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Recent developments suggest that well-intended climate policies--including carbon taxes and subsidies for renewable energy -- might not accomplish what policy makers intend. Hans-Werner Sinn has described a "green paradox," arguing that these policies could hasten global warming by encouraging owners of fossil fuel reserves to increase their extraction rates for fear that their reserves will become worthless. In this volume, economists investigate the empirical and theoretical support for the green paradox. Offering detailed and rigorous analyses of the forces and assumptions driving Sinn's argument, the contributors consider whether rising carbon tax rates inevitably speed up climate change; the effects of the design of resource markets, the availability of clean substitutes, and the development of new technologies; and the empirical evidence (or lack thereof) for the green paradox result. They consider extraction costs; sustainability and innovation; timing, announcement effects, and time consistency in relation to policy measures; and empirical results for the green paradox phenomena under several alternative policy measures.
ContributorsJulien Daubanes, Corrado Di Maria, Carolyn Fischer, Florian Habermacher, Michael Hoel, Darko Jus, Gebhard Kirchgassner, Ian Lange, Pierre Lasserre, Volker Meier, Karen Pittel, Stephen Salant, Frank Stahler, Gerard van der Meijden, Frederick van der Ploeg, Edwin van der Werf, Ngo Van Long, Ralph A. Winter, Cees Withagen
About the author
Karen Pittel is Director of the Ifo Center for Energy, Climate, and Exhaustible Resources and Professor of Economics at Munich University. Frederick van der Ploeg is Professor of Economics and Research Director of the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford. Cees Withagen is Professor of Environmental Economics at VU University, Amsterdam.
Summary
A detailed and rigorous analysis of the effect of climate policies on climate change that questions the empirical and theoretical support for the "green paradox."
