wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

uncertainty and endogenous technical change in climate policy models until recently endogenous technical change and uncertainty have been modeled separately in climate policy models in this paper we review the emerging literature that considers both these elements together taken as a whole the literature indicates that explicitly including uncertainty has important quantitative and qualitative impacts on optimal climate change technology policy

identifying roles of international institutions in clean energy technology innovation and diffusion in the developing countries matching barriers with roles of the institutions abstract the development of clean energy technologies is a central issue in climate change negotiation the signatory countries to the united nations convention on climate change agreed to organize the technology executive committee and the climate technology centre and network the objectives of this paper are twofold the first objective is to show a broad landscape of barriers in technology development the paper summarizes the results of key case studies that were conducted to uncover technology specific barriers in technology development these case studies include both technologies for industrial use such as wind bio energy and building energy efficiency and technologies for individual use such as light emitting diodes and photovoltaic panels the case studies also contain technologies at the innovation stage such as integrated gasification combined cycle and carbon capture and storage the second objective of this paper is to highlight and define roles of international institutions in overcoming identified barriers in clean energy technology development in this paper four areas of focus for international institutions are discussed including 1 increasing r d cooperation at the innovation stage 2 facilitation of intellectual property rights 3 supporting finance and 4 enhancing the enabling environment at the diffusion stage

group incentive compatibility in a market with indivisible goods abstract in a market where each trader has one unit of an indivisible good there are procedures for exchanging goods which result in competitive allocations one of these procedures the top trading cycle has the property that it is in each trader s best interest to report his true preferences over the set of goods this note shows that no subset of traders can misrepresent their preferences and improve the allocation for all members of the subset additionally if there are no indifferences in the preferences then some traders in a subset that misrepresents preferences do worse

a review of wta wtp studies abstract willingness to accept wta is usually substantially higher than willingness to pay wtp these constructs have been studied for roughly 30 years and with a wide variety of goods this paper reviews those studies we find that the less the good is like an ordinary market good the higher is the ratio the ratio is highest for non market goods next highest for ordinary private goods and lowest for experiments involving forms of money a generalization of this pattern holds even when we account for differences in survey design ordinary goods have lower ratios than non ordinary ones we also find that ratios in real experiments are not significantly different from hypothetical experiments and that incentive compatible elicitation yields higher ratios

climate mitigation under an uncertain technology future a tiam world analysis abstract this paper explores the impacts of long term technology and climate uncertainties on the optimal evolution of the world energy system stochastic programming with the tiam world model is used for a parametric analysis of hedging strategies varying the probabilities associated to each of two contrasted technology outlooks the parametric analysis constitutes an original supplement to the computation of hedging strategies by identifying technologies that are robust under a broad range of probabilities of the two technology outlooks natural gas appears to be one of the most appealing robust options in an uncertain technological context especially in china given its relatively low emissions and the low capital cost of associated technologies natural gas and some other options are in fact considered as super hedging actions penetrating more in the hedging solution than in any of the deterministic scenarios nuclear power and ccs use are less robust they depend much more on either the level of the climate target or the probabilities of the technology outlooks the analysis also shows that technological uncertainty has a greater impact under milder climate targets than under more severe ones future research might consider a larger set of possible technology outlooks as well as specific analyses focused on key characteristics of low carbon technologies

the differential impact of low carbon technologies on climate change mitigation cost under a range of socioeconomic and climate policy scenarios this paper considers the effect of several key parameters of low carbon energy technologies on the cost of abatement a methodology for determining the minimum level of performance required for a parameter to have a statistically significant impact on co2 abatement cost is developed and used to evaluate the impact of eight key parameters of low carbon energy supply technologies on the cost of co2 abatement the capital cost of nuclear technology is found to have the greatest impact of the parameters studied the cost of biomass and ccs technologies also have impacts while their efficiencies have little if any sensitivity analysis of the results with respect to population gdp and co2 emission constraint show that the minimum performance level and impact of nuclear technologies is consistent across the socioeconomic scenarios studied while the other technology parameters show different performance under higher population lower gdp scenarios solar technology was found to have a small impact and then only at very low costs these results indicate that the cost of nuclear is the single most important driver of abatement cost and that trading efficiency for cost may make biomass and ccs technologies more competitive

