Pay less, get less: An economic assessment of post-2012 climate policy proposals

Policymakers need to agree to the post-Kyoto climate architecture soon to implement it in 2012. Using a set of quantitative indicators, this column assesses a number of proposed international climate policy architectures and evaluates their economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, distributional implications, and enforceability. Unfortunately, the most effective policies are the most costly and hardest to enforce.

VoxEU.org is a policy portal set up by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in conjunction with a consortium of national sites, including the Italian site LaVoce, the French site Telos and the Spanish site Sociedad Abierta. Vox aims to promote research-based policy analysis and commentary by leading scholars. The intended audience is economists in governments, international organisations, academia and the private sector as well as journalists specializing in economics, finance and business.