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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2021‒11‒15
two papers chosen by |
| By: | Samuel Kortum (Cowles Foundation, Yale University); David A. Weisbach (The University of Chicago Law School) |
| Abstract: | 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 but not goods, both at a lower rate than the extraction tax rate, and (iii) a goods-speciï¬ c export subsidy. The policy controls leakage by combining supply-side and demand-side taxes to control the price of energy in the non-taxing region. It exploits international trade to expand the reach of the climate policy. We calibrate and simulate the model to illustrate how the optimal policy compares to more traditional policies such as extraction, production, and consumption taxes and combinations of those taxes. The simulations show that combinations of supply-side and demand-side taxes are much better than simpler policies and can perform nearly as well as the optimal policy. |
| Keywords: | Carbon taxes, Border adjustments, Leakage, Climate change |
| JEL: | F18 H23 Q54 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2311&r= |
| By: | Christophe Bonneuil (CRH - Centre de Recherches Historiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Pierre-Louis Choquet (CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Benjamin Franta (Stanford University) |
| Abstract: | Building upon recent work on other major fossil fuel companies, we report new archival research and primary source interviews describing how Total responded to evolving climate science and policy in the last 50 years. We show that Total personnel received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971, became more fully informed of the issue in the 1980s, began promoting doubt regarding the scientific basis for global warming by the late 1980s, and ultimately settled on a position in the late 1990s of publicly accepting climate science while promoting policy delay or policies peripheral to fossil fuel control. Additionally, we find that Exxon, through the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), coordinated an international campaign to dispute climate science and weaken international climate policy, beginning in the 1980s. This represents one of the first longitudinal studies of a major fossil fuel company's responses to global warming to the present, describing historical stages of awareness, preparation, denial, and delay. |
| Keywords: | Public relations,Denial,Agnotology,Global warming,Climate change,Oil industry |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03390521&r= |