Governments around the globe have begun to implement various actions to limit carbon emissions and so, combat climate change. This book brings together some of the leading scholars in environmental and climate economics to examine the distributional consequences of policies that are designed to reduce these carbon emissions.Whether through a carbon tax, cap-and-trade system or other mechanisms, most proposals to reduce carbon emissions include some kind of carbon pricing system - shifting the costs of emissions onto polluters and providing an incentive to find the least costly methods of abatement. This standard efficiency justification for pricing carbon also has important distributional consequences - a problem that is often ignored by economists while being a major focus of attention in the political arena. Leading scholars in environmental and climate economics take up these issues to examine such questions as: Will the costs fall on current or future generations? Will they fall on the rich, poor, middle class, or on everyone proportionally? Which countries will benefit, and which will suffer? Students and scholars interested in climate change, along with policy makers, will find this lively volume an invaluable addition to the quest for information on this globally important issue. Contributors include: S. Barrett, G.S. Becker, J. Blonz, C. Boehringer, D. Burtraw, M.A. Cohen, M. Deshpande, S. Devarajan, J. Elliott, C. Fischer, I. Foster, D. Fullerton, R. Goettle, M. Greenstone, T. Hertel, G. Heutel, M.S. Ho, D.W. Jorgenson, K. Judd, L. Kaplow, C.D. Kolstad, S. Kortum, A.M. Levinson, R.D. Ludema, G.E. Metcalf, E. Moyer, T. Munson, K.M. Murphy, S. Paltsev, I.W.H. Parry, W. Randolph, S. Rausch, J.M. Reilly, K.E. Rosendahl, D.T. Slesnick, R.H. Topel, M.A. Walls, D.A. Weisbach, M.L. Weitzman, P.J. Wilcoxen, R.C. Williams

Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed--a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism.
Bringing together leading economists, "Reforming the Welfare State" examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.