This essay revisits the question of instrument choice for the regulation of externalities in the context of climate change. The central point is that the Pigouvian prescription to equate marginal control costs with the expected marginal benefits of damage reduction should guide the design of...

This paper analyzes whether political outcomes in local democracies are determined by the preferences of the median - typically poor - agents or whether they reflect the wishes of the wealthy elites. A model shows that when politicians belonging to different groups can form coalitions, the...

As much as environmental problems manifest themselves as problems with the natural environment, environmental problems — and their solutions — are ultimately social and behavioral in nature. Just as the natural sciences provide a basis for understanding the need for environmental policy and...

The United States has long suffered from a schizophrenia about energy policy. The importance of one of the factors in energy policy, the environment, has never been formally defined. Climate change adds another distinct layer to this complexity, as neither energy policies nor environmental...

With the expansion of renewable energy sources (RES) in countries all over the world, policy design to address the negative impacts of RES plants on their local and regional environment gains in importance. We analyse whether policy design should be spatially-differentiated or uniform when...