November 2008
"Expecting the Unexpected: Macroeconomic Volatility and Climate Policy"
Discussion Paper
By Warwick McKibbin, Adele Morris and Peter Wilcoxen
"To estimate the emissions reductions and costs of a climate policy, analysts usually compare a policy scenario with a baseline scenario of future economic conditions without the policy. Both scenarios require assumptions about the future course of numerous factors such as population growth, technical change, and non-climate policies like taxes. The results are only reliable to the extent that the future turns out to be reasonably close to the assumptions that went into the model.
In this paper we examine the effects of unanticipated macroeconomic shocks to growth in developing countries or a global financial crisis on the performance of three climate policy regimes: a globally-harmonized carbon tax; a global cap and trade system; and the McKibbin-Wilcoxen hybrid...."
September 5, 2007
McKibbin and Wilcoxen Proposal: A Credible Foundation for Long-Term International Cooperation on Climate Change
Policy Brief
By Warwick McKibbin and Peter Wilcoxen
Warwick McKibbin and Peter Wilcoxen propose a system of parallel national-level cap-and-trade programs. Each country would determine its own emissions path and give away long-term permits to regulated firms.
