Resource efficiency and circular economy policies aim at reducing resource intensity and use throughout the economy, thereby decreasing environmental impacts. Besides the environmental benefits expected from these policies, potential employment benefits are often emphasised, which would follow the anticipated structural changes in the economy from material-intensive to more labour-intensive activities. However, the size of the employment effect is still unclear and difficult to quantify. To date, the quantitative literature on the employment impacts of the circular economy is still scarce. This study is the first of its kind to review the available studies on this increasingly important policy issue.
{"title":"Labour Market Consequences of a Transition to a Circular Economy: A Review Paper","authors":"Frithjof Laubinger, E. Lanzi, Jean Château","doi":"10.1561/101.00000120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000120","url":null,"abstract":"Resource efficiency and circular economy policies aim at reducing resource intensity and use throughout the economy, thereby decreasing environmental impacts. Besides the environmental benefits expected from these policies, potential employment benefits are often emphasised, which would follow the anticipated structural changes in the economy from material-intensive to more labour-intensive activities. However, the size of the employment effect is still unclear and difficult to quantify. To date, the quantitative literature on the employment impacts of the circular economy is still scarce. This study is the first of its kind to review the available studies on this increasingly important policy issue.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"14 1","pages":"381-416"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48656115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sectoral Decomposition of CO2 World Emissions: A Joint Quantile Regression Approach","authors":"Luca Merlo, L. Petrella, Valentina Raponi","doi":"10.1561/101.00000116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000116","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"14 1","pages":"197-239"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45104487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many of the findings from behavioural economics research offer useful opportunities to better understand and anticipate people's choices among alternatives and to improve policy design accordingly. Their use has, however, varied among fields — being widely employed in some and mainly ignored in others. Major issues and likely understatements resulting from current practice are illustrated in the recent assessment of the monetary value of damages resulting from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
{"title":"Behavioural Economics, Benefit-Cost Analysis, and the WTP versus WTA Choice","authors":"J. Knetsch","doi":"10.1561/101.00000119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000119","url":null,"abstract":"Many of the findings from behavioural economics research offer useful opportunities to better understand and anticipate people's choices among alternatives and to improve policy design accordingly. Their use has, however, varied among fields — being widely employed in some and mainly ignored in others. Major issues and likely understatements resulting from current practice are illustrated in the recent assessment of the monetary value of damages resulting from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"14 1","pages":"153-196"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41676083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
After five decades of modeling oil price shocks, their causes and repercussions remain a question of considerable interest, both in the academic literature and the policy domain. This paper critically reviews the leading explanations of the underlying causes of oil price shocks since the 1970s. Specifically, it is intended to provide insights into the theoretical, methodological, and empirical milestones together with unresolved issues from both a historical and exploratory viewpoint. The paper also provides and discusses pathways to overcome some of the unresolved issues to aid future model formulations and policy prescriptions.
{"title":"Five Decades of Modeling Oil Price Shocks: A Critical Review","authors":"Mikidadu Mohammed","doi":"10.1561/101.00000117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000117","url":null,"abstract":"After five decades of modeling oil price shocks, their causes and repercussions remain a question of considerable interest, both in the academic literature and the policy domain. This paper critically reviews the leading explanations of the underlying causes of oil price shocks since the 1970s. Specifically, it is intended to provide insights into the theoretical, methodological, and empirical milestones together with unresolved issues from both a historical and exploratory viewpoint. The paper also provides and discusses pathways to overcome some of the unresolved issues to aid future model formulations and policy prescriptions.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"14 1","pages":"241-297"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45621894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A cost-effective low-carbon transition requires designing a state support mechanism that delivers an optimal diversity of renewable energy sources (RES) in the energy mix. Lowest price auctions that do not discriminate between technologies deliver optimal RES diversity, providing that there are no spill-over effects associated with the deployment of each technology. This precondition fails to apply, however, if RES technologies are able to benefit from learning-by-doing and if learning rates are uncertain. In the first part of this study we review the literature on the optimal diversity of technologies when technological progress is uncertain and on the uncertainty of learning rates. Then we use an analytical model to demonstrate that, under the uncertainty of learning potential, the socially-optimal diversity of RES is larger than the outcome of the lowest price auction. We also show that the social benefits from diversification disappear if there is no potential for learning-by-doing. Thus, countries that potentially could benefit from large learning rate effects — such as countries at the technological frontier — should increase RES diversification by introducing technology-specific auctions, while more peripheral countries should limit diversification by using technology-neutral auctions. We also show that the diversity of RES in the social optimum is greater than that predicted by energy models assuming fixed learning rates.
