TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chichilnisky,Graciela
AU  - Heal,Geoffrey
TI  - Who Should Abate Carbon Emissions? An International Viewpoint
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4425
PY  - 1993
Y2  - August 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4425
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4425.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Graciela Chichilnisky
335  riverside drive ny ny 10025
E-Mail: gc9@columbia.edu

Geoffrey Heal
Graduate School of Business
616 Uris Hall
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027-6902
Tel: 212/854-6459
Fax: 212/316-9219
E-Mail: gmh1@columbia.edu
AB  - We review the optimal pattern of carbon emission abatements across countries in a simple multi-country world. We model explicitly the fact that the atmosphere is a public good. Within this framework we establish conditions for it to be necessary for optimality that the marginal cost of abatement be the same in all countries. These condition are quite restrictive, and amount to either ignoring distributional issues between countries or operating within a framework within which lump-sum transfers can be made between countries. These results have implications for the use of tradeable emission permits, which as normally advocated will lead to the equalization of marginal abatement costs across countries. The observation that the atmosphere is a public good implies that we may need to look at a Lindahl equilibrium rather than a Walrasian equilibrium in tradeable permits.
ER  -