International Economic Instruments and Climate Change

by Jean-Charles Hourcade, Richard Baron, Olivier Godard

A Framework Convention on Climate Change signed at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 contains a commitment by participating countries to work toward reductions in their emissions of greenhouse gases. World attention will now focus on how this abatement should be carried out. In a "market-based" approach, the two most-often discussed economic options are tradeable permits and taxes. This volume contains summary papers from two OECD Workshops on these subjects. The book reviews experiences with tradeable permits and taxes and outlines the principle problems which might arise if they were used on the climate change problem. It also reviews the most important issues that would have to be considered when designing greenhouse gas emission abatement programs involving these policy instruments.

101 pages, Paperback

First published July 16, 1993