benefit transfer a comparison of wtp for air quality between france and germany a contingent valuation study was carried out under similar conditions on two sites simultaneously strasbourg france and kehl germany in order to test the reliability of the benefit transfer method on average the air quality is approximately the same in the two cities using a transfer of the benefit function we compared the direct estimated benefits from improved air quality with the transferred benefits in the same city the originality of this test is that the valued good is the same in both cities which means that the transfer is an intra site transfer however our findings show that the method of benefit transfer was not generally valid indeed inhabitants of kehl declared a higher price for their state of health and air quality than inhabitants in strasbourg this result could be explained by a stronger sensitivity to environmental problems in germany

recent advances in the valuation of ecosystem services and biodiversity recent interest in the economics of biodiversity and wider ecosystem services has been given empirical expression through a focus upon economic valuation this emphasis has been prompted by a growing recognition that the benefits and opportunity costs associated with such services are frequently given cursory consideration in policy analyses or even completely ignored the valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services is therefore increasingly seen as a crucial element of robust decision making and this has been reflected in a growing body of related research we provide a critical review of some of this research considering the valuation methods applied to date and focussing upon their limitations in respect to certain categories of ecosystem services particularly cultural services and the applicability of the extant literature to new settings substantial questions also remain at the interface of natural science and economics and we consider the potential contribution of the conceptualization of ecosystems as assets as a response to this challenge as part of this review we also highlight the role which large scale ecosystem assessments have played as an impetus to extending the valuation evidence base and the way in which frameworks and assessments of how ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing might be translated into policy thinking and decision analyses

coalition and party formation in a legislative voting game we examine a legislative voting game where decisions are being made over both ideological and distributive dimensions and legislators preferences are separable over the two dimensions in equilibrium legislators prefer to make proposals for the two dimensions together rather than offering sequential proposals on the two dimensions separately the equilibria exhibit interaction between the ideological and distributive dimensions and in any equilibrium there is a positive probability that a proposal is made and approved which excludes the median legislator as defined over the ideological dimension in contrast with a game where no distributive decision is being made moreover in any stationary equilibrium there is more than one ideological decision that has a positive probability of being proposed and approved we show that legislators can gain from forming political parties and consider examples where predictions can be made about the composition of parties we discuss the impact of political parties on the outcome

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

low carbon and clean energy scenarios for india analysis of targets approach abstract low carbon energy technologies are of increasing importance to india for reducing emissions and diversifying its energy supply mix using gcam an integrated assessment model this paper analyzes a targets approach for pushing solar wind and nuclear technologies in the indian electricity generation sector from 2005 to 2095 targets for these technologies have been constructed on the basis of indian government documents policy announcements and expert opinions different targets have been set for the reference scenario and the carbon price scenario in the reference scenario wind and nuclear technologies exceed respective targets in the long run without any subsidy push while solar energy requires subsidy push throughout the century in order to meet its high targets in the short run nuclear energy also requires significant subsidy including a much higher initial subsidy relative to solar power which is a result of its higher targets under a carbon price scenario the carbon price drives the penetration of these technologies still subsidy is required especially in the short run when the carbon price is low we also found that pushing solar wind and nuclear technologies leads to a decrease in share of ccs under the carbon price scenario and biomass under both the reference and carbon price scenarios this is because low carbon technologies compete among themselves and substitute each other thereby enhancing the need for subsidy or carbon price highlighting that proposed targets are not set at efficient levels in light of contemporary debate on external costs of nuclear energy we also assess the sensitivity of the results to nuclear technology cost we find that higher cost significantly decreases the share of nuclear power under both the reference and carbon price scenarios

constitutional rules of exclusion in jurisdiction formation the rules under which jurisdictions nations provinces can deny immigration or expel residents are generally governed by a constitution but there do not exist either positive or normative analyses to suggest what types of exclusion rules are best we stylize this problem by suggesting four constitutional rules of admission free mobility admission by majority vote admission by unanimous consent admission by a demand threshold for public goods in a simple model we characterize the equilibria that result from these rules and provide a positive theory for which constitutional rules will be chosen

