Resource and Energy Economics最新文献

This paper compares two regimes of tradable emission permits, a regime with international permit trade (IPT) and a regime with domestic permit trade (DPT). We focus on the effects of the distribution of firms between countries. Our model combines intra-industry trade with a monopolistically competitive industry. We find that a more equal distribution of firms between countries results in higher global pollution under the DPT regime, while under the IPT regime the global pollution is invariant with the distribution of firms. We also find that international permit trade can either increase or reduce global pollution, depending on the distribution of firms.

Previous laboratory evidence suggests that people tend to value their decision right beyond its instrumental value. We measure the intrinsic value of decision rights in the context of switching the electricity provider. We focus on customers of an online platform who can either choose a service that reminds them when they are allowed to switch their electricity contract or a service that automatically switches the contract on their behalf whenever possible. Our focus is on the intrinsic value of decision rights as a potential obstacle of this choice automation. Surprisingly, we find that customers who make use of the automation service assign significantly higher intrinsic value to their decision rights, compared to those who opted for the mere reminder. Hence, there appears to be a connection between having a high intrinsic value of decision rights and the level of interest in attributes of the automation service under consideration. The positive correlation suggests that the widespread positive intrinsic value of decision rights and the future adoption of similar automation services and devices do not necessarily contradict each other.

This paper uses a stochastic optimal control model to show how standard loan contracts create incentives for farmers to focus on short-term financial performance at the expense of farms’ long-term natural capital. These incentives are a manifestation of the debt overhang problem. Extending this model shows how sustainability-linked loans can be used to weaken these incentives in a way that potentially benefits farmers and their bankers. The magnitude of the economic benefits generated by these loans depends on farm characteristics. The paper investigates the optimal design of sustainability-linked loans.

Production licenses with use restrictions that limit output are commonly used to regulate biological production processes. Such regulations are vulnerable to rent formation and production distortions that can end up subsidizing harmful environmental behavior. This paper develops a partial equilibrium model for a biological production process and use the model to study the impact of production quotas in Norwegian salmon aquaculture. Results suggest substantial regulatory rents capitalized in license values. Production has intensified leading to excessive stocking of fish per license, a shorting of the production period, and smaller produced fish. Our findings provide important insights for quota policies in food production, especially for cases where quotas are motivated by harmful environmental effects.

To shed light on the recent debate about climate change in this post-pandemic scenario, we take advantage of a unique dataset that combines geo-tagged social media data from Twitter in Spain from 2017 to 2022. Twitter conversations have been analyzed with natural language processing techniques to obtain sentiment scores related to climate change. These were merged with additional relevant control variables, aiming to understand the role of the contributing factors on the evolution of the hedonic scores, including external temperatures, the occurrence of heat waves, and deaths related to climate. We find a strong negative effect of external temperatures on sentiment, aggravated by recent increases in the frequency of heat waves and deaths related to climate. Further, this negative sentiment is accentuated after experiencing the recent COVID-19.

We analyze the political impact of a generous solar panel subsidization program. Subsidies far exceeded their social benefit and were partly financed by new taxes on adopters and by electricity surcharges for all consumers. We use local panel data from Belgium and find a decrease in votes for government parties in municipalities with high adoption rates. This shows that the voters’ punishment for a costly policy exceeded the potential reward by adopters who received generous subsidies. Further analysis indicates that punishment mainly comes from non-adopters, who change their vote towards anti-establishment parties.

While climate policy studies are widespread, fully fledged computable general equilibrium (CGE) model analyses of distributional policy effects are challenging because the required data and approaches are not directly available. To ease such distributional analyses, we provide a step-by-step “recipe” for disaggregating a country-specific representative consumer of a CGE model. Using this “recipe”, we implement German household survey data in a global CGE model by distinguishing three income groups of the German representative consumer. We find that the negative consumption effect of CO${}_2$ pricing is highest for the low-income group, whereas the negative income effect is highest for the high-income group and exceeds the consumption effect. The low-income group benefits most from (per capita-based redistribution of) carbon pricing revenues and receives social transfers such that poor households can be better off with such climate policies than without them. CO${}_2$ pricing of imports at the (EU) border slightly strengthens these distributional effects and is mainly beneficial for the low-income group. The geographic extension of emissions trading within a “climate club” leads to substantial efficiency gains that are beneficial for Germany and the EU.

We employ the footloose capital model to examine and compare how two countries decide on their emission permits non-cooperatively under domestic and international emissions trading in the presence of capital mobility. We find that even if two countries are symmetric and have the same carbon prices under domestic emissions trading, they can benefit from international emissions trading. This finding holds regardless of capital mobility. We also find that allowing footloose capital increases each country’s and global emissions under domestic emissions trading; however, it does not affect emissions under international emissions trading. Additionally, we show that the cooperative choices of emission permits are the same regardless of international mobility of emission permits and capital and are always lower than the non-cooperative ones.

This paper examines a common-pool resource where quotas and fines are set by a regulator, an artisanal organization (cooperative), or both. We analyze the interaction between these two regulatory agencies under a flexible policy regime, where quotas and fines can be revised across periods, and under an inflexible policy regime, where they cannot. We show that inefficiencies arise in the inflexible regime, but they are reduced when the two agencies coexist. Overall, we demonstrate that the artisanal organization may be preferred when environmental damages are low, but the regulator may be preferable otherwise.

Exclusion zones, like protected areas or setback distances, are the most common policy instrument to mitigate environmental impacts of human land-use, including the deployment of renewable energy sources (RES). However, exclusion zones may also increase generation and environmental costs of RES deployment. This paper aims to understand and quantify these trade-offs. Using a simple analytical model, we propose that cost effects of exclusion zones can be decomposed into a substitution effect (because RES generation is shifted to sites with higher or lower marginal costs) and an output effect (because more sites may be needed to attain a given RES generation target). We provide a numerical illustration for two examples of exclusion zones – setback distances to settlements and forest bans – which are implemented for wind power deployment in Germany. We find that moderate setback distances reduce disamenity costs but also lead to increases in generation and other environmental costs. This trade-off is primarily due to the output effect. Importantly, the output effect also implies that very restrictive setback distances may fail to reduce, and even increase, aggregate disamenity costs of wind power deployment. For forest bans, our analysis reveals substantial increases in disamenity costs. This trade-off mainly results from the substitution effect. Our analytical insights can be transferred to other fields of environmental policy, for example, exclusion zones regulating agricultural land-use or urban development.