Governments contracting with private agents for the provision of an impure public good must contend with agents who would potentially supply the good absent any payments. This additionality problem is centrally important to the use of carbon offsets to mitigate climate change. We analyze optimal...

Governments contracting with private agents for the provision of an impure public good must contend with agents who would potentially supply the good absent any payments. This additionality problem is centrally important in the use of carbon offsets as part of climate change mitigation....

In this paper, we present what is to our knowledge the first theoretical economic analysis of CO2- enhanced oil recovery (EOR). This technique, which has been used successfully in a number of oil plays (notably in West Texas, Wyoming, and Saskatchewan), entails injection of CO2 into mature oil...

Economists have analyzed potential for damages from climate change from theoretical analyses and with Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). Analytical models typically write damages as a function of the carbon stock, while IAMs typically view damages as based on temperatures. In this paper, we...

We model countries' choice of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a dynamic game. Emissions generate immediate benefits to the emitting country but also increase atmospheric GHG concentrations that negatively affect present and future welfare of all countries. Because there are no international...

Addressing global climate change is likely to require broad-based deployment of new infrastructure. This new infrastructure is likely to be both costly to build and difficult to reverse – suggesting the deployment of new infrastructure is an example of “investment under uncertainty” (Dixit...

Transitioning the economy from one that relies on fossil fuels to one that emphasizes renewable energy sources will have important implications for the pattern of natural resource use. Such a transition depends on government policies. As elected politicians have an incentive to weigh the...

We model countries' choice of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a dynamic game. Emissions generate immediate benefits to the emitting country but also increase atmospheric GHG concentrations that negatively affect present and future welfare of all countries. Because there are no international...