This paper analyzes the efficient design of green payments. Green payments can generate environmental benefits and support farmers' income. We extend a standard adverse selection model by incorporating dual policy goals into the design of green payments: conservation and income support. We also...

Pigouvian taxes are typically imposed in situations where there is imperfect knowledge on the extent of damage caused by a producing firm. A regulator imposing imperfectly informed Pigouvian taxes may cause the firms that should (should not) produce to shut down (produce). In this paper we use a...

In this paper, we examine the design of permit trading programs when the objective is to minimize the cost of achieving an ex ante pollution target, that is, one that is defined in expectation rather than an ex post deterministic value. We consider two potential sources of uncertainty, the...

Life cycle analysis (LCA) is the standard approach used to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of biofuels. However, it is increasingly recognized that LCA results do not account for some impacts including land use changes that have important implications on GHGs. Thus, an alternative...

The optimal pollution permit trading system is examined when the regulator, faced with incomplete information on firms’' abatement costs and delivery coefficients, seeks to minimize expected total abatement costs to meet an ex ante pollution target. Intuitively, we find that the optimal trading...