WCEREA Webinar: The Political Economy of Carbon Pricing

Date

Time

9:00 - 10:30am Pacific Time

Venue

Online via Zoom

Speakers

• Bård Harstad, Stanford Graduate School of Business
• Jeroen van den Bergh, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Catherine Wolfram, MIT Sloan School of Management

Marcelo Caffera (University of Montevideo) will moderate the panel.

Price

Ordinary Member Cost: $0.00
Student Member Cost: $0.00
Emeritus Member Cost: $0.00
Non Members Cost: $0.00

Description

The  World Council of Environmental and Resource Economists Associations - WCEREA is pleased to announce the webinar on "The political economy of carbon pricing" to be held on September 9, 2025 at 9:00 - 10:30 am Pacific Time (see time converter here; add to your calendar here).

There is a considerable number of carbon pricing initiatives around the world. Nevertheless, in general, the level of these prices is lower than needed to mitigate emissions sufficiently to hit the Paris Agreement targets on time. A major reason behind low carbon taxes and high carbon caps seems to be political. Authorities are not willing to pay the political cost of higher carbon prices. A possible increase in the energy costs and how this increase is distributed among different income groups is not the only driver of the political cost. Part of the policy cost arises because carbon prices address a global problem, not a national one. Therefore, international cooperation plays a significant role in the domestic political economy of carbon prices.

To induce the level and speed of mitigation that carbon prices alone at politically viable levels are unlikely to achieve, several colleagues have suggested that climate policy should adopt a more “holistic” approach. According to this approach, carbon taxes should complement other instruments, such as subsidies to R&D, more “prescriptive” instruments, and a carbon border adjustment mechanism. In this scenario, important questions remain to be answered: Are high carbon prices doomed as climate policy instruments? How does international cooperation affect the chances of observing effective carbon prices in the future? What is the role that a carbon border adjustment mechanism should have? In this webinar, we gathered three distinguished scholars to present their views on these pressing questions.

Organisers

The webinar is organised by the WCEREA Board.

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