue to households with large capital assets and that influence majority decisions in...