A study on the design of a hybrid policy for carbon abatement

ABSTRACTA necessary way to mitigate global warming is carbon reduction, which the international community is now actively promoting. China has committed a target goal for carbon reduction to the international society, and has devoted a great effort toward researching the impact of related policies. Carbon taxation and carbon trading are the two main mechanisms to advocate carbon abatement, which many countries have been using. Each of these two mechanisms possesses advantages and disadvantages, and an appropriate combination of them can make best use of their advantages while bypassing their disadvantages, creating a superior mechanism. In our opinion, the main differences between these two mechanisms are that carbon taxation has a lower institution cost (consisting of the related infrastructural investment and the regulation cost, etc), and is easier to operate, but lacks the flexibility in response to variations of market conditions. However, this flexibility is just the origin of risk, which increases ...