As economists, we tend to accept the principle that more choice cannot make us worse off. However, recent evidence from laboratory and field experiments suggests that more choice can inhibit decision-making and reduce search in many situations, potentially reducing welfare. This paper provides a...

Carbon markets are central to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper introduces a new carbon market model that aims to simulate the development of the global carbon market over the next 10-20 years. The model is based on detailed regional and sectoral marginal abatement...

Carbon markets are central to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper introduces a new carbon market model that aims to simulate the development of the global carbon market over the next 10-20 years. The model is based on detailed regional and sectoral marginal abatement...

One of the most controversial areas of economics is the practice of discounting: attaching a lower weight to future costs and benefits than present costs and benefits. Discounting appears to offend notions of sustainable development and the interests of future generations. Recent advances in the...

Research into the social cost of carbon emissions — the marginal social damage from a ton of emitted carbon — has tended to focus on “best guess” scenarios. Such scenarios generally ignore the potential for low-probability, high-damage events, which are critically important to...

Time consistency problems can arise when environmental taxes are employed to encourage firms to take irreversible abatement decisions. Setting a high carbon tax, for instance, would induce firms to invest in low-carbon technology, yet once investment has occurred the government can then reduce...

The introduction of mandatory controls and a trading scheme covering approximately half of all carbon dioxide emissions across Europe has triggered a debate about the impact of emissions trading on the competitiveness of European industry. Economic theory suggests that, in many sectors,...

The European Directive on the EU ETS allows governments to auction up to 10% of the allowances issued in phase II 2008-2012, without constraints being specified thereafter. This article reviews and extends the long-standing debate about auctioning, in which economists have generally supported...

Kagan (2002) argues that the different responses of Europeans and Americans to major strategic and international challenges is not simply due to differences in the current administrations, but rather results from (i) a power gap and (ii) differing ideologies. This article applies Kagan's theory...

Discussions about applied Cost Benefit Analysis are incomplete without the thorny issue of discounting emerging at some point. Indeed, since the calculation of Net Present Values (NPV), and hence the efficiency of a project or policy, hinges so crucially upon the level of the discount rate...