{"title":"Optimal Diversity in Auctions for Renewable Energy Sources under Technological Uncertainty","authors":"Jakub Sawulski, Jan Witajewski-Baltvilks","doi":"10.1561/101.00000118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000118","url":null,"abstract":"A cost-effective low-carbon transition requires designing a state support mechanism that delivers an optimal diversity of renewable energy sources (RES) in the energy mix. Lowest price auctions that do not discriminate between technologies deliver optimal RES diversity, providing that there are no spill-over effects associated with the deployment of each technology. This precondition fails to apply, however, if RES technologies are able to benefit from learning-by-doing and if learning rates are uncertain. In the first part of this study we review the literature on the optimal diversity of technologies when technological progress is uncertain and on the uncertainty of learning rates. Then we use an analytical model to demonstrate that, under the uncertainty of learning potential, the socially-optimal diversity of RES is larger than the outcome of the lowest price auction. We also show that the social benefits from diversification disappear if there is no potential for learning-by-doing. Thus, countries that potentially could benefit from large learning rate effects — such as countries at the technological frontier — should increase RES diversification by introducing technology-specific auctions, while more peripheral countries should limit diversification by using technology-neutral auctions. We also show that the diversity of RES in the social optimum is greater than that predicted by energy models assuming fixed learning rates.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"14 1","pages":"299-347"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41548397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper provides an overview of the role of oil spill liability in policy at the state, national, and international levels. The primary focus is on damages to publicly owned natural resources from oil spills and associated legislation, policy, and economics. Both US and International Law have evolved over time to provide strict liability for an ever more inclusive set of oil spill damages, including what is termed "pure environmental" damages. This represents arguably the most expansive implementation of the "Polluter Pays Principle", which makes those who pollute financially responsible for the damages. Under both US and International Law, the primary form of compensation is a set of cost-effective actions to restore environmental damages, which has been termed resource-based compensation, as opposed providing to monetary compensation to injured parties. The framework under US law for liability for publicly owned natural resource damages requires quantification of causal linkages from a spill event, to injury to natural resources, to damages to the public, to natural recovery to baseline conditions, and accelerated recovery under alternative sets of restoration programs. In principle, this is a logical framework to ensure that the public is compensated for spill-related environmental damages. However, carrying out such a program may strain the state-of-the-science at each stage, given the many limitations of our scientific understanding of complex environmental systems. Thus, assessing liability for oil spill damages is a highly challenging endeavor and enormous uncertainties exist at nearly every stage in the process. Furthermore, litigation for oil spill damages is often a high stakes game, where the parties that are principally involved in assessing damages also receive benefits from, or pay the costs of, the damage awards. Thus, the process of assessing damages cannot be viewed as an objective analysis by impartial third parties. Furthermore, this damage assessment process is costly and time consuming, and neither assessment costs nor litigation costs contribute to compensating victims or restoring environmental damages. This raises the question of whether we as a society should rethink the framework for compensation for natural resource damages in future oil spill legislation. Standardized alternatives to traditional tort law exist which may reduce the time and financial costs of litigation and may thereby expedite restoration actions. Furthermore, standardized approaches may not necessarily reduce the accuracy of damage assessments, given the great scientific uncertainties and the financial interests of the parties involved in the damage assessment process.
{"title":"Liability for Natural Resource Damages from Oil Spills: A Survey","authors":"J. Opaluch","doi":"10.1561/101.00000114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000114","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides an overview of the role of oil spill liability in policy at the state, national, and international levels. The primary focus is on damages to publicly owned natural resources from oil spills and associated legislation, policy, and economics. Both US and International Law have evolved over time to provide strict liability for an ever more inclusive set of oil spill damages, including what is termed \"pure environmental\" damages. This represents arguably the most expansive implementation of the \"Polluter Pays Principle\", which makes those who pollute financially responsible for the damages. Under both US and International Law, the primary form of compensation is a set of cost-effective actions to restore environmental damages, which has been termed resource-based compensation, as opposed providing to monetary compensation to injured parties. The framework under US law for liability for publicly owned natural resource damages requires quantification of causal linkages from a spill event, to injury to natural resources, to damages to the public, to natural recovery to baseline conditions, and accelerated recovery under alternative sets of restoration programs. In principle, this is a logical framework to ensure that the public is compensated for spill-related environmental damages. However, carrying out such a program may strain the state-of-the-science at each stage, given the many limitations of our scientific understanding of complex environmental systems. Thus, assessing liability for oil spill damages is a highly challenging endeavor and enormous uncertainties exist at nearly every stage in the process. Furthermore, litigation for oil spill damages is often a high stakes game, where the parties that are principally involved in assessing damages also receive benefits from, or pay the costs of, the damage awards. Thus, the process of assessing damages cannot be viewed as an objective analysis by impartial third parties. Furthermore, this damage assessment process is costly and time consuming, and neither assessment costs nor litigation costs contribute to compensating victims or restoring environmental damages. This raises the question of whether we as a society should rethink the framework for compensation for natural resource damages in future oil spill legislation. Standardized alternatives to traditional tort law exist which may reduce the time and financial costs of litigation and may thereby expedite restoration actions. Furthermore, standardized approaches may not necessarily reduce the accuracy of damage assessments, given the great scientific uncertainties and the financial interests of the parties involved in the damage assessment process.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"14 1","pages":"37-111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/101.00000114","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49624707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research in economics is anthropocentric. It only cares about the welfare of humans, and usually does not concern itself with animals. When it does, animals are treated as resources, biodiversity, or food. That is, animals only have instrumental value for humans. Yet unlike water, trees or vegetables, and like humans, most animals have a brain and a nervous system. They can feel pain and pleasure, and many argue that their welfare should matter. Some economic studies value animal welfare, but only indirectly through humans’ altruistic valuation. This overall position of economics is inconsistent with the utilitarian tradition and can be qualified as speciesist. We suggest that economics should directly value the welfare of sentient animals, at least sometimes. We briefly discuss some possible implications and challenges for (environmental) economics.
