| 21. |
- Fredriksson, Per G., et al.
(författare)
-
The Political Economy of Refunded Emissions Payment Programs
- 2004
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Lobbying by pollution firms is commonly viewed as having a negative impact on the stringency of environmental policy. We ask whether lobbying instead can bring about stricter environmental policy, and how imperfect property rights affect the policy outcome. We study the effects on the equilibrium pollution tax of refunding all tax payments to the polluting firms. Relatively clean firms may be induced to lobby for a higher pollution levy. However, this incentive declines when the property rights over the accumulated funds are insecure.
|
|
| 22. |
- García, Jorge H., 1972, et al.
(författare)
-
Corporate environmental management in transition economies: The case of Central and Eastern Europe
- 2009
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We use firm-level data to study the adoption of Environmental Management Practices (EMPs) in the most polluting industrial sectors in Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia during the 1990 – 1998 period when these countries were in a transition away from a centrally planned economy. Despite the stickiness of a long established managerial regime and the declines in industrial output during this period, around 42% of the firms in our sample adopted Environmental Plans (EPs) and/or established Environmental Departments (EDs). The analysis reveals that enforcement and public disclosure of the environmental performance of firms are the most important forces behind the implementation of both of these EMPs. Also, but to a lesser extent, export oriented firms and larger firms are prone to adoption. Finally, we use a methodology that clarifies some of the links between different EMPs not addressed in earlier studies. Notably, once a firm has decided to adopt (or not adopt) an ED, additional increases in enforcement do not to lead to EP implementation.
|
|
| 23. |
- García, Jorge H., 1972, et al.
(författare)
-
Public Disclosure of Industrial Pollution: The PROPER Approach for Indonesia?
- 2009
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the Program for Pollution Control Evaluation and Rating (PROPER) in Indonesia. PROPER, the first major public disclosure program in the developing world, was launched in June 1995; though it collapsed in 1998 with the Asian financial crisis, it is currently being revived. There have been claims of success for this pioneering scheme, yet little formal analysis has been undertaken. We analyze changes in emissions concentrations (mg/L) using panel data techniques with plant-level data for participating firms and a control group. The results show that there was indeed a positive response to PROPER, especially among firms with poor environmental compliance records. The response was immediate, and firms pursued further emissions reductions in the following months. The total estimated reductions in biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were approximately 32%.
|
|
| 24. |
- Hennlock, Magnus, et al.
(författare)
-
Emissions Trading Subject to Kantian Preferences
- 2018
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We study a cap-and-trade market equilibrium where different regions belonging to an emissions trading regime have different ambitions about the stringency of the cap. Specifically, we introduce a segment of consumers with Kantian preferences and show that they would prefer a more stringent cap compared to other regions. When a region sets up a voluntary more stringent cap within a cap-and-trade market, dual carbon markets with dual prices on allowances can emerge with trade against both caps. We then show that labelling a subset of the allowances in a cap-and-trade market captures the higher willingness to pay driven by different ambition levels among agents within a trading scheme. We show under what circumstances a socially efficient outcome from carbon markets can be achieved by labelling allowances when there are heterogeneous preferences among regions about the ambition level in an emissions trading regime. Being voluntary, trade in labelled allowances is consistent with a bottom-up approach where efforts are built up gradually by actors, countries and regions that wants to take leadership in international climate policy.
|
|
| 25. |
- Hoel, Michael, et al.
(författare)
-
Discounting and relative prices in assessing future environmental damages
- 2006
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Environmentalists are often upset at the effect of discounting costs of future environmental damage, e.g. due to climate change. An often overlooked message is that we should discount costs but also take into account the increase in the relative price of the ecosystem service endangered. The effect of discounting would thus be counteracted, and if the rate of price rise of the item was fast enough it might even be reversed. The scarcity that leads to rising relative prices for the environmental good will also have direct effects on the discount rate itself. The magnitude of these effects depends on properties of the economyâ??s technology and on social preferences. We develop a simple model of the economy that illustrates how changes in crucial technology and preference parameters may affect both the discount rate and the rate of change of values of environmental goods. The combined effect of discounting and the change of values of environmental goods is more likely to be low, or even negative, the lower is the growth rate of environmental quality (or the larger its decline rate) and the lower is the elasticity of substitution between environmental quality and produced goods.
|
|
| 26. |
- Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 1966, et al.
