Speaker: Shreekant Gupta (Visiting Senior Fellow, Department of Economics, National University of Singapore)
Date: Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Time: 12.15pm - 1.30pm (brown bag seminar; participants are advised to bring their own lunch)
Venue: Seminar Room 3-5, Level 3, Manasseh Meyer, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Synopsis:

The risk posed by climate change to human well being is serious and requires collective action at a global level. A number of factors such as high energy prices, emerging threats to world food security and political developments in the United States make it likely a negotiated agreement on curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may emerge during the coming decade, especially once the Kyoto Protocol runs its course in the year 2012. By definition, global collective action to address climate change has to include major emitters in the North and South and will have to be based on twin principles of equity and efficiency. With regard to the latter, in a world of second best, this paper derives a ‘cap and trade’ system for GHG emissions with a safety valve and a price floor, in effect a hybrid tax-permit system. At the same time an equitable distribution of global commons requires an initial allocation of GHG quotas approximating per capita entitlements. The implications of such an allocation for a global carbon market and for carbon prices in the presence of technical change are derived. Likely distributional implications of such a market and the feasibility of such transfers taking place are also estimated.

For details contact Siti (sppsr@nus.edu.sg)