| 41. |
- Damon, Maria, 1977, et al.
(författare)
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Policy Instruments for Sustainable Development at Rio +20
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Environment and Development. - : SAGE Publications. - 1070-4965. ; 21:2, s. 143-151
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Twenty years ago, governments gathered for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The “Rio Declaration” laid out several principles of sustainable development, including the central role of policy instruments. In this article, we take stock of where we stand today in implementing sound and effective environmental policy instruments throughout the world, particularly in developing and transitional economies. We argue that, as our experience with market-based environmental policies has deepened over the past two decades, so has the ability to adapt instruments to complicated and heterogeneous contexts—but we are only just beginning, and the need to be further along is dire. One key factor may be that economists have not yet meaningfully accounted for the importance of political feasibility, which often hinges on risks to competitiveness and employment, or on the distribution of costs rather than on considerations of pure efficiency alone.
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| 42. |
- Drupp, M. A., et al.
(författare)
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Accounting for the increasing benefits from scarce ecosystems
- 2024
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Ingår i: SCIENCE. - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 383:6687, s. 1062-1064
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Governments are catching up with economic theory and practice by increasingly integrating ecosystem service values into national planning processes, including benefitcost analyses of public policies. Such analyses require information not only about today's benefits from ecosystem services but also on how benefits change over time. We address a key limitation of existing policy guidance, which assumes that benefits from ecosystem services remain unchanged. We provide a practical rule that is grounded in economic theory and evidence-based as a guideline for how benefits change over time: They rise as societies get richer and even more so when ecosystem services are declining. Our proposal will correct a substantial downward bias in currently used estimates of future ecosystem service values. This will help governments to reflect the importance of ecosystems more accurately in benefit-cost analyses and policy decisions they inform.
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| 43. |
- Duan, Hongbo, et al.
(författare)
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China’s adaptive response to climate change through air-conditioning
- 2023
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Ingår i: iScience. - : Elsevier BV. - 2589-0042. ; 26:3, s. 1-19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studies have shown that the soaring demand for air conditioners in recent years is closely related to the worsening global warming; however, little evidence has been provided for China. This study uses weekly data of 343 Chinese cities to investigate how air conditioner sales respond to climate variability. We detected a U-shaped relationship between air-conditioning and temperature. An additional day with average temperature above 30°C increases weekly sales by 16.2%. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the adoption of air-conditioning is different for south and north China. By combining our estimates with shared socioeconomic pathway scenarios, we project China’s mid-century air conditioner sales and the resulting electricity demand. Under the fossil-fueled development scenario, air conditioner sales in the Pearl River Delta would rise by 71% (65.7%–87.6%) in summer. On average, the per capita electricity demand for air-conditioning will surge by 28% (23.2%–35.4%) in China by mid-century.
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| 44. |
- Ekbom, Anders, 1963, et al.
(författare)
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Integrating soil science into agricultural production frontiers
- 2013
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Ingår i: Environment and Development Economics. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 1355-770X .- 1469-4395. ; 18, s. 291-308
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper integrates soil science variables into an economic analysis of agricultural output among small-scale farmers in Kenya's highlands. The integration is valuable because farmers' choice of inputs depends on both the status of the soil and socioeconomic conditions. The study uses a stochastic production frontier in which the individual farm's distance to the frontier depends systematically on individual factors. We show the importance of including key soil properties and find that phosphorus has a negative output elasticity, suggesting that farms may be using the wrong fertilizer mix. Hence, the central policy implication is that while fertilizers are generally beneficial, their application needs to be based on better soil information. This highlights the importance of strengthening agricultural extension, increased access to markets and more diversified supply of production inputs.
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| 45. |
- Ekbom, Anders, 1963, et al.
(författare)
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Muddy waters : economic analysis of soil erosion and downstream externalities
- 2018
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Ingår i: Ghanaian Journal of Economics. - 2309-8945. ; 6:1, s. 74-107
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Soil erosion and fertilizer leakage cause serious externalities in downstream environments throughout the world. Social costs are estimated to be very large and include, e.g., loss of health, reduced productivity due to pollution and eutrophication of freshwater resources, and degradation of aquatic and marine resources. The key optimal control models on soil capital management omit downstream externalities. Based on comparative statics analysis of our model, which includes downstream externalities, combined with an extended discussion on policy instruments, we conclude that governments should try to provide incentives to farmers, not primarily to stop soil and nutrient loss per se (since the farmers will look after their own soil capital) but to prevent negative externalities on downstream users, who have few opportunities to negotiate with the upstream farmers, who may even be unaware of the problems they cause.
