| 1. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
A Fair Share : Burden-Sharing Preferences in the United States and China
- 2010
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Using a choice experiment, we investigated preferences for distributing the economic burden of decreasing CO2 emissions in the two largest CO2-emitting countries: the United States and China. We asked respondents about their preferences for four burden-sharing rules to reduce CO2 emissions according to their country’s 1) historical emissions, 2) income level, 3) equal right to emit per person, and 4) current emissions. We found that U.S. respondents preferred the rule based on current emissions, while the equal right to emit rule was clearly least preferred. The Chinese respondents, on the other hand, preferred the historical rule, while the current emissions rule was the least preferred. Respondents overall favored the rule that was least costly for their country. These marked differences may explain the difficulties countries face in agreeing how to share costs, presenting a tough hurdle to overcome in future negotiations. We also found that the strength of the preferences was much stronger in China, suggesting that how mitigation costs are shared across countries is more important there.
|
|
| 2. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
A fair share: Burden-sharing preferences in the United States and China
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Resource and Energy Economics. - 0928-7655. ; 35:1, s. 1-17
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using a sequential discrete choice experiment, we investigate preferences for distributing the economic burden of reducing CO2 emissions in the two largest CO2-emitting countries: the United States and China. We asked respondents about their preferences for four burden-sharing rules to reduce CO2 emissions according to their country's relative (1) historical emissions, (2) income level, (3) emissions per capita, and (4) current emissions. We found that respondents overall favored the rule that was least costly for their country. In addition, the willingness to pay was much higher in China, suggesting that how mitigation costs are shared across countries is more important for Chinese than for Americans. To some extent the willingness to pay varies with socioeconomic characteristics and attitudes. For example, university-educated respondents in the United States are willing to pay more for the rule that is the least costly for their own country, compared with those with a lower education level. At the same time, the ranking of the two most preferred rules are generally robust across all socioeconomic groups within each country.
|
|
| 3. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
Doing good with other people’s money: A charitable giving experiment with students in environmental sciences and economics
- 2011
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We augment a standard dictator game to investigate how preferences for an environmental project relate to willingness to limit others’ choices. We explore this issue by distinguishing three student groups: economists, environmental economists, and environmental social scientists. We find that people are generally disposed to grant freedom of choice, but only within certain limits. In addition, our results are in line with the widely held belief that economists are more selfish than other people. Yet, against the notion of consumer sovereignty, economists are not less likely to restrict others’ choices and impose restrictions closer to their own preferences than the other student groups.
|
|
| 4. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
Is Fairness Blind? - The effect of framing on preferences for effort-sharing rules
- 2010
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- By using a choice experiment, this paper focuses on citizens’ preferences for effort-sharing rules of how carbon abatement should be shared among countries. We find that Swedes do not rank the rule favoring their own country highest. Instead, they prefer the rule where all countries are allowed to emit an equal amount per person, a rule that favors Africa at the expense of high emitters such as the U.S. The least preferred rule is reduction proportional to historical emissions. Using two different treatments, one where the respondents were informed about the country names and one where the country names were replaced with anonymous labels A-D, we also test whether people’s preferences for effort-sharing rules depend on the framing of the problem. We find that while the ranking of the principles is the same in both treatments, the strength of the preferences is significantly increased when the actual names of the countries are used.
|
|
| 5. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
Paying for Mitigation: A Multiple Country Study
- 2010
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Unique survey data from a contingent valuation study conducted in three different countries (China, Sweden, and the United States) were used to investigate the ordinary citizen’s willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing CO2 emissions. We find that a large majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase. A smaller share of Americans, however, believes these statements, when compared to the Chinese and Swedes. A larger share of Americans is also pessimistic and believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change. We also find that Sweden has the highest WTP for reductions of CO2, while China has the lowest. Thus, even though the Swedes and Chinese are similar to each other in their attitudes toward climate change, they differ considerably in their WTP. When WTP is measured as a share of household income, the willingness to pay is the same for Americans and Chinese, while again higher for the Swedes.
