Dimensions: 5.5'' x 8.5'' 71 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: November 1998 Paperback ISBN: 0-8447-7115-5 Price: $ 9.95 Add to Cart   Examination Copies

Download the full text of The Economics & Politics of Climate Change from the AEI Center for Regulatory and Market Studies.

A fundamental issue is what steps, if any, nations should take to control greenhouse gas emissions. Robert W. Hahn argues that over the next decade the best strategy for policymakers is to build institutions that can address climate change in the future by developing a capacity at the nation-state level to measure greenhouse gas emissions and to implement and enforce cost-effective ways of limiting emissions. Policymakers must also improve the capacity of an international body to assess greenhouse gas inventories and review national policies.

Hahn recommends that the developed nations craft an agreement for the next decade that provides a slight emission limitation and allows for a series of case studies, in which developing nations would participate, to preserve diversity and build useful institutional knowledge.

The Economics & Politics of Climate Change is one in a series of new AEI studies related to the globalization of environmental policy. These studies will focus on specific issues and on the new institutional arrangements required to deal with them.

Robert W. Hahn is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Executive Director of the AEI Center for Regulatory and Market Studies.