Economic and Environmental Impacts of the Kyoto Protocol

In 2003, the Kyoto Protocol which imposes legally binding emission constraints on industrialized countries is likely to enter into force. The Protocol has been celebrated as a milestone in climate policy, but standard economic theory casts doubts that it will go beyond symbolic policy. In this paper, we show that the final concretion of the treaty is consistent with the theoretical prediction: Kyoto more or less boils down to business-as-usual without significant compliance costs to ratifying parties.

Böhringer, Christoph and Carsten Vogt (2003), Economic and Environmental Impacts of the Kyoto Protocol, Canadian Journal of Economics 36(2) , 475-494