| This paper examines biofuels from an economic perspective and evaluates the merits of promoting biofuel production in the context of the policies’ multiple objectives, life-cycle implications, pecuniary externalities, and other unintended consequences. The policy goals most often cited are to reduce fossil fuel use and to lower greenhouse gas emissions. But the presence of multiple objectives and various indirect effects complicates normative evaluation. To address some of these complicating factors, we look at several combinations of policy alternatives that achieve the same set of incremental gains along the two primary targeted policy dimensions, making it possible to compare the costs and cost-effectiveness of each combination of policies. For example,... |
