Environmental and Resource Economics最新文献

Cities increasingly address climate change, e.g. by pledging city-level emission reduction targets. This is puzzling for the provision of a global public good: what are city governments’ reasons for doing so, and do pledges actually translate into emission reductions? Empirical studies have found a set of common factors which relate to these questions, but also mixed evidence. What is still pending is a theoretical framework to explain those findings and gaps. This paper thus develops a theoretical public choice model. It features economies of scale and distinguishes urban reduction targets from actual emission reductions. The model is able to explain the presence of targets and public good provision, yet only under specified conditions. It is also able to support some stylized facts from the empirical literature, e.g. on the effect of city size, and resolves some mixed evidence as special cases. Larger cities chose more ambitious targets if marginal net benefits of mitigation rise with city size—if they set targets at all. Whether target setting is more likely for larger cities depends on the city type. Two types are obtained. The first type reduces more emissions than a free-riding city. Those cities are more likely to set a target when they are larger. However, they miss the self-chosen target. Cities of the second type reach their target, but mitigate less than a free-riding city. A third type does not exist. With its special cases, the model can thus guide further empirical and theoretical work.

This paper examines the impact of the Spanish Environmental Investment (EI) tax credit on adoption of green technologies by employing data from 2567 industrial firms for 6 years. It makes use of the sudden re-introduction of the tax incentive in March 2011, that aimed at favouring energy efficient over solely pollution abating technologies. I exploit this unexpected change and perform a difference-in-differences analysis to study its effect on green investments and as an extention on green employment outcomes. The policy change, aimed at switching financing to energy efficient technologies, is assessed as semi-effective. Admittedly, it decreased investment in end-of-pipe technologies, but the investment in superior cleaner production technologies increased only for the small firms (below 50 employees), which are especially vulnerable to the capital market failure. Unfortunately, the policy change had also a few unexpected indirect effects, firms in response to the tax incentive regime modification reduced the number of their green employees and their associated salaries. In stark contrast to the decision of the Spanish government on this EI tax credit, the results of this analysis seem to be quite encouraging for the continued use of this green fiscal policy and show that the modifications in the precision of the existing fiscal policies can be successful.

Climate change and the ongoing energy transition can increase energy poverty rates. To date, the main tool employed to alleviate energy poverty has involved income transfers to vulnerable households. However, measures that seek to improve a home’s energy efficiency have recently gained increasing relevance. In this study we assess the effectiveness of these two types of policy, assuming universal coverage and optimal behaviour. Results points that income transfers and energy efficiency measures have the potential to decrease the proportion of households in energy poverty; however, the magnitude of their respective effects differs greatly. The average impact of energy efficiency measures provides for a greater reduction in energy poverty rates than income transfer policies. Although the greatest reduction in energy poverty is obtained by combining both measures, this combination of tools leads to overlapping effects with income transfers making only a marginal contribution once total retrofit have been implemented.

We exploit a fuel tax increase in Portugal to identify its effect on cross-border fuel sales and associated carbon leakage in the Spanish border regions. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, we find that while gasoline sales remained unaffected, diesel sales in Spanish border regions increased by 6–9%. Synthetic control methods confirm these estimates and attribute this differential effect by fuel type to routes frequented by heavy-duty vehicles, with large diesel tanks. We estimate a carbon leakage equivalent to 14–20% of Portugal’s annual mitigation commitment for road transport emissions. Our findings imply that heavy goods vehicles’ strategic behavior undermines the potential mitigation effects and revenue gains of transport climate policy, underscoring the need for coordinated policies in similar federal or quasi-federal contexts.

Economic analysis of catastrophic risk is a topic that unfortunately has become more relevant since the 1960s. An important question when a vital resource stock is at risk is whether one should invest more in the stock to create a buffer against a catastrophe or allow the stock to decrease as risk makes its future value decrease. The present paper analyses exogenous catastrophic risk where the probability of catastrophe cannot be controlled. Conditions for when precautionary behaviour is optimal are given with general functional forms. The paper analyses both problems with a single catastrophe and problems with an infinite sequence of catastrophes. It is shown that most of the results pertaining to a single catastrophe carry over to the case with an infinite number of catastrophes.

This paper sheds light on the unidentified effects of unilateral environmental and trade actions within an international trade framework with two large open economies, transboundary pollution, and Public Pollution Abatement (PPA) activities. When private and public abatement coexists in the exporting country, stricter environmental policy by the importing one magnifies the carbon leakage effect. Pareto efficiency dictates that Border Carbon Adjustment (BCA) should account not only for the difference in carbon taxes between the two countries, but also for the policy’s unintended consequences on PPA. More importantly, we argue that a conditional reduction of BCA, subject to stricter environmental policy by the country that exports the polluting good, decreases global pollution and increases countries’ welfare. Such reform strategy generates strong incentives for countries with laxer environmental policy to adopt a stricter one.

Using a lab-in-the-field experiment with Ugandan fishers, we study if and how the use of a common pool resource changes when the resource is either scarce or abundant and when the number of users increases over time. Both resource scarcity and a growing group require users to be more constrained, that is, more cooperative, in order to maintain the resource. However, the results show that fishers do not curtail their harvesting behavior under increased pressure, leading to rapid overexploitation when scarce resources are used by a growing group. This implies a particular need for sustainable management when scarce resources are exposed to in-migration.

The Paris Agreement (PA) opens for parties to use Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) for implementing their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). This paper analyzes spot, forward and options market trading of ITMOs up to the end of the first PA trading period (2030), given uncertainty about (1) the fulfillment of parties’ NDC targets, and (2) the existence and functioning of the ITMO markets, as ITMO banking beyond 2030 is not allowed. Closed-form solutions are derived for options trading and its welfare impacts given uniform distributions of parties’ uncertainties about fulfilling their individual commitments. Access to call options for late ITMO purchases leads to larger forward ITMO sales or less current mitigation, help parties stay in NDC compliance in 2030, brings early revenue to low-income parties, and is welfare enhancing for all parties. Access to put options for late ITMO sales is less important, and will not be used when put options are not subsidized and parties are risk neutral. The ITMO markets can be enabled by donor-provided climate finance. Effectively functioning ITMO markets can dramatically reduce parties’ costs of achieving their NDCs, and could increase parties’ ambitions, then also reducing global greenhouse gas emissions under the agreement.