The political economy of environmental policy favors the use of quantity-based instruments over price-based instruments (e.g., tradable permits over green taxes), at least in the United States. With cost uncertainty, however, there are clear efficiency advantages to prices in many cases,...

Most studies that compare price and quantity controls for greenhouse gas emissions under uncertainty find that price mechanisms perform substantially better. In these studies, the benefits from reducing emissions are proportional to the level of reductions, and such linear benefits strongly...

Costs and benefits in the distant future-such as those associated with global warming, long-lived infrastructure, hazardous and radioactive waste, and biodiversity-often have little value today when measured with conventional discount rates. We demonstrate that when the future path of this...

Using a simple analytical model incorporating benefits of a stock, costs of adjusting the stock, and uncertainty in costs, we uncover several important principles governing the choice of price-based policies (e.g., taxes) relative to quantity-based policies (e.g., tradable permits) for...

Cost containment has emerged as a major point of contention in the current congressional debate about designing a cap-and-trade program to limit future U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper reviews basic concepts and policy options for cost management, drawing on a March 2008 workshop...

Seminal work by Weitzman (1974) revealed that prices are preferred to quantities when marginal benefits are relatively flat compared to marginal costs. We extend this comparison to indexed policies, where quantities are proportional to an index, such as output. We find that policy preferences...

On efficiency grounds, the economics community has to date tended to emphasize price-based policies to address climate change -- such as taxes or a “safety-valve” price ceiling for cap-and-trade -— while environmental advocates have sought a more clear quantitative limit on emissions. This...

In September 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency asked 12 economists how the benefits and costs of regulations should be discounted for projects that affect future generations. This paper summarizes the views of the panel on three topics -- the use of the Ramsey formula as an organizing...

In September 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency asked 12 economists how the benefits and costs of regulations should be discounted for projects that affect future generations. This paper summarizes the views of the panel on three topics: the use of the Ramsey formula as an organizing...