The direct sale of emissions allowances by auction is an emerging characteristic of cap-and-trade programs. This study is motivated by the observation that all of the major implementations of cap-and-trade regulations for the control of air pollution have started with a generous allocation of...

Environmental markets have several institutional features that provide a new context for the use of auctions and which have not been studied previously. This paper reports on laboratory experiments testing three auction forms: uniform and discriminatory price sealed bid auctions and an ascending...

Auctions are increasingly being used to allocate emissions allowances (“permits”) for cap and trade and common-pool resource management programs. These auctions create thick markets that can provide important information about changes in current market conditions. This paper reports a...