China's unconventional nationwide CO2 emissions trading system: Cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts

China is implementing what is expected to become the world's largest CO2 emissions trading system. To reduce emissions, the nation employs a tradable performance standard (TPS), a rate-based instrument differing significantly from cap&trade (C&T) and a carbon tax, emissions pricing instruments used elsewhere. With matching analytically and numerically solved models, we assess the cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts of China's TPS for reducing CO2 emissions from the power sector.