effective purchasing power in a quantity constrained economy an estimate for the german democratic republic a measure of microeconomic disequilibrium for households facing both budget and quantity constraints is estimated from east german data using a new specification the flexible cobb douglas utility function the parameters of a german direct utility function are estimated from west german family budgets it is estimated that an average east german family in 1977 would have been willing to give up 13 of its total expenditure in order to attain its demands at official prices

the hotspots reference routes and research trends of marginal abatement costs a systematic review abstract as one of the most effective means of evaluating environmental policies marginal abatement costs macs have been adopted in a growing body of research this study characterizes the mac related literature from 1993 to 2018 on web of science based on a systematic review bibliometric analysis and mind mapping the results classify the research hotspots into influential factors methods and empirical applications the three most frequently mentioned influential factors are technical change discount rates and energy prices compared with top down models bottom up models including engineering model and expert based method are the most widely used improvements in the former focus on strengthening market behavior effect while those in the latter aim to overcome the weaknesses of negative costs and lack of interaction across measures mac applications focus on environmental policies with two new research areas recently emerging co benefits and sectoral abatement costs furthermore a reference route is proposed by summarizing the applicability of methods and matching relationships among influential factors methods and empirical problems finally potential research directions are summarized based on the identified research hotspots and a similar co word analysis in marginal cost field such as considering the effects of both multiple influential factors and the interaction among factors on maccs

achieving california s 80 greenhouse gas reduction target in 2050 technology policy and scenario analysis using ca times energy economic systems model the ca times optimization model of the california energy system v1 5 is used to understand how california can meet the 2050 targets for greenhouse gas ghg emissions 80 below 1990 levels this model represents energy supply and demand sectors in california and simulates the technology and resource requirements needed to meet projected energy service demands the model includes assumptions on policy constraints as well as technology and resource costs and availability multiple scenarios are developed to analyze the changes and investments in low carbon electricity generation alternative fuels and advanced vehicles in transportation resource utilization and efficiency improvements across many sectors results show that major energy transformations are needed but that achieving the 80 reduction goal for california is possible at reasonable average carbon reduction cost 9 to 124 tonne co2e at 4 discount rate relative to a baseline scenario availability of low carbon resources such as nuclear power carbon capture and sequestration ccs biofuels wind and solar generation and demand reduction all serve to lower the mitigation costs but ccs is a key technology for achieving the lowest mitigation costs

self selecting agri environmental policieswith an application to the don watershed we consider a model of regulation for nonpoint source water pollution through non linear taxation subsidization of agricultural production farmers are heterogenous along two dimensions their ability to transform inputs into final production and the available area they possess asymmetric information and participation of farmers to the regulation scheme put constraints on the optimal policy that we characterize we show that a positive relationship between size of land and ability may exacerbate adverse selection effects we calibrate the model using data on a french watershed and we simulate the optimal second best policy and characterize the allocation of the abatement effort among the producers

agricultural runoff as a nonpoint externality a theoretical development the purpose of this paper is to develop and explore a theory dealing with an important facet of agricultural runoff problems agricultural runoff is a nonpoint externality with notable implications for both research and policy a nonpoint externality exists whenever the externality contributions of individual economic agents cannot be practically measured by direct monitoring without monitoring regulations on emissions cannot be enforced and charges or subsidies cannot be assessed thus policies which are usually suggested for pollution abatement are not available there is great need for a theoretical base that can adequately capture these facts such a theory yields some important implications even before specific empirical applications the economic problem of agricultural runoff can be separated into three distinct categories first the sediment nutrients and chemicals removed by runoff represent a loss of resources to the individual farmer these costs are borne privately by farmers second if the discount rate of the individual farmer is greater than the social discount rate or if the farmer has a planning horizon which is shorter than society s the farmer will mine the soil resource at a rate which is more depletive than is socially optimal this is a temporal externality a third category involves the conservation of mass physical resources lost by the individual farm must appear elsewhere in the environment in sufficient quantities these resources are pollutants since water is the primary transport media for these resources it is water that is polluted by soil nutrients and agricultural chemicals this spatial externality has been the focus of much research here we intend to develop a theory for these issues to employ it to suggest a revised research methodology and to provide some important conclusions about alternative runoff policies only two of the three categories of agricultural runoff problems involve externalities and only the spatial externality is considered here

