Compares 3 methods of reducing gasoline comsumption in the United States: setting higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for passenger vehicles; raising the Federal tax on gasoline; and setting a limit on carbon emissions from gasoline combustion and requiring gasoline producers to hold allowances for those emissions, known as a cap-and-trade program.

Cost-Benefit Analysis provides accessible, comprehensive, authoritative, and practical treatments of the protocols for assessing the relative efficiency of public policies. Its review of essential concepts from microeconomics, and its sophisticated treatment of important topics with minimal use of mathematics helps students from a variety of backgrounds build solid conceptual foundations. It provides thorough treatments of time discounting, dealing with contingent uncertainty using expected surpluses and option prices, taking account of parameter uncertainties using Monte Carlo simulation and other types of sensitivity analyses, revealed preference approaches, stated preference methods including contingent valuation, and other related methods. Updated to cover contemporary research, this edition is considerably reorganized to aid in student and practitioner understanding, and includes eight new cases to demonstrate the actual practice of cost-benefit analysis. Widely cited, it is recognized as an authoritative source on cost-benefit analysis. Illustrations, exhibits, chapter exercises, and case studies help students master concepts and develop craft skills.

Gasoline prices and driving behavior. Volume of traffic ; Speed of traffic ; Applicability of findings to other regions of the United States -- Gasoline prices and vehicle markets. Market shares for cars and light trucks ; Gasoline prices and vehicle market status ; Changes in new vehicle fuel economy and pricing ; Changes in the used vehicle market -- Study data -- Analytical approach and economic results.

Several Members of Congress and public interest groups have recently proposed policies that would reduce gasoline consumption in the United States. Such proposals stem primarily from a desire to enhance the nation's energy security and to decrease its emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas that affects the Earth's climate. This book compares three methods of reducing gasoline consumption: increasing the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards that govern passenger vehicles, raising the federal tax on gasoline, and setting a limit on carbon emissions from gasoline combustion and requiring gasoline producers to hold allowances for those emissions (a policy known as a cap-and-trade program). Also, the book weighs the relative merits of those policies against several major criteria: whether they would minimise costs to producers and consumers; how reliably they would achieve a given reduction in gasoline use; their implications for automobile safety; and their effects on such factors as traffic congestion, requirements for highway construction, and emissions of air pollutants other than carbon dioxide. In addition, the book examines two more policy implications that lawmakers may be concerned about: the impact on people at different income levels and in different regions, and the effects on federal revenue.

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study--prepared at the request of the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Science--presents an overview of issues related to climate change, focusing primarily on its economic aspects. The study draws from numerous published sources to summarize the current state of climate science and provide a conceptual framework for addressing climate change as an economic problem. It also examines public policy options and discusses the potential complications and benefits of international coordination. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide impartial analysis, the study makes no recommendations.

This report reviews recent US fiscal developments and discusses key policy challenges that will need to be addressed in order to tackle the growing pressures on public retirement and health care systems during the next decade. Chapters discuss: the fiscal deficit and the need for fiscal reform; the economic impact of budget policies; fiscal consequences of social security and medicare; an intergenerational analysis of fiscal imbalances, debt dynamics and fiscal sustainability; energy policy and the role of taxation to reduce consumption.