Emissions Standard System: A monetary regime for provision of global public goods

This paper theoretically examines an imaginary monetary regime in which the private provision of global public goods that reduce greenhouse gases ("emissions reducers," e.g., forests) is enhanced and the public goods are held in the private sector as monetary assets. We consider a monetary regime where the government or the central bank makes public goods a means of payment by committing itself to conversion of emissions reducer into cash (and probably by adopting appropriate banking regulations). Using a simple cash-in-advance setting, we show that the monetary regime internalizes the externality of public goods by endowing them with a private function as a means of payment. In the monetary regime, private agents buy and hold emissions reducers voluntarily, and the government need not impose caps on emissions nor pay any costs for public goods provision. Moreover, in an economic boom when greenhouse gas emissions increase, emissions reducers may also increase automatically. Due to the network externalities of money, emissions reducers may become used as money internationally and thus the international free-rider problem may be mitigated.

Our results imply that the monetary regime may be a promising extension of existing policy plans for global warming.