Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Yale University

Series

2021

Climate change

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Optimal Unilateral Carbon Policy, Samuel Kortum, David A. Weisbach Nov 2021

Optimal Unilateral Carbon Policy, Samuel Kortum, David A. Weisbach

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We derive the optimal unilateral policy in a general equilibrium model of trade and climate change where one region of the world imposes a climate policy and the rest of the world does not. A climate policy in one region shifts activities—extraction, production, and consumption—in the other region. The optimal policy trades off the costs of these distortions. The optimal policy can be implemented through: (i) a nominal tax on extraction at a rate equal to the global marginal harm from emissions, (ii) a tax on imports of energy and goods, and a rebate of taxes on exports of energy …


Climate Club Futures: On The Effectiveness Of Future Climate Clubs, William D. Nordhaus May 2021

Climate Club Futures: On The Effectiveness Of Future Climate Clubs, William D. Nordhaus

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A proposal to combat free-riding in international climate agreements is the notion of a “climate club” or coalition of countries to encourage high levels of participation. Empirical models of climate clubs in the early stages relied on the analysis of single-period coalition formation. The results suggested that there were limits on the potential strength of clubs and that it would be difficult to have deep abatement strategies in the club framework. The current work extends the single-period approach to many periods and develops an approach analyzing “supportable policies” to analyze multi-period clubs. The major surprise of the study is the …