discrete choice survey experiments a comparison using flexible methods abstract this study investigates the convergent validity of discrete choice contingent valuation cv and contingent rating ranking cr methods using flexible econometric methods our results suggest that cv and cr can produce consistent data achieve convergent validity when respondent s preferred choices and the same changes in environmental quality are considered we also find that cr models that go beyond modeling the preferred choice and include additional ranks cannot be pooled with the cv models accounting for preference heterogeneity via random coefficient models and their flexible structure does not make rejection of the hypothesis of convergent validity less likely but instead rejects the hypothesis to about the same degree or perhaps more frequently than fixed parameter models commonly used in the literature

the optimal research and development portfolio of low carbon energy technologies a study of china to support decision making for an optimal portfolio strategy for low carbon energy technology research and development r d this study proposes a dynamic two stage stochastic programming model taking into account both the uncertainty of technological change and damages of climate change based on china s economic and technology level and expert elicitation an r d investment portfolio strategy looking at three low carbon technologies carbon capture and storage ccs solar photovoltaic pv and nuclear including nine projects is investigated through the proposed model the optimized results show that the optimal r d technology portfolio is robust to different levels of risk in climate damage however the total social costs for the optimal r d technology portfolio is lowest in the medium risk of climate damage scenario under different opportunity costs the composition of the optimal r d portfolio varies however projects for each of the three technologies always constitute the optimal r d portfolio furthermore the implication is that a technology synergistic r d strategy is conducive to enhancing the level of co2 abatement and reducing the total social cost

second best taxation as a game second best theory usually lies in the realm of normative analysis it focuses attention on the best solutions which still can be obtained in problems where constraints of various natures forbid the attainment of first best pareto optimal situations its central concern is the characterization of such second best solutions and a large part of the literature concentrates on the optimal design of taxes or of policies of public firms taking a second best problem we try in this paper to shift the emphasis from normative to positive considerations the solution we are interested in is not optimal with respect to some a priori given social welfare function embodying justice objectives but it is supposed to reflect the power of the different agents in a negotiation process clearly the conceptual tools required for such an analysis are to be found in game theory and it is actually a game theoretical approach that we follow here the model we are looking at is presented in section ii it formalizes one of the simplest second best problems that can be imagined we have a twogood economy with one private good and one public good agents have different wealth in private good and the public good is financed through a wealth tax this latter fiscal system is clearly not flexible enough to adjust contributions with marginal willingnesses to pay so that we actually face a second best situation there is one decision variable in the society the tax rate which determines the public good production about which the agents have conflicting desires to this problem we associate a game which provides a precise framework for the analysis of the power of the agents the positive outcomes of the negotiation process are supposed to belong to the core of this game sections iii and iv concentrate on the analysis of the core the results strongly contrast with those obtained in the classical studies of the core of 67 0022 053 l 81 040067 25 02 00 o

a new assessment model of social cost of carbon and its situation analysis in china abstract the social cost of carbon scc represents monetary value of the damage caused by carbon dioxide emissions in climate change it is an important standard for the formulation of climate policy the uncertainty of carbon social cost is closely related to climate sensitivity damage parameters discount rate and so on previous studies have mainly focused on the consequences of climate change and the effect of social cost of carbon and welfare under different policies its research on the social cost of carbon has not included the evolution coefficient of carbon emissions and it has rarely introduced the climate disaster damage function into the process of solving the social cost of carbon this paper provides a simplified formula for the social cost of carbon the model has a nonlinear processing of the carbon circulation system which increases the nonlinear structure of co2 emission potential in addition the model modifies the climate damage function which adds additional losses from climate catastrophes this paper analyzes the combined effects of several key sensitivity parameters resulting in a fat tail distribution of social cost of carbon ultimately it is found that the mean scc of 2015 is 44 93 tco2 and the median scc is 15 9054 tco2 considering the possibility of extreme results and the impact of disaster risk loss on uncertain structure the joint effects of damage parameters climate sensitive parameters and discount rates make the social cost of carbon as much as 2 8 times the median and fat tail effect is obvious this brings uncertainty to the current emission reduction policies and abatement costs making it more difficult to assess cost effectiveness at last the paper evaluates the social cost of carbon under the base situation and low discount rate in china

