Environmental and Resources Economics

Description

The main line of research of the Group of environmental economics is the analysis, from a game theory approach, of the international cooperation to face global environmental problems, such as the climate change.

The principal issues we want to address in this framework are:

The scope and effectiveness of the international environmental agreements. Using coalition formation games with different properties, we want to evaluate how successful this kind of agreements can be not only in terms of participation (scope) but also in terms of the abatement reached by the agreement (effectiveness).
The effect of technological change to increase participation in international environmental agreements. This is key issue that has not been extensively addressed in the theoretical literature and that deserves more attention.
The analysis of the instruments used to implement the abatement targets of the agreements. In particular, we would like to compare the use of permit markets with the use of taxes in a framework of international cooperation to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the two instruments.

Finally, a second line of research that is also in our agenda focuses on the analysis of the strategic aspect of the environmental policy, in particular, on the strategic use of carbon tax to reduce the market power of the oil producers.