Carbon pricing is widely accepted as an economically efficient mitigation instrument but its adoption is still limited. Large and growing disparities in carbon pricing across countries and regions raise competitiveness and leakage concerns. These could be dealt with by the adoption of border carbon adjustments (BCAs). In this webinar the potential role of BCAs will be illustrated and discussed on the basis of the results from a recent study by the IMF.

James Roaf is an Assistant Director in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF. He has recently taken on the new role of Climate Change Policy Coordinator, overseeing a team of dedicated experts and a rapidly expanding work agenda on fiscal policies to address climate change. Previous IMF assignments have included mission chief for Russia and for Serbia, the policy response to the global financial crisis and the eurozone crisis, development of policies for reserve adequacy and sovereign debt restructuring, individual crisis cases in Russia, Argentina, and Greece, and overseas postings in Poland and Bulgaria. Mr. Roaf worked at the UK Treasury prior to joining the IMF.

Carolyn Fischer is Research Manager of the Sustainability and Infrastructure Team in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. Her research addresses issues of technical change, trade, and carbon leakage in environmental policy instrument design. She has held appointments as a professor of environmental economics at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and as a Canada 150 Research Chair in Climate Economics, Innovation and Policy at the University of Ottawa, where she is currently on leave. She holds research fellow affiliations with Resources for the Future (RFF), the European Institute of Environmental Economics (EIEE), the Tinbergen Institute, and the CESifo Research Network. She is currently a Council Member for the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), serves on expert advisory boards for research institutes in Europe and in North America, and is co-editor of Environmental and Resource Economics. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.