Fiscal considerations may shift governmental priorities away from environmental concerns: Finance ministers face strong demand for public expenditures such as infrastructure investments but they are constrained by international tax competition. We develop a multi-region model of tax competition...

This article analyzes the international emissions trading regime at the heart of the world's effort to address global warming as a means of exploring broader international governance issues. The trading regime seeks to marry two models of global governance, market liberalism, which embraces...

This article explains why states and localities need to be full partners in a national climate change effort based on federal legislation or the existing Clean Air Act. A large share of reductions with the lowest cost and the greatest co-benefits (e.g., job creation, technology development,...

An increasing proportion of greenhouse gas emissions is produced in urban areas in industrializing and developing countries. Recent research shows that per capita emissions in cities like Bangkok, Cape Town or Shanghai have already reached the level of cities like London, New York or Toronto....

Developing countries reject meaningful emission targets (recent intensity caps are no exception), while many industrialized countries insist that developing countries accept them. This impasse has prevented the Kyoto Protocol from establishing a global price for greenhouse gas emissions. This...

“Hopes are fading that a strong treaty will emerge from next month’s negotiations in Copenhagen,” according to Nature Geoscience (2009/11). This short book starts from Nature’s critique of the “targets and timetables” approach to international agreement and describes an international...

The Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in December 1997, is the first international treaty to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. But Kyoto does not mark the conclusion to international cooperation on climate change. It is really just a beginning. This paper shows that, in the aggregate, the benefits...

A Sectoral Crediting Mechanism (SCM) shows promise as a means to encourage the transition from the Clean Development Mechanism to more-efficient climate policies. But as an open ended program, an SCM would discourage financial commitment by developing countries. Hence, a second transition, from...

The Kyoto Protocol’s approach of assigning emission targets, or “caps,” exacerbates problems with international cooperation and commitment. This has caused the developing countries, which account for the fastest growing half of emissions, to reject caps. Global carbon pricing addresses...

In this paper a simple model is used to analyse the strategic behaviour of countries that bargain over CO2 emission reductions. Five main world regions are considered and their incentives to sign an international agreement on climate change control are analysed. A non-cooperative approach to...