|
|
| 6. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth - A Multiple Country Test of an Oath Script
- 2010
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and emissions reductions, we took advantage of the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics that addresses the effects of making promises, in order to investigate the effect of an oath script in a contingent valuation survey. The survey was conducted in Sweden and China, and its results indicate that an oath script has significant effects on respondent behavior in answering willingness-to-pay (WTP) questions, some of which vary by country. In both countries, the share of zero WTP responses and extremely high WTP responses decreases when an oath script is used, which also results in lower variance. In China, the oath script also reduces the average WTP, cutting it by half in certain instances. We also found that the oath script has different impacts on various respondent groups. For example, without the oath script, Communist party members in China are more likely than others to have a positive WTP for emissions reductions, but with the oath script, there is no longer any difference between the groups.
|
|
| 7. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
-
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - A multiple country test of an oath script
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-2681. ; 89, s. 105-121
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Hypothetical bias is one of the main issues bedeviling the field of nonmarket valuation. The general criticism is that survey responses reflect how people would like to behave, rather than how they actually behave. In our study of climate change and carbon emissions reductions, based on the increasing bulk of evidence from psychology and economics regarding the effects of making promises, we investigate the effect of an oath script in a contingent valuation survey. The survey was conducted in Sweden and China, and its results indicate that an oath script has significant effects on respondent behavior in answering willingness-to-pay (WTP) questions. In both countries, the shares of zero WTP responses and extremely high WTP responses decrease when an oath script is used, resulting in lower variance. Furthermore, the conditional WTP decreases in the Chinese but not in the Swedish sample. We also find that the effect of the oath script is not generally dependent on respondent characteristics, and the few differences we observe vary with the countries.
|
|
| 8. |
- Kataria, Mitesh, 1978
(författare)
-
Confirmation: What's in the evidence?
- 2014
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The difference between accommodated evidence (i.e. when evidence is known first and a hypothesis is proposed to explain and fit the observations) and predicted evidence (i.e., when evidence verifies the prediction of a hypothesis formulated before observing the evidence) is investigated. According to Bayesian confirmation theory, accommodated and predicted evidence constitute equally strong confirmation. Using a survey experiment on a sample of students, however, it is shown that predicted evidence is perceived to constitute stronger confirmation than accommodated evidence. Turning to the question why, we find that trusting a model to predict correctly is intrinsically related to trust in the proposers’ (i.e., the scientists’) level of knowledge, and subjects’ are more persuaded by the proposer ability to utilize this knowledge to predict in the future if the proposer in the past shown to be successful in predicting rather than accommodating evidence. The existence of such an indirect relationship between hypothesis and evidence can be considered to impose undesirable subjectivity and arbitrariness on questions of evidential support. Evidential support is ideally a direct and impersonal relationship between hypothesis and evidence and not an indirect and personal relationship as it has shown to be in this paper.
|
|
| 9. |
- Kataria, Mitesh, 1978
(författare)
-
One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer: A Comment on Zacharias Maniadis, Fabio Tufano, and John List
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Econ Journal Watch. - 1933-527X. ; 11:1, s. 4-10
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In their article “One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer: New Evidence on Anchoring Effects,” Zacharias Maniadis, Fabio Tufano, and John List (2014) present a framework for statistical inference. Presenting evidence from a simulation, the authors suggest that a decision about whether to call an experimental finding noteworthy, or deserving of great attention, should be based on the calculated post-study probability and not on the Classical significance test. In their simulation, it is assumed that the unconditional probability P(H0) is known. The assumption restricts the conclusions to the following: (i) if a non-negligible difference between the post-study probability and the significance level is found then only post-study probabilities offer proper inference; (ii) if a negligible difference is found then both approaches would more or less offer proper inference, though post-study probabilities would be slightly more accurate. In this comment I raise some concerns with their simulation. First, if P(H0) is unknown, as is often the case with economic applications, the post-study probability can lead to even worse inference than the Classical significance test, depending on the quality of the prior. Second, the simulation in Maniadis, Tufano, and List (2014) ignores previous assessments of P(H0) and instead utilizes a selective empirical setup that favors the use of post-study probabilities. Such utilizations might illustrate the pitfalls of the Classical significance test. But, contrary to what Maniadis, Tufano, and List argue, their results do not allow for drawing general recommendations about which approach is the most appropriate.
|
|
