• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.61-87
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• 1992

Reducing the level of greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to mitigate global warming. One of the most feasible methods to reduce emissions would be to conserve energy and substitute fossil fuels. Yet reducing emissions entails huge financial costs, so it is advisable to employ cost-effective economic instruments such as a carbon tax or tradeable emissions permits. Assuming that the proper economic tools will be used in the future, we calculated the optimal level of emissions reduction for Korea. We applied to our cost-benefit analysis Nordhaus' scenario regarding the economic damage from a $3^{\circ}C$ rise in global temperatures, which is the calculated result when the greenhouse gas level doubles. The result of our analysis based on the 1990 data indicates that the optimal level of emissions reduction ranges from 2% to 15 % of current emissions depending on the value of damage parameters. We also found that the amount of emissions must be reduced will increase if action is postponed, when the development of climate engineering technology or more efficient use of energy is expected. In addition, we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the economic instruments available to implement emissions reduction. Tradeable permits and carbon tax are equivalent in their cost-effectiveness, but have different implications in practice.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.339-347
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• 2004

This paper asks the question: what choice of environmental policy instruments is efficient to reduce sulfur dioxide from stationary sources\ulcorner: In Korea, command and control has been a common way of controlling $SO_2-emissions.$ When compared to the non-incentive environmental policy instrument such as command and control, economic incentive environmental policy instrument has been the advantage of making polluter himself flexibly deals with in marginal abatement cost to develop environmental technology in the long view. Therefore, the application possibility of the incentive environmental policy instrument was studied in this research to realize the countermeasure for controlling of $SO_2-emissions.$ As a result, enforcement of the countermeasure such as flue gas desulfurizer by command and control would be suitable because power generation is performed by the public or for the public in source of air pollution and thus, economic principle is not applied to the polluter. In the source of industrial pollution, enforcement of fuel tax is found to be suitable for the countermeasure for the use of low sulfur oil in terms of the flexibility of demand for the price in the long tenn. For the permissible air pollution standards applicable to all air pollutant emitting facilities, enforcement of incentive environmental policy such as bubble, off-set, banking policy or tradeable emission penn its would be ideal in long terms according to the regional characteristics and the number and scale of air pollutant emitting facilities.