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| 46. |
- Ewald, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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Att bryta dödläget i klimatförhandlingarna?
- 2019
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Ingår i: Socialmedicinsk Tidskrift. - 0037-833X. ; 96:3, s. 311-322
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- De internationella klimatförhandlingarna har lämnat planetens öde till nationerna själva att avgöra. Det blev för svårt att förhandla fram ett bindande avtal för vad varje land skulle göra, så Parisavtalet bygger på frivillighet. De nödvändiga politiska styrmedlen behöver således implementeras lokalt, men behövs överallt. Det är svårt att få till politiskt. Därför riktas uppmärksamheten till några föregångsländer och deras roll i att leda den globala klimatpolitiken framåt. Klassisk teori om kollektivt handlande förutspår att länder kommer att agera själviskt och inte minska sina utsläpp. Ett bakomliggande antagande är att införande av klimatpolitik är kostsamt. Vi har genomfört en enkätundersökning med 537 forskare i miljöekonomi. Resultaten visar att de är av uppfattningen att proaktiv klimatpolitik snarare genererar ekonomiska vinster. The international climate negotiations have left the planet’s fate to the nations themselves to decide. It became too difficult to negotiate a binding agreement for what each country should do, thus, the Paris agreement is based on volunteerism. The necessary policy instruments need to be implemented locally, but are needed everywhere. This is politically challenging. Our attention turns to a few frontrunner countries and their role in leading global climate policy forward. Classical theory of collective action predicts that countries will act selfishly and not reduce their emissions. An underlying assumption is that the introduction of climate policy is costly. We have conducted a survey of 537 researchers in environmental economics. The results show that they are of the opinion that proactive climate policy rather generates economic gains.
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| 47. |
- Ewald, Jens, et al.
(författare)
-
Saving energy in residential buildings: the role of energy pricing
- 2021
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Ingår i: Climatic Change. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0165-0009 .- 1573-1480. ; 167
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A zero-carbon society requires dramatic change everywhere including in buildings, a large and politically sensitive sector. Technical possibilities exist but implementation is slow. Policies include many hard-to-evaluate regulations and may suffer from rebound mechanisms. We use dynamic econometric analysis of European macro data for the period 1990–2018 to systematically examine the importance of changes in energy prices and income on residential energy demand. We find a long-run price elasticity of −0.5. The total long-run income elasticity is around 0.9, but if we control for the increase in income that goes towards larger homes and other factors, the income elasticity is 0.2. These findings have practical implications for climate policy and the EU buildings and energy policy framework.
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| 48. |
- Ewald, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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Understanding the resistance to carbon taxes: Drivers and barriers among the general public and fuel-tax protesters
- 2022
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Ingår i: Resources and Energy Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0928-7655 .- 1873-0221. ; 70
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Carbon taxes are generally well accepted in countries with significant experience thereof but there is still public resistance to raising them. We study attitudes toward carbon taxation and other environmental policy instruments in Sweden. We survey a national sample of the population as well as members of a large political movement that protests fuel taxes. Our results show that the motivations in both groups are alike: educational level, rural versus urban domicile, political orientation, and especially trust in government correlate with opinions on carbon taxes; household income does not appear to matter. Lack of trust in government and lack of belief in the Pigouvian mechanism appear as especially important motivations for protesters' opposition. We find support for revenue refunding, but greater support, in both groups, for earmarking for climate use. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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| 49. |
- Feindt, S., et al.
(författare)
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Understanding regressivity: Challenges and opportunities of European carbon pricing
- 2021
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Ingår i: Energy Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0140-9883. ; 103
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We examine how a European carbon price will affect citizens by studying its incidence on households in 23 countries of the EU. At the national level, the distributional impact before revenue recycling is mainly neutral, sometimes progressive. At an aggregate EU level, however, the impact is regressive because some low-income countries would be strongly affected by the carbon price. While national redistribution can yield a progressive EU incidence, we show that European-wide redistribution is more effective for the most affected households. We offer two indicators to offset regressive distributional effects of EU climate policy, such as the recently proposed Green Deal. The first renders the tax burden proportional; the second focuses on compensating the households most severely affected. Including both indicators in European redistribution makes for a better representation of the initial burden of carbon pricing and could increase public acceptability.
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| 50. |
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