{"title":"Directly Valuing Animal Welfare in (Environmental) Economics","authors":"A. Carlier, Nicolas Treich","doi":"10.1561/101.00000115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000115","url":null,"abstract":"Research in economics is anthropocentric. It only cares about the welfare of humans, and usually does not concern itself with animals. When it does, animals are treated as resources, biodiversity, or food. That is, animals only have instrumental value for humans. Yet unlike water, trees or vegetables, and like humans, most animals have a brain and a nervous system. They can feel pain and pleasure, and many argue that their welfare should matter. Some economic studies value animal welfare, but only indirectly through humans’ altruistic valuation. This overall position of economics is inconsistent with the utilitarian tradition and can be qualified as speciesist. We suggest that economics should directly value the welfare of sentient animals, at least sometimes. We briefly discuss some possible implications and challenges for (environmental) economics.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":"14 1","pages":"113-152"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/101.00000115","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42011871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nudging has become a major form of intervention in the domains of sustainable behaviour, health behaviour, financial behaviour, and many others. But how does nudging work? Research so far has paid more attention to the effects of nudging than to the underlying mechanisms. The most prominent mechanisms associated in the literature with nudging are human biases and automatic decision-making. However, we argue that the heart of nudging mechanism is a shift in salience. Attention to this mechanism leads to an important distinction between two kinds of nudging: first, there is goal nudging, in which the salience of overarching goals is affected, leading to changes in activated preferences and attention to specific classes of alternatives. Second, there is behavioural nudging, in which the salience of a concrete alternative is being affected. In most cases, the two kinds of nudging work hand in glove, but without paying attention to their separate and joint effects, nudging interventions can be ineffective or even counterproductive.
{"title":"Two Kinds of Nudging and the Power of Cues: Shifting Salience of Alternatives and Shifting Salience of Goals","authors":"Siegwart Lindenberg, E. Papies","doi":"10.1561/101.00000110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000110","url":null,"abstract":"Nudging has become a major form of intervention in the domains of sustainable behaviour, health behaviour, financial behaviour, and many others. But how does nudging work? Research so far has paid more attention to the effects of nudging than to the underlying mechanisms. The most prominent mechanisms associated in the literature with nudging are human biases and automatic decision-making. However, we argue that the heart of nudging mechanism is a shift in salience. Attention to this mechanism leads to an important distinction between two kinds of nudging: first, there is goal nudging, in which the salience of overarching goals is affected, leading to changes in activated preferences and attention to specific classes of alternatives. Second, there is behavioural nudging, in which the salience of a concrete alternative is being affected. In most cases, the two kinds of nudging work hand in glove, but without paying attention to their separate and joint effects, nudging interventions can be ineffective or even counterproductive.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2019-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/101.00000110","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44444324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","authors":"D. Popp","doi":"10.1561/101.00000111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000111","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2019-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/101.00000111","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44599109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We characterize the optimal pollution-, capital- and labour-tax structure in a continuous-time growth model in the presence of pollution (resulting from production), both in the first- and second-best, allowing investors to be driven by social responsibility objectives. The social responsibility objective takes the form of warm-glow, as in Andreoni (1990) and Dam (2011), inducing firms to reduce pollution through increased abatement activity. Among the results, the first best pollution tax is still positive under warm-glow, the second-best pollution tax displays the additivity property, and we show the circumstances under which the Chamley-Judd zero capital-income tax result does not hold.
{"title":"Optimal Taxation, Environment Quality, Socially Responsible Firms and Investors","authors":"Thomas I. Renström, Luca Spataro, L. Marsiliani","doi":"10.1561/101.00000112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/101.00000112","url":null,"abstract":"We characterize the optimal pollution-, capital- and labour-tax structure in a continuous-time growth model in the presence of pollution (resulting from production), both in the first- and second-best, allowing investors to be driven by social responsibility objectives. The social responsibility objective takes the form of warm-glow, as in Andreoni (1990) and Dam (2011), inducing firms to reduce pollution through increased abatement activity. Among the results, the first best pollution tax is still positive under warm-glow, the second-best pollution tax displays the additivity property, and we show the circumstances under which the Chamley-Judd zero capital-income tax result does not hold.","PeriodicalId":45355,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2019-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/101.00000112","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47030325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}