willingness to accept willingness to pay and the income effect abstract the gap between willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept wta has previously been studied by searching for evidence of substitutability the neoclassical hypothesis or status quo bias testing for neoclassical versus psychological theories of preferences we study the gap differently asking whether the observed pairs of wta and wtp are consistent with neoclassical preferences we use sugden s alternatives to the neoclassical theory of choice in i bateman k g willis eds valuing environmental preferences theory and practice of the contingent valuation method in the us eu and developing countries oxford university press oxford pp 152 180 chapter 6 result showing that the effect of income on wtp can be approximated from information on the ratio wta wtp drawing inferences from a meta analysis of 201 wta wtp ratios we conclude that the data are not consistent with neoclassical preferences

climate change and optimal energy technology r d policy public policy response to global climate change presents a classic problem of decision making under uncertainty theoretical work has shown that explicitly accounting for uncertainty and learning in climate change can have a large impact on optimal policy especially technology policy however theory also shows that the specific impacts of uncertainty are ambiguous in this paper we provide a framework that combines economics and decision analysis to implement probabilistic data on energy technology research and development r d policy in response to global climate change we find that given a budget constraint the composition of the optimal r d portfolio is highly diversified and robust to risk in climate damages the overall optimal investment into technical change however does depend in a non monotonic way on the risk in climate damages finally we show that in order to properly value r d abatement must be included as a recourse decision

do contingent valuation estimates pass a scope test a meta analysis abstract this paper considers the scope test proposed to judge the internal consistency of contingent valuation estimates the test is shown to be quite sensitive to the maintained hypotheses required to derive fairly precise expectations for the properties of wtp functions and therefore a different approach may be needed in gauging the reliability of cv this paper describes an approach that relies on a weight of the evidence criterion and uses meta analysis to develop a systematic appraisal of what the economic values of changes in amenity resources are the approach is illustrated for the case of estimating people s willingness to pay for improving or maintaining visibility at the national parks

characterizing the effects of valuation methodology in function based benefits transfer abstract meta analyses have demonstrated that willingness to pay wtp estimates vary systematically according to methodological factors the benefits transfer literature provides little guidance with regard to the treatment of such effects transfers are typically conducted by ignoring such effects using ad hoc adjustments or otherwise suppressing information regarding the sensitivity of wtp to methodological attributes this paper illustrates a means to characterize methodological effects within benefits transfer based on an application of the common bootstrap drawing from meta analysis the approach characterizes the sampling distribution of wtp with respect to patterns of methodological variation present in underlying studies results provide a means to characterize the extent of variation associated with predefined groups of methodological attributes providing transparent information on the sensitivity of wtp not typically available in benefits transfer

choosing a functional form for an international benefit transfer evidence from a nine country valuation experiment abstract this paper investigates the performance of common approaches in international benefit transfer using data from identical and simultaneous contingent valuation studies on marine water quality in nine european countries the environmental good is shared by the study countries but the countries differ substantially in their income levels and other characteristics we compare the performance of value transfers with or without income elasticity of willingness to pay adjustments and function transfers that include only core variables supported by economic theory our results point to a new source of uncertainty associated with function transfer choosing a particular functional form even if only theoretically relevant explanatory variables are used the theory offers no insights with respect to a functional relationship of the dependence e g linear log linear exponential polynomial we show that while different functional forms may offer improvements in model fit this does not necessarily translate to improvements in transfer errors or minimum tolerance levels in our case the value transfer with constant unit income elasticity adjustment corresponding to the log log functional relationship between willingness to pay and income performs the best including additional explanatory variables or using other functional forms worsens the quality of transfers overall our study questions the rationale for using more complicated function transfers in international benefit transfers as the relationships observed within a country or a group of countries does not necessarily translate to dependencies between countries

