 Economic ideas for a complex climate policy regimeDallas Burtraw and Matt Woerman Energy Economics, 2013, vol. 40, issue S1, S24-S31 Abstract: The parsimony of economic theory provides general insights into an otherwise complex world. However, the most straightforward organizing principles from theory have not often taken hold in environmental policy or in the decentralized climate policy regime that is unfolding. One reason is inadequate recognition of a variety of institutions. This paper addresses three ways that the standard model may inadequately anticipate the role of institutions in the actual implementation of climate policy, with a U.S. focus: multilayered authority across jurisdictions, the impressionistic rather than deterministic influence of prices through subsidiary jurisdictions, and the complementary role of prices and regulation in this context. The economic approach is built on the premise that incentives affect behavior. We suggest that an important pathway of influence for economic theory is to infuse incentive-based thinking into the conventional regulatory framework. In a complex policy regime, incentives can be shaped by shadow prices as well as market prices. Keywords: Institutions; Federalism; Subsidiarity; Shadow prices; Incentives; Regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:40:y:2013:i:s1:p:s24-s31 DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2013.09.021 Access Statistics for this article Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier |
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