Send Ted a Secret Decoder Ring

Ted Gayer, an environmental economist at Georgetown and formerly one of my staff at the CEA, reminds me of another way to join the Pigou Club: Advocating an auction of pollution rights under cap-and-trade environmental regulations. If pollution rights are auctioned rather than handed out as freebies to firms, the system is equivalent to Pigovian taxes. (You can read Ted's article on the issue starting on page 5 of this pdf document.)

He is right. Welcome to the Club, Ted.