the next generation of urban maccs reassessing the cost effectiveness of urban mitigation options by integrating a systemic approach and social costs abstract many cities are implementing policies and climate action plans yet local climate policies suffer from a lack of scientific understanding and evaluation methods able to support the definition of efficient mitigation strategies the purpose of this paper is to build on classical approaches in the energy policy field that exist at the national and international level to propose an urban maccs methodology able to fulfill this lack and inform local debates the methodology is an extension of static expert based maccs it combines a land use transport integrated model and an abatement cost methodology that integrates co benefits and takes into account the spatial and systemic dimensions of cities the methodology is implemented for the transportation sector of a mid sized european city grenoble france our results present the cost effectiveness and political feasibility of several proposed measures we find that the inclusion of co benefits can profoundly change the cost benefit assessment of transport mitigation options moreover we underline the key parameters determining the cost effectiveness ranking of mitigation options these urban maccs aim to serve as a bridge between urban planning and mitigation policies and can thus contribute to strengthen and align sustainable and climate change agendas at the local level

london and beyond taking a closer look at urban energy policy this paper considers the field of urban energy policy a neglected yet important topic cities account for approximately two thirds of global primary energy consumption creating significant benefits and costs as a result there has been growing interest in the contribution of cities to global energy policy issues such as climate change but a number of significant questions remain e g how do energy policy processes differ between national and urban scales and how can cities contribute most effectively to global policy goals we present the results of interviews with key stakeholders in london to illustrate some unique features of the urban energy policy cycle we then take a wider view proposing a research agenda with three key goals describing the global variety of urban energy consumption and policy understanding the resulting diversity in responsibility vulnerability and capacity and developing shared procedures and solutions tackling these questions is vital if cities are to contribute fully to current energy policy efforts

the regulation of non point source pollution under imperfect and asymmetric information abstract this paper develops a bayesian framework for discussing the role of information in the design of non point source pollution control mechanisms an ambient concentration tax is examined allowing for spatial transport among multiple zones imposition of the tax requires costly measurement of concentrations in selected zones and the selection of zones for measurement must be undertaken without perfect information regarding several parameters of the problem potentially crucial information issues discussed include a the impact of asymmetric priors regarding fate and transport b the cost of measuring ambient concentration and c the optimal acquisition of information regarding fate and transport

the usefulness of marginal co2 e abatement cost curves in austria energy efficiency measures are manifold in all economic sectors these measures can be pictured by a marginal abatement cost curve macc which is a common way to show co2 e abatement potential and its related costs in various fields in this paper we calculated the marginal co2 e abatement cost curve for austria for the first time to fulfill the need for country specific cost curves one of the strengths of such curves lies in their ability to highlight that energy efficiency measures can even have negative abatement costs the weaknesses consist of neglecting a change in energy prices the rate of diffusion and compatibility with existing technologies by using a static bottom up approach we constructed the macc for four economic sectors household service transport energy and found a national mitigation potential of 45 4 million tons co2 e the results further show that even with the measures with negative abatement costs it is possible to make the necessary co2 e mitigation to fulfill the kyoto protocol the conclusions emphasize that the curve makes a contribution to overcome one of the barriers of implementation by providing enhanced information on energy efficiency measures and its costs

efficiency loss from resource misallocation in soviet industry the paper analyzes the problems that arise in estimating the efficiency loss from misallocation of resources in soviet industry as revealed by the inequality of marginal rates of substitution among factors in the eight branches of soviet industry econometric estimates of production functions in these branches are utilized to reach estimates of the loss arising from interbranch misallocation of capital and labor deployed in soviet industry this loss appears to be nonnegligible ranging from a low of about 3 to 4 percent to a high of 10 percent of efficient factor use and to be rising over time thus an added reason for the current deceleration in soviet industrial and overall growth is suggested

