We examine the extent to which various environmental policy instruments meet major evaluation criteria, including cost-effectiveness, distributional equity, minimization of risk in the presence of uncertainty, and political feasibility. Instruments considered include emissions taxes, tradable...

Using analytical and numerical general equilibrium models, we show that preexisting factor taxes produce a "tax-interaction effect" that increases the costs of pollution taxes and quotas. Under policies that raise revenue and recycle it through cuts in marginal factor tax rates, this effect is...

We show that under typical conditions the simple "excess-burden triangle" formula substantially underestimates the excess burden of commodity taxes, in some cases by a factor of 10 or more. This formula performs poorly because it ignores general equilibrium interactionsmost important,...

Carbon taxes introduce potentially uneven cost burdens across the population. The distribution of these costs is especially important in affecting political outcomes. This paper links dynamic overlapping-generations and microsimulation models of the United States to estimate the initial...