Basing allocation of allowances for existing installations under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme on specific emission values (benchmarks) rather than on historic emissions may have several advantages. Benchmarking may recognize early action, provide higher incentives for replacing old...

This paper generalizes the recent political economy model of Helpman and Grossman in which contributions by producer lobbies and government decisions about trade policies are modeled as a common agency game. We allow the government to choose among domestic as well as trade interventions. When...

This paper generalizes the Grossman-Helpman political economy model to characterize the structure of environmental and industry protection for a small open economy when domestic and/or trade policies are the outcome of a noncooperative common agency game between sector-specific producer lobbies...

In the last 30 years, specific primary energy use in the German steel industry has decreased by about 30%. This decrease can be attributed to both structural changes in the steel industry (from basic oxygen steel to electric arc furnace steel) and to the improved energy efficiency of new...

With greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decreasing by more than 18% in the 1990s, Germany appears to be among the few industrialised countries which are on track to meet the targets they committed themselves to under the Kyoto Protocol. This achievement may appear less remarkable if one takes into...

From an analysis of the available national allocation plans for the first period (2005-2007) of the EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS), it can be inferred that (i) the total allocation to installations covered under the EU ETS is rather generous and (ii) most EU Member States ban the transfer...

We quantified the volume of free allowances that different national allocation plans proposed to allocate to existing and new installations, with specific reference to the power sector. Most countries continue to allocate based on historic emissions, contrary to hopes for improved allocation...

Based on 18 national allocation plans (NAPs) submitted to the European Commission for phase II (2008-2012) of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), we find that, on average, the ET budgets in phase II are only about 2.6% below historical emissions in 2005, about 3.1% lower than the budgets...