Articles

10 Items

he Harbor Freeway, California State Route 110, in Downtown Los Angeles during afternoon rush hour.

Wikimedia CC/Coolcaesar

Journal Article - Journal of Economic Perspectives

Policy Evolution Under the Clean Air Act

| Fall 2019

The 1970 Clean Air Act established the basic architecture of the U.S. air pollution control system: It was the first environmental law to give the federal government a serious regulatory role, and it became a model for many subsequent environmental laws in the United States and abroad. In this article, the authors describe the evolution of air pollution control policy under this legislation with particular attention to the types of policy instruments used.

teaser image

Magazine Article - The Environmental Forum

Free GHG Cuts: Too Good to be True?

| May/June 2007

Global climate change is a serious environmental threat, and sound public policies will be needed to address it effectively and sensibly. In previous columns, I have emphasized the importance of recognizing the global commons nature of the problem, and hence designing and implementing an international policy architecture that is scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic.

teaser image

Journal Article - Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

Land-Use Change and Carbon Sinks: Econometric Estimation of the Carbon Sequestration Supply Function

| 2006

Investigates the cost of forest-based carbon sequestration by analyzing econometrically micro-data on revealed landowner preferences, modeling six major private land uses in a comprehensive analysis of the contiguous United States.

teaser image

Journal Article - Journal of Economic Perspectives

What Can We Learn from the Grand Policy Experiment? Lessons from SO2 Allowance Trading

| Summer 1998

The most ambitious application ever attempted of a market-based approach to environmental protection has been for the control of acid rain under the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, which established a sulfur dioxide allowance trading program. This essay identifies lessons that can be learned from this grand experiment in economically oriented environmental policy. The author examines positive political economy lessons, asking why this system was adopted from acid-rain control in 1990, and he considers normative lessons that can be learned from the program's structure and performance, focusing on lessons for the design and implementation of future systems.

Journal Article - American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings

An International Policy Architecture for the Post-Kyoto Era

| May 2006

We describe the basic features of a post-Kyoto international global climate agreement, which addresses three crucial questions: who, when, and how. The respective elements are: first, a means to ensure that key nations-- industrialized and developing-- are involved; second, an emphasis on an extended time path of action (employing a cost-effective pattern over time); and third, inclusion of market-based policy instruments.