When Can Carbon Abatement Policies Increase Welfare? The Fundamental Role of Distorted Factor Markets

This paper employs analytical and numerical general equilibrium models to assess the efficiency impacts of two policies to reduce U.S. carbon emissions — a revenue-neutral carbon tax and a non-auctioned carbon quota — taking into account the interactions between these policies and pre-existing tax distortions in factor markets. We show that tax interactions significantly raise the costs of both policies relative to what they would be in a first-best setting. In addition, we show that these interactions put the carbon quota at a significant efficiency disadvantage relative to the carbon tax: for example, the costs of reducing emissions by 10 percent are more than three times as high under the carbon quota as under the carbon tax. This disadvantage reflects the inability of the quota policy to generate revenue that can be used to reduce pre-existing distortionary taxes. Indeed, second-best considerations can limit the potential of a carbon quota to generate overall efficiency gains. Under our central values for parameters, a non-auctioned carbon quota (or set of grandfathered carbon emissions permits) cannot increase efficiency unless the marginal benefits from avoided future climate change are at least $17.8 per ton of carbon abatement. Most estimates of marginal environmental benefits are below this level. Thus, our analysis suggests that any carbon abatement by way of a non-auctioned quota will reduce efficiency. In contrast, our analysis indicates that a revenue-neutral carbon tax can be efficiency-improving so long as marginal environmental benefits are positive.

Contemplating cloth: the weaving of Jun Tomita

The village of Koshihata, set on the mountain slopes of north-western Kyoto is the home and workplace of Japanese textile artist and weaver, Jun Tomita. This rural setting of neatly ordered vegetable plots and rice fields, hills and woods, with its endlessly changing views, and semi-self-sufficient lifestyle, has made the perfect locale for the contemplation and creation of now much celebrated and collected textile works

Material matters: a quiet philosophy

Matthew Harris' work is immediately striking for its unique language of gentle yet beautifully chaotic assembling of patched, joined, printed and stitched surfaces. The intense visual vocabulary draws on a catalogue of sources; in Harris' own words, it is a "bringing together and condensing of multiple visual references, scraps of things seen and noted, maybe in passing, maybe studied over time"

A martial art: indigo-dyed textiles from Saitama, Japan

The article provides information on indigo-dyed textiles from Saitama, Japan

Fuji-Yoshida: weaving town

Japan is rich in regional textile history and despite relative decline in recent decades numerous centres of production remain. One such example is Fuji-Yoshida, located at the northern base of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo

Made-by-hand: [re]valuing traditional (Japanese) textile practices for contemporary design

Textiles touch all our lives – from the cradle to the grave – and serve increasingly diverse purposes. Historically, and as one of the first industrialized commodities, the skill and knowledge required to construct fabrics to clothe and furnish has dominated cultures worldwide. Contemporary Japanese textile design draws on countless traditions of often ancient but sustained craft practices. These traditions both respond to and employ the natural condition of things, exercising heightened and honed sensibilities to material know-how. Discussed through the discipline of woven textiles and, in particular, ‘traditional’ Japanese production systems, this article seeks to identify the location and distribution of both practical and aesthetic expertise in textile making and its transferable value for contemporary practices. The article presents case studies of surviving vernacular ‘cottage’ industries, where highly organized systems of knowledge exchange, spanning agricultural fibre production to direct technical instruction in thread making, ensure effective engagement with and ‘management’ of very specific materiality. The notion of intangible cultural property will be discussed in the context of inherited knowledge and how traditional social hierarchies and knowledge systems have served to nurture and perpetuate the sharing of skills and understanding through generations of textile makers and making

W is for Wallpaper

Exhibition review for 'W is for Wallpaper' at Ruthin Craft Centre, Denbighshire in September to November 2015

The Incidence of Pollution Control Policies

This paper reviews theoretical and empirical literature on the household distribution of the costs and benefits of pollution control policies, and ways of integrating distributional issues into environmental cost–benefit analysis. Most studies find that policy costs fall disproportionately on poorer groups, though this is less pronounced when lifetime income is used, and policies affect prices of inputs used pervasively across the economy. The policy instrument itself is also critical; freely allocated emission permits may hurt the poor the most, as they transfer income to shareholders via scarcity rents created by higher prices, while emissions taxes offer opportunities for progressive revenue recycling. And although low-income households appear to bear a disproportionate share of environmental risks, policies that reduce risks are not always progressive, for example, they may alter property values in ways that benefit the wealthy. The review concludes by noting a number of areas where future research is badly needed.distributional incidence; emissions taxes; tradable permits; environmental benefits; distributional weights