is meta analysis a noah s ark for non market valuation this paper describes meta analytical methods as they have been applied to non market valuation research these studies have been used to review and synthesize literature and more recently in benefit transfer this second use imposes a higher standard on the consistency in economic concepts being summarized and in the resources included in a meta analysis to meet this need the paper proposes and illustrates a structural framework using a generalized method of moments estimator to estimate the parameters of a preference function with the benefits estimates usually encountered in meta analytic summaries

how reliable are meta analyses for international benefit transfers meta analysis has increasingly been used to synthesise the environmental valuation literature but only a few test the use of these analyses for benefit transfer these are typically based on national studies only however meta analyses of valuation studies across countries are a potentially powerful tool for benefit transfer especially for environmental goods where the domestic literature is scarce we test the reliability of such international meta analytic transfers and find that even under conditions of homogeneity in valuation methods cultural and institutional conditions across countries and a meta analysis with large explanatory power the transfer errors could still be large further international meta analytic transfers do not on average perform better than simple value transfers averaging over domestic studies thus we question whether the use of meta analysis for practical benefit transfer achieves reliability gains justifying the increased effort however more meta analytic benefit transfer tests should be performed for other environmental goods and other countries before discarding international meta analysis as a tool for benefit transfer

a multi objective decision model for investment in energy savings and emission reductions in coal mining abstract coal mining companies should clearly be investing in energy savings and treatment technologies aimed at reducing both their energy consumption and their pollution levels in order to meet the requirements of government regulations relating to environmental protection however when considering the types of technical equipment to use and the timing of their investment these companies also need to consider their profits and the costs of such investment we therefore propose a multi objective mixed integer non linear programming mminlp model of investment in energy savings and emission reductions designed to handle this type of decision making problem given three objectives maximum profits minimal energy consumption and minimal pollution we develop a hybrid mixed coding particle swarm optimization and multi objective non dominated sorting genetic algorithm ii pso nsga ii to optimize the continuous and discrete decision variables as a means of helping companies to reach the optimum decision we also integrate the subtractive clustering multi criteria tournament decision gain analysis method sc mtd gam to select the best trade off solutions on the optimal pareto fronts finally we carry out a case study of investment decisions on energy savings and emission reductions in the zhenzhou coal industry group co ltd china with the results revealing that the proposed model can support decision making for energy savings and emission reductions in coal mining areas as compared with the nsga ii and non dominated sorting particle swarm optimization nspso algorithms the proposed pso nsga ii is found to have better convergence coverage and uniformity

strategy proofness and essentially single valued cores revisited abstract we consider general allocation problems with indivisibilities where agents preferences possibly exhibit externalities in such contexts many different core notions were proposed one is the individually rational core ir core whereby blocking is only allowed via allocations where the non blocking agents receive their endowments we show that if there exists an allocation rule satisfying individual rationality efficiency and strategy proofness then for any problem for which the ir core is non empty the allocation rule must choose an ir core allocation and all agents are indifferent between all allocations in the ir core we further show that the result cannot be generalized to supersets of the ir core we apply our result to housing markets coalition formation and networks

context sensitive benefit transfer using stated choice models specification and convergent validity for policy analysis benefit transfer has been an important practical policy tool appealing to government agencies especially when time or budget is constrained however the literature fails to support convergent validity of benefit transfer using the stated preference method this empirical study conducts four convergent validity assessments of benefit transfer using the choice modeling method and data from rhode island and massachusetts regarding coastal land management the comparisons evaluate how individual characteristics improve benefit transfer and yield insights relevant to research specifications to produce studies adaptable for transfer applications empirical tests show benefit transfer using choice modeling may be acceptable and even empirically valid depending on the policy objectives and the context

signals or noise explaining the variation in recreation benefit estimates this paper uses meta analysis to summarize the benefit estimates derived from travel cost recreation demand models after reviewing approximately 200 published and unpublished studies prepared from 1970 to 1986 77 were found to report either consumer surplus estimates or sufficient information to derive them using these estimates of the consumer surplus per unit of use from each study it was possible to evaluate the influence of variables describing the site characteristics the activities undertaken at each site the behavioral assumptions and the specification decisions the findings provide clear support for using econometric methods to summarize results from diverse empirical studies they highlight the important research issues in model development and offer a consistency check to the procedures used in benefit transfer analyses for policy evaluations

