Contracting for Impure Public Goods: Carbon Offsets and Additionality / Charles Mason, Andrew Plantinga.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mason, Charles.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Plantinga, Andrew.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w16963.

NBER working paper series no. w16963

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Contracting for Impure Public Goods

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2011.

Summary:

Governments contracting with private agents for the provision of an impure public good must contend with agents who would potentially supply the good absent any payments. This additionality problem is centrally important to the use of carbon offsets to mitigate climate change. We analyze optimal contracts for forest carbon, an important offset category. A novel national-scale simulation of the contracts is conducted that uses econometric results derived from micro data. For a 50 million acre increase in forest area, annual government expenditures with optimal contracts are found to be about $4 billion lower compared to costs with a uniform subsidy.

Notes:

Print version record

April 2011.