| 1. |
- Habla, Wolfgang, et al.
(författare)
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Should it stay, or swerve? Trading off lives in dilemma situations involving autonomous cars
- 2024
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Ingår i: HEALTH ECONOMICS. - 1057-9230 .- 1099-1050.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using a representative survey with 1317 individuals and 12,815 moral decisions, we elicit Swedish citizens' preferences on how algorithms for self-driving cars should be programmed in cases of unavoidable harm to humans. Participants' choices in different dilemma situations (treatments) show that, at the margin, the average respondent values the lives of passengers and pedestrians equally when both groups are homogeneous and no group is to blame for the dilemma. In comparison, the respondent values the lives of passengers more when the pedestrians violate a social norm, and less when the pedestrians are children. Furthermore, we explain why the average respondent in the control treatment needs to be compensated with two to six passengers spared in order to sacrifice the first pedestrian, even though she values the lives of passengers and pedestrians equally at the margin. We conclude that respondents' choices are highly contextual and consider the age of the persons involved and whether these persons have complied with social norms.
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| 2. |
- Habla, Wolfgang, et al.
(författare)
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Strategic Delegation and Non-cooperative International Permit Markets
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We analyze a principal-agent relationship in the context of international climate policy in a two-country framework. First, the principals of both countries decide whether to link their domestic emission permit markets to an international market. Second, the principals select agents who then non-cooperatively determine the levels of emission permits. Finally, these permits are traded on domestic or international permit markets. We find that the principals in both countries have an incentive to select agents that care (weakly) less for environmental damages than the principals do themselves. This incentive is more pronounced under international permit markets, particularly for permit sellers, rendering an international market less beneficial to at least one country. Our results may explain why we do not observe international permit markets despite their seemingly favorable characteristics and, more generally, suggest that treating countries as atomistic players may be an oversimplifying assumption when analyzing strategic behavior in international policy making.
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| 3. |
- Habla, Wolfgang
(författare)
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The Green Paradox and Interjurisdictional Competition across Space and Time
- 2016
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper demonstrates that unintended effects of climate policies (Green Paradox effects) also arise in general equilibrium when countries compete for mobile factors of production (capital and resources/energy). Second, it shows that countries have a rationale to use strictly positive source-based capital taxes to slow down resource extraction. Notably, this result comes about in the absence of any revenue requirements by the government, and independently of the elasticity of substitution between capital and resources in production. Third, the paper generalizes the results obtained by Eichner and Runkel (2012) by showing that the Nash equilibrium entails inefficiently high pollution.
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| 4. |
- Habla, Wolfgang, et al.
(författare)
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The Political Economy of Mitigation and Adaptation
- 2016
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper, we acknowledge that the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change have differential fiscal impacts. Whereas mitigation typically raises fiscal revenues, adaptation is costly to the taxpayer and to a greater extent the more distortionary the tax system is. In an OLG model with majority voting, we analyze how the choices of mitigation and adaptation are distorted under a lump-sum and a distortionary income tax regime. We find that whenever emissions and adaptation exhibit stock characteristics, the levels of mitigation and adaptation are chosen inefficiently low in the political equilibrium under lump-sum taxation. By contrast, the political equilibrium may entail inefficiently high mitigation or inefficiently high adaptation (but not both simultaneously) if the tax system is distortionary. A calibration of our model to the German economy shows that both mitigation and adaptation can be expected to be inefficiently low in the political equilibrium. Furthermore, the standard assumption of a lump-sum tax system when analyzing mitigation and adaptation is found to underestimate the loss in utilitarian welfare relative to a distortionary tax system, although mitigation levels are generally higher under the latter regime.
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| 5. |
- Habla, Wolfgang, et al.
(författare)
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The political economy of mitigation and adaptation
- 2017
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Ingår i: European Economic Review. - : Elsevier BV. - 0014-2921 .- 1873-572X. ; 92, s. 239-257
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate policies have very uneven effects in terms of their fiscal impact. While mitigation of climate change typically raises revenues, adaptation is costly to the taxpayer, and the more so, the more distortionary the tax system. Moreover, the benefits and costs of mitigation and adaptation vary across generations. In an OLG model with majority voting, we show that even in the absence of international pollution spillovers and strategic considerations, neither mitigation nor adaptation can be expected to be set efficiently. The reason is that voters have incentives to use climate policy as an instrument for redistribution. We find that these incentives depend on the underlying tax system. Furthermore, the chosen mitigation or adaptation level may be inefficiently high in a political equilibrium with a distortionary income tax system, although not simultaneously. This finding suggests that a distortionary income tax system favors one policy (mitigation or adaptation) at the expense of the other. The calibration of our model to the German economy reveals that both mitigation and adaptation are lower than their socially optimal levels.
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| 6. |
- Muller, Paul, et al.
(författare)
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Experimental and non-experimental evidence on limited attention and present bias at the gym
- 2018
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We show that limited attention and present bias contribute to low levels of exercise. First, in a large randomized experiment, we find that email reminders increase gym visits by 13 % and that they benefit nearly all types of individuals. Limited attention can explain these effects. Second, using a novel dataset, we find that many bookings for gym classes are canceled, and that bookings are made even for classes that never have a waiting list. Comparing these findings to the predictions of a dynamic discrete choice model, we conclude that many gym members use bookings to commit themselves to future attendance.
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| 7. |
- Sterner, Thomas, 1952, et al.
(författare)
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Policy design for the Anthropocene
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2398-9629. ; 2, s. 14-21
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2019, Springer Nature Limited. Today, more than ever, ‘Spaceship Earth’ is an apt metaphor as we chart the boundaries for a safe planet1. Social scientists both analyse why society courts disaster by approaching or even overstepping these boundaries and try to design suitable policies to avoid these perils. Because the threats of transgressing planetary boundaries are global, long-run, uncertain and interconnected, they must be analysed together to avoid conflicts and take advantage of synergies. To obtain policies that are effective at both international and local levels requires careful analysis of the underlying mechanisms across scientific disciplines and approaches, and must take politics into account. In this Perspective, we examine the complexities of designing policies that can keep Earth within the biophysical limits favourable to human life.
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