meta analytic benefit transfer of outdoor recreation economic values testing out of sample convergent validity a benefit transfer approach to recreationeconomic valuation using meta analysis isexamined since the meta regression modeltakes into account some of the study specificeffects on willingness to pay wtp estimates benefit transfer using meta analysis couldyield a valid wtp estimate of unstudiedrecreation resources the convergent validityof the meta analytic benefit transfer is testedusing out of sample original studies from theu s the analyses are performed usingpercentage difference paired t test regression and correlation tests the testsreveal mixed results on convergence betweenestimated wtp using meta analytic benefittransfer function btf and out of sampleoriginal wtp values there is a fairly highpercentage difference between the estimated andoriginal wtp values 80 88 and the meandifferences are statistically significant asshown by paired t tests however correlationand regression results consistently showsignificant positive relationships betweennational btf estimated and original wtp valuesindicating some level of convergence theresults show that the national btf outperformthe regional btf indicating a potential of thenational btf for recreation benefit transferwhen a first best primary valuation study isnot affordable

what experimental protocol influence disparities between actual and hypothetical stated values preferences elicited in hypothetical settings have recently come underscrutiny causing estimates from the contingent valuation method to bechallenged due to perceived hypothetical bias given that the receivedliterature derives value estimates using heterogeneous experimentaltechniques understanding the effects of important design parameters onthe magnitude of hypothetical bias is invaluable in this paper we addressthis issue statistically by using a meta analysis to examine data from 29experimental studies our empirical findings suggest that on averagesubjects overstate their preferences by a factor of about 3 in hypotheticalsettings and that the degree of over revelation is influenced by thedistinction between willingness to pay and willingness to accept publicversus private goods and several elicitation methods

meta analysis and benefit transfer for resource valuation addressing classical challenges with bayesian modeling abstract the use of meta regression models based on existing studies to estimate the value of resources at a new policy site has become a popular alternative to collecting original data in recent years there are two prevalent dilemmas associated with classical meta regression models the difference in the available set of regressors across source studies and the treatment of methodological explanatory variables in the construction of benefit transfer functions in this study we illustrate how these issues can be addressed efficiently within a bayesian meta regression framework we find that the bayesian model in contrast to its classical counterpart can estimate a relatively large set of parameters including indicators of unobserved study heterogeneity with reasonable accuracy even when the underlying meta sample is small the incorporation of information from regressor deficient source data in the specification of bayesian priors leads to a better model fit and tighter welfare estimates for benefit transfer in our application of freshwater angling

meta analysis benefit transfer and methodological covariates implications for transfer error meta regression models in the valuation literature demonstrate that willingness to pay estimates vary according to methodological factors neither theory nor characteristics of policy sites dictate the treatment of associated covariates within benefit transfer however and the literature provides few insights into potential impacts of common empirical treatments this paper introduces a method to systematically characterize the impact of methodological variables on transfer error using a repeated leave one out convergent validity framework the analysis contrasts errors for a hypothetical ideal case in which correct methodological covariate treatments are known to the realistic case in which the correct treatment is unknown results indicate that the common assumption of mean values for methodological covariates leads to only a modest increase in mean transfer error relative to that found in the hypothetical ideal case

willingness to pay in different policy planning methods insights into respondents decision making processes willingness to pay in different policy planning methods insights into respondents decision making processes

enhanced geospatial validity for meta analysis and environmental benefit transfer an application to water quality improvements meta regression models are commonly used within benefit transfer to estimate willingness to pay wtp for environmental quality improvements theory suggests that these estimates should be sensitive to geospatial factors including resource scale market extent and the availability of substitutes and complements valuation meta regression models addressing the quantity of non market commodities sometimes incorporate spatial variables that proxy for a subset of these effects however meta analyses of wtp for environmental quality generally omit geospatial factors such as these leading to benefit transfers that are invariant to these factors this paper reports on a meta regression model for water quality benefit transfer that incorporates spatially explicit factors predicted by theory to influence wtp the metadata are drawn from stated preference studies that estimate per household wtp for water quality changes in united states water bodies and combine primary study information with extensive geospatial data from external sources results find that geospatial variables are associated with significant wtp variations as predicted by theory and that inclusion of these variables reduces transfer errors

