Policy makers and analysts are often faced with situations where it is unclear whether market-based instruments hold real promise of reducing costs, relative to conventional uniform standards. We develop analytic expressions that can be employed with modest amounts of information to estimate the...

This paper concerns optimal emissions of greenhouse gases when catastrophic consequences are possible. A numerical model is presented which takes into account both continuous climate-feedback damages as well as the possibility of a catastrophic outcome. The uncertainty in the model concerns...

This paper investigates the economic implications of a comprehensive approach to sustainable greenhouse policies that strives to stabilise the atmospheric concentration of the five major greenhouse gases at an ecologically determined threshold level. In a theoretical optimisation model...

We consider a simple dynamic model of environmental taxation that exhibits time inconsistency. There are two categories of firms, Believers, who take the tax announcements made by the Regulator to face value, and Non-Believers, who perfectly anticipate the Regulator's decisions, albeit at a...

This paper provides an overview of the U.S. experience with market-based instruments with four categories: emission charges, tradeable permit systems,market friction reduction, and government subsidy reduction. Following that, I examine normative lessons that can be learned from these...

Environmental policies typically combine the identification of a goal with some means to achieve that goal. This chapter for the forthcoming Handbook of Environmental Economics focuses exclusively on the second component, the means - the "instruments" - of environmental policy, and considers, in...

The purpose of the paper is to narrow the gap between the widespread use of voluntary agreements and research on the rationale of such approaches. A typical example are voluntary agreements of many industries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of global warming. If the industry...