uncoordinated agricultural and environmental policy making an application to irrigated agriculture in the west agriculture and the environment are linked by a mutual reliance on scarce resources and prevalent market distortions in this paper we examine the efficiency costs of policies that correct distortions in one sector while ignoring those in another the dual distortions of an environmental externality and water subsidies are studied in the context of irrigated agriculture in california the welfare costs associated with independent action by either a water agency or an environmental authority when that policy maker attempts to correct the respective market distortion without consideration of the distortion in the other market are estimated policies to correct the two distortions are found to be complementary under these conditions the independent correction of either distortion improves welfare by at least 118 per acre in most cases the simultaneous adoption of various second best policies further reduces welfare losses associated with these distortions

a complete solution to a class of principal agent problems with an application to the control of a self managed firm this paper considers a class of principal agent problems which have the following features 1 there is adverse selection because the principal ignores the value of one parameter of the agent s true characteristics 2 leaving aside the information parameter the principal s welfare as well as the agent s welfare depend on two types of variables observable to both of them the first ones possibly multidimensional are called action variable s and the second one which is one dimensional has in general the meaning of a money transfer 3 the principal is a stackelberg leader of the two person game he can commit himself to decision rules which are admissible on informational grounds he optimizes within the adequate class taking into account besides the agent s reaction one constraint which has generally the meaning of an individual rationality constraint and sometimes of a feasibility constraint the optimization is limited to the class of non stochastic mechanisms 4 the problem can also receive an alternative interpretation the principal faces a continuum of agents of unknown characteristics the distribution being known however stylized principal agent problems of this type have often been considered in the economic literature in particular the reader will later be able to recognize that the standard income tax model a la mirrlees 1971 the quality or quantity choice model of the monopolist a la mussa and rosen 1978 or maskin and riley 1982 and the model of government regulation of the private monopolist of baron and myerson 1982 all belong to

ambient taxes when polluters have multiple choices economic research on environmental policy design has largely been concerned with the merits of emissions based economic incentives e g emissions charges emissions reduction subsidies transferable discharge permits ambient based tax subsidy schemes have drawn considerable interest in nonpoint pollution literature as alternatives to emissions based instruments expanding especially on segerson s seminal article this article examines the optimal design and budget balancing properties of ambient tax subsidy schemes under more realistic assumptions about the dimensions of firms choice sets than prior research

the soviet economic decline soviet growth from 1960 to 1989 was the worst in the world after we control for investment and human capital the relative performance worsens over time there is some evidence that the burden of defense spending modestly contributed to the soviet debacle the declining soviet growth rate from 1950 to 1987 can be accounted for by a declining marginal product of capital with a constant rate of growth of total factor productivity the soviet reliance on extensive growth rising capital to output ratios was no greater than that of market economies such as japan and the republic of korea but a low elasticity of substitution between capital and labor implied especially acute diminishing returns to capital compared with the case in market economies copyright 1995 by oxford university press

partially verifiable information and mechanism design in a principal agent model with adverse selection we study the implementation of social choice functions when the agent s message space is a correspondence which depends on this true characteristic we characterize such correspondence for which the revelation principle is valid returns must not contradict easily observable elements of the taxpayer s lifestyle in this paper we present a model of two person organizations in which these considerations are important we ask whether the restrictions on fallacious statements inherent in the system are sufficient to achieve the goals of the organization we show that the optimal way of eliciting the agent s response may not be to establish incentives for truthtelling in all instances in our model there is one player the agent who observes the state of the economic system another player the principal takes an action based on the information presented to him by the agent this class of models is often referred to as the principal agent problem in the extensive and growing literature on this problem it has always been assumed that the agent could lie to the principal and therefore that he had to be properly motivated to act at least partially in the principal s interest our formal way of modelling the partial verifiability of information is to introduce the restriction that the agent s responses must lie in a set m o that varies with the true state 0 it is assumed that this set always admits the possibility of responding with the true state the way in which the allowable response set varies with the true state is known to the principal in other respects we retain the usual principal agent formalization in particular the principal is the stackelberg leader in this game he can commit himself to choose a collective action as a function of the message transmitted by the agent whether the variation of the message space with the true observation is purely technological or whether it is induced by the severity of potential actions of the principal