economic analysis of a low carbon path to 2050 a case for china india and japan abstract this article studies the economic implications that different global ghg emission mitigation policies may have in the major asian economies namely china india and japan the analysis covers the period 2010 2050 and is performed by means of a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model gem e3 four scenarios are investigated the three standard ame scenarios and a fourth scenario with a ghg emission reduction path compatible with the 2 c target reducing global ghg emissions in 2050 by 50 relative to 2005 the scenarios are compared with the already adopted and announced policies of the respective countries in the context of the copenhagen pledges for 2020 and their long term objectives in 2050 we further discuss the role of energy efficiency measures and zero carbon power technologies in order to reach the long term 2 c target we find that postponing significant emission reductions may not accrue an economic benefit over time whereas it may increase some risks by possibly overstretching the reliance on zero carbon technologies

assessment of copenhagen pledges with long term implications abstract this study first evaluates the pledges under the copenhagen accord using the dne21 model our estimates for the 2020 pledges fall collectively within the range of 46 700 49 100 mt co 2 eq our study also finds the efforts arising from the current 2020 pledges have wide ranging implications in terms of mitigation costs and types of actions based on this analysis we seek to place the copenhagen pledges in a long term context putting focus on costs and feasibility we set up a carbon prices convergence scenario assuming that all countries start from the copenhagen commitments and gradually undertake their own individual efforts in accordance with the convergence of carbon prices toward a uniform price in 2050 despite soaring carbon prices in most countries total costs as share of gdp show modest increase ranging mostly between 0 and 0 4 we also find that there does not seem to be much difference in the degree of burden between developed and major developing countries under this scenario since the challenge of climate change will require significant reductions in ghg emissions in the coming decades we need to make long lasting efforts getting on the right track toward the ultimate goal of stabilizing ghgs

national and international benefit transfer testing with a rigorous test procedure benefit transfer as a mean to transfer values from existing monetary valuation studies to new policy sites has been in use for many years this paper aims to analyze the forecasting quality of benefit transfer by applying a rigoroust test also referred to as accuracy t test that takes into account testing errors which were made in previous surveys beside the analysis of national benefit transfers based on two german contingent valuation studies additional efforts were made to investigate into the validity and accuracy of international benefit transfer by considering two norwegian studies that employed a similar survey design

the role of china in mitigating climate change abstract we explore short and long term implications of several energy scenarios of china s role in efforts to mitigate global climate risk the focus is on the impacts on china s energy system and gdp growth and on global climate indicators such as greenhouse gas concentrations radiative forcing and global temperature change we employ the mit integrated global system model igsm framework and its economic component the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model we demonstrate that china s commitments for 2020 made during the un climate meetings in copenhagen and cancun are reachable at very modest cost alternative actions by china in the next 10 years do not yield any substantial changes in ghg concentrations or temperature due to inertia in the climate system consideration of the longer term climate implications of the copenhagen type of commitments requires an assumption about policies after 2020 and the effects differ drastically depending on the case meeting a 2 c target is problematic unless radical ghg emission reductions are assumed in the short term participation or non participation of china in global climate architecture can lead by 2100 to a 200 280 ppm difference in atmospheric ghg concentration which can result in a 1 1 c to 1 3 c change by the end of the century we conclude that it is essential to engage china in ghg emissions mitigation policies and alternative actions lead to substantial differences in climate energy and economic outcomes potential channels for engaging china can be air pollution control and involvement in sectoral trading with established emissions trading systems in developed countries

