Suchergebnisse

"With few exceptions, economic analyses of "cap-and-trade" permit trading mechanisms for climate change mitigation have been based on first-best scenarios without pre-existing distortions or regulations. The reason is obvious: interactions between permit trading and other regulations will be complex. However, climate policy proposed for the U.S. will certainly interact with existing laws, and will also likely include additional regulatory changes with their own sets of interactions. Major bills introduced in the U.S. Congress have included both permit trading and traditional command and control regulations - a combination sometimes called "belts and suspenders." This paper discusses interactions between these instruments, and begins to lay out a framework for thinking about them systematically. The most important determinant of how the two types of instruments interact involves whether or not the cap-and-trade permit price would induce more or less abatement than mandated by the traditional standards alone. Moreover, economists' experience predicting the costs of environmental regulations suggests we are more likely to overestimate the costs of cap-and-trade, and therefore the price of carbon permits, than we are to overestimate the costs of a traditional regulatory standard, and that therefore the regulatory standards will likely reduce the cost-effectiveness benefits of cap-and-trade"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Regulations governing the energy efficiency of new buildings have become a cornerstone of US environmental policy. California enacted the first such codes in 1978 and has tightened them every few years since. I evaluate the resulting energy savings three ways: comparing energy used by houses constructed under different standards, controlling for building and occupant characteristics; examining how energy use varies with outdoor temperatures; and comparing energy used by houses of different vintages in California to that same difference in other states. All three approaches yield estimated energy savings significantly short of those projected when the regulations were enacted. (JEL Q48, Q51, Q52)

Pollution emitted by US manufacturers declined markedly over the past several decades, even as real manufacturing output increased. I first show that most of the decline in US manufacturing pollution has resulted from changing production processes ("technology"), rather than changes in the mix of goods produced. I then show that increased net imports of polluting goods ("international trade") accounts for only a small portion of the pollution reductions from the changing mix of goods. Together, these two findings demonstrate that shifting polluting industries overseas explains only a minor part—less than 10 percent—of the cleanup of US manufacturing. (JEL F18, L23, L60, O30, Q52, Q53)