Carbon markets – both emission trading systems and baseline and credit systems – are an increasingly common policy instrument being introduced to address climate change mitigation. However, their design is crucial to ensure that they deliver cost-effective emission reductions while maintaining environmental integrity. This Element puts together a comprehensive, principle-based overview of the risks and abuses to environmental integrity and cost effectiveness that have emerged for carbon ma...

Examine what would happen if we were to deploy blockchain technology at the sovereign level and use it to create a decentralized cashless economy. This book explains how finance and economics work today, and how the convergence of various technologies related to the financial sector can help us find solutions to problems, such as excessive debt creation, banks getting too big to fail, and shadow banking. The Blockchain Alternative offers sensible corrections to outdated and incorr...

Japan's savings are among the highest in the world, and these high rates have played a valuable role throughout the post-war period. However, over the next several decades, Japan's population will be ageing rapidly. Will this lower Japanese savings rates?Using up-to-date financial and demographical data, author Robert Dekle finds that the answer to this question is an emphatic 'yes'. Understanding Japanese Saving holds key lessons for Western nations undergoing similar demo...

In the past two years, the world has experienced how unsound economic practices can disrupt global economic and social order. Today’s volatile global financial situation highlights the importance of managing risk and the consequences of poor decision making.The Doom Loop in the Financial Sector reveals an underlying paradox of risk management: the better we become at assessing risks, the more we feel comfortable taking them. Using the current financial crisis as a case stu...

This open access book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn,...

*What were the causes of the financial and economic crises of 2008-2009?*What intellectual and policy mistakes prevented academics and policymakers from anticipating the crisis?*What is the future of financial regulation both domestic and international?*What role did global macroeconomic imbalances play in the run-up to the crisis?*What is the future of the export-led growth model and what are the implications for developing countries?*To what extent will government remain involved in the eco...

Greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets have long been promoted as an important element of a comprehensive climate policy approach. Offset programs can reduce the overall cost of achieving a given emission goal by enabling emission reductions to occur where costs are lower. Offsets have the potential to deliver sustainability co-benefits, through technology development and transfer. They can also develop human and institutional capacity for reducing emissions in sectors and locations not included in ...

As scientific and observational evidence on global warming piles up every day, questions of economic policy in this central environmental topic have taken center stage. But as author and prominent Yale economist William Nordhaus observes, the issues involved in understanding global warming and slowing its harmful effects are complex and cross disciplinary boundaries. For example, ecologists see global warming as a threat to ecosystems, utilities as a debit to their balance sheets, and farm...

This book builds on a decade-long experience with mechanisms provided by the Kyoto Protocol and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It discusses the challenges of climate finance in the context of the post-Copenhagen negotiations and provides a long-term outlook of how climate finance in developing countries could develop. Written by climate finance experts from academia, carbon finance businesses and international organisations, the book provides background, firsthand insights,...

A companion to the bestseller, The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution, this title deals with theoretical challenges and cutting-edge macro-micro linkage models. The authors compare the predictive and analytical power of various macro-micro linkage techniques using the traditional RHG approach as a benchmark to evaluate standard policies, such as, a typical stabilization package and a typical structural reform policy.

This paper proposes an innovative financing mechanism, known as the Low Carbon Development Facility (LCDF) that would bring additional investment financing at concessional rates to unlock low carbon development projects in non-Annex 1 countries, increasing project-based emissions avoidance in these countries.The LCDF could be a modality of the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund to implement the financial pledges made by Annex 1 countries as a result of Copenhagen and post-COP15 negotiations to sup...

Since its modest beginning in the 1970s, the academic and research focus on energy has grown substantially and energy has established itself as an independent, interdisciplinary subject area. It attracts attention from people in a range of different fields including engineers, scientists, geologists, environmentalists, bankers, investors, policy makers and politicians. Energy Economics introduces the basic concepts of energy economics and explains how simple economic tools can be ...