(författare)
-
Discounting and Relative Consumption
- 2013
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We analyze optimal social discount rates when people derive utility from relative consumption. We compare the social, private, and conventional Ramsey rates. Assuming a positive growth rate, we find that 1) the social discount rate exceeds the private discount rate if the importance of relative consumption increases with consumption and that 2) the social discount rate is smaller than the Ramsey rate given quasi-concavity in own and others’ consumption and risk aversion with respect to others’ consumption. Numerical calculations demonstrate that the latter difference may be substantial and have important implications for long run environmental issues such as global warming.
|
|
| 27. |
- Muchapondwa, Edwin, 1971, et al.
(författare)
-
Agricultural Risk Management through Community-Based Wildlife Conservation in Rural Zimbabwe
- 2009
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper investigates whether the risk faced by rural farmers in Zimbabwe could poten- tially be managed by using community-based wildlife conservation. Community-based wildlife conservation could be an additional asset in the rural farmers investment portfolio thereby potentially diversifying and consequently reducing the risk they face. Such investment could also help e¤orts to conserve wildlife. By making use of national historical data and statistical analysis, this paper nds that community-based wildlife conservation is a feasible hedge asset for agricultural production in rural Zimbabwe. The bene ts of diversi cation into community-based wildlife conservation are likely to be high only in those rural areas that can sustain wildlife pop- ulations su¢cient to generate adequate returns from wildlife activities such as tourism, trophy hunting, live animal sales and meat cropping.
|
|
| 28. |
- Muller, Adrian, 1971, et al.
(författare)
-
Decoupling: Is there a Separate Contribution from Environmental Taxation
- 2011
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Decoupling is a crucial topic in the analysis of sustainable development. Without decoupling, continuing and increasing economic growth in developed and developing countries would come with ever increasing environmental pressures, unavoidably destroying the carrying capacity of ecosystems with corresponding detrimental effects on the environment and societies. The prime example today is climate change. If we do not succeed in drastically decoupling greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth, the mitigation goals necessary to avoid catastrophic impacts will never be reached. Due to this importance of decoupling, it is thus essential to know how different policy instruments may support its achievement. The aim of this paper is to address the question whether there is a separate contribution from environmental taxation to decoupling and to offer researchers some guidance on how to optimally address this question.
|
|
| 29. |
- Muller, Adrian, 1971, et al.
(författare)
-
Output and Abatement Effects of Allocation Readjustment in Permit Trade
- 2009
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In permit trading systems, free initial allocation is common practice. A recent example is the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS). We investigate effects of different free allocation schemes on incentives and identify significant perverse effects on abatement and output employing a simple multi-period model. Firms have incentives for strategic action if allocation in one period depends on their actions in previous ones and thus can be influenced by them. These findings play a major role where trading schemes become increasingly popular as environmental or resource use policy instruments. This is of particular relevance in the EU-ETS, where the current period is a trial-period before the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol. Finally, this paper fills a gap in the literature by establishing a consistent terminology for initial allocation.
|
|
| 30. |
- Quiroga, Miguel, 1969, et al.
(författare)
-
Have Countries with Lax Environmental Regulations a Comparative Advantage in Polluting Industries?
- 2009
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We aim to study whether lax environmental regulations induce comparative advantages, causing the least-regulated countries to specialize in polluting industries. The study is based on Trefler and Zhu’s (2005) definition of the factor content of trade. For the econometrical analysis, we use a cross-section of 71 countries in 2000 to examine the net exports in the most polluting industries. We try to overcome three weaknesses in the empirical literature: the measurement of environmental endowments or environmental stringency, the possible endogeneity of the explanatory variables, and the influence of the industrial level of aggregation. As a result, we do find some evidence in favor of the pollution-haven effect. The exogeneity of the environmental endowments was rejected in several industries, and we also find that industrial aggregation matters.
|
|