cost effectiveness of greenhouse gas mitigation in transport a review of methodological approaches and their impact abstract a review is given of methodological practices for ex ante cost effectiveness analysis cea of transport greenhouse gas ghg mitigation measures e g fuel economy and co2 standards for road vehicles in the us and eu besides the fundamental differences between different types of policies and abatement options which inherently result in different cea outcomes differences in methodological choices and assumptions are another important source of variation in cea outcomes fourteen methodological issues clustered into six groups are identified on which thirty three selected studies are systematically reviewed the potential variation between lower and upper cost effectiveness estimates for ghg mitigation measures in transport resulting from different methodological choices and assumptions lies in the order of 400 per tonne co2 eq the practise of using cea for policy making could improve considerably by clearly indicating the specific purpose of the cea and its strengths and limitations for policy decisions another improvement is related to the dominant approach in transport ghg mitigation studies the bottom up financial technical approach which assesses isolated effects implying considerable limitations for policy making a shift to welfare economic approaches using a hybrid model has the potential to establish an improved assessment of transport ghg mitigation measures based on realistic market responses and behavioural change

research issues in nonpoint pollution control research on nonpoint pollution control instruments has focused primarily on incentives applied either to production inputs that affect nonpoint pollution or to ambient pollution concentrations both approaches may in theory yield an efficient solution however input based incentives will generally have to be second best to make implementation practical design issues include which inputs to monitor and the rates to apply to them the limited research indicates that second best input based incentives can be effective in adjusting input use in environmentally desirable ways alternatively ambient based incentives have theoretical appeal because efficient policy design appears to be less complex than for input based incentives these incentives have no track record nor close analogues that demonstrate potential effectiveness however research on how households and firms might react in response to ambient based incentives is needed before these instruments can be seriously considered

contract design for the purchase of environmental goods from agriculture an environmental stewardship program whereby farmers are paid directly for the environmental goods they provide is developed by combining the microparameter distribution model with mechanism design principles the program overcomes the information asymmetry between farmers and governments and accounts for the deadweight losses from distortionary taxes the characteristics of optimal input and payment schedules of the program are derived these optimal schedules are determined by the tradeoffs between farming profits environmental benefits and deadweight losses from taxes and are second best except under restrictive conditions on deadweight losses from taxes and on the marginal product of inputs and marginal pollution costs

technological progress and factor utilization in eastern european economic growth frontier production functions are estimated for the industrial sector of four east european countries czechoslovakia the german democratic republic hungary and poland the estimates reveal that the slowdown in industrial growth in these countries is due to a decline in the efficiency or intensity of factor utilization rather than to declining rates of growth of technological progress in all countries changes in the efficiency of resource utilization are found to be more responsive to changes in macroeconomic policies than to economic reforms finally the amount of labor that could be displaced during cyclical downturns is estimated and found to imply potentially high levels of disguised unemployment copyright 1989 by the london school of economics and political science

regulatory policy design for agroecosystem management on public rangelands this paper analyzes regulatory design for agroecosystem management on public rangelands we present an informational and institutional environment where three of the most prominent regulatory instruments on public rangelands input regulation cost sharing taxation and performance regulation can be de ned and compared the paper examines how the optimal regulation is shaped by the informational and institutional constraints faced by federal land management agencies flmas such as the bureau of land management and the u s forest service these constraints include informational asymmetries between ranchers and flmas limitations on flmas ability to monitor ranch level ecological conditions and constraints on flmas actions due to budget limitations and restrictions on the level of penalties they can assess the theoretical model extends the previous work of baker 1992 prendergast 2002 and hueth and melkonyan 2009 by considering optimal regulation by a budget constrained regulator in an environment of asymmetric information and moral hazard

subjective discount rates in the general population and their predictive power for energy saving behavior why do people sometimes refrain from saving energy even if it would pay off in monetary terms subjective discount rates present one possible explanation for this lack of foresight but little is known about their level and reliability in the general population with regard to behavior persons with lower discount rates are expected to accept additional costs upfront more readily than those with higher discount rates based on a representative nation wide study the swiss environmental survey 2007 and a follow up survey our analyses reveal that on average subjective discount rates are well above market interest rates and moderately stable over a time interval of four years income and education are negatively correlated with discount rates contrary to expectations we did not find convincing support for an impact of discount rates on energy saving behavior