development and utilization of energy related technologies economic performance and the role of policy instruments the present study investigates the effects of energy related technologies on economic performance at firm level we distinguish clearly between adoption and use of energy related technologies process innovation in the broad sense and product innovation in energy related fields we take into consideration four energy related policy instruments and expected demand for energy related new products and services we investigate the possibility of indirect effects of policy on performance via adoption or innovation by interacting adoption and innovation variables with policy instrument dummies we test our hypotheses not only for the pooled data but also separately for the three countries austria germany switzerland that are taken into consideration in this study we find a positive direct effect of investment expenditures for energy related technologies on labour productivity that measure intensity of adoption of energy related technologies and a positive indirect effect of energy taxes via investment in energy related technologies further we find positive direct and indirect effects of regulation standards and voluntary agreements via the adoption of production related technologies and for technologies for the generation of renewal energy sources we find neither direct nor indirect effects of the sales of innovative energy related products that measure product innovation in energy related products on labour productivity no differences among the three countries could be detected with respect to investment in energy related technologies and sales of innovative energy related products the indirect effects of regulation and standards and voluntary agreements can be primarily traced back to german firms

investment in risky r d programs in the face of climate uncertainty we analyze how the socially optimal technology rd and that uncertainty in damages interacts with uncertainty in the returns to rd and r d that reduces the emissions to output ratio and argue that this is a good representation of r d into fossil fuel technologies for r d programs into non carbon technologies optimal investment is higher in riskier programs our empirical model indicates that the optimal investment in a risky program is about 3 1 2 times larger than in a program with certain returns for r d programs aimed at reducing emissions in fossil fuel based technologies our results show that qualitatively investment is higher in less risky programs under most uncertain damage scenarios our empirical model shows however that the risk profile of fossil fuel based r d programs generally has little quantitative impact on optimal investment the exception is that when the probability of a catastrophe inducing full abatement is very high investment is about twice as high in risky programs compared to programs with certain returns

environmental value transfer state of the art and future prospects abstract the main objectives of the paper are to 1 give an overview of the state of the art of environmental value transfer 2 discuss its prospects and potential role in cba as a decision support tool and 3 provide further guidelines for proper use and application environmental value or benefit transfer is a technique in which the results of studies on monetary environmental valuation are applied to new policy contexts the technique is controversial not least because of academic and political reservations over the usefulness and technical feasibility of economic valuation tools to demonstrate the importance of environmental values in project or programme appraisals testing of environmental value transfer so far has been unable to validate the practice taking into account the conditions set out in the literature for valid and reliable value transfer most transfers appear to result in substantial transfer errors this paper discusses why and addresses the question of which factors may have been overlooked it is argued that the problem is much more fundamental than previously acknowledged strict guidelines in terms of quantitative adjustment mechanisms to valid value transfer are meaningless if the more fundamental issue of differences in the very nature of the values elicited is not addressed at the same time

baseline projections of energy and emissions in asia this paper analyzes the projected development of energy systems in the asia region in the hypothetical absence of future carbon policies baseline scenarios prepared by participating teams in the asia modeling exercise are used to generate a comprehensive assessment of the key drivers of co2 emissions for the next several decades especially for china and india we find a very wide range of projected emissions paths across the models and identify per capita income and energy intensity as the two major factors responsible for the variation while the range of assumptions for growth in the former is roughly consistent with historical experience in other asian economies models foresee faster reductions in the latter with respect to those observed in neighboring countries at similar stages of economic development on the other hand there is a considerable agreement on the evolution of the energy technology mix which is assumed to continue to be dominated by fossil fuels in the foreseeable future

exchange of indivisible goods and indifferences the top trading absorbing sets mechanisms there is a wide range of economic problems that involve the exchange of indivisible goods with no monetary transfers starting from the housing market model of the seminal paper by shapley and scarf 1974 to problems such as the kidney exchange or the school choice problem the classical solution to many of these models is to apply a mechanism called top trading cycles attributed to david gale which satisfies good properties for the case of strict preferences in this paper we propose a family of mechanisms called top trading absorbing sets mechanisms which generalize the top trading cycles to the general case in which individuals are allowed to report indifferences while preserving a maximal possible set of its desirable properties

economic valuation of biodiversity a comparative study abstract in recent years an intensive debate on the economic valuation of biodiversity has entered the environmental economics literature the present paper seeks to offer first a critical review of key concepts that are essential for a proper understanding of such evaluation issues particular attention is given here to various monetary valuation approaches and to comparative i e meta analytical methods from the perspective of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity several illustrative examples are presented in order to highlight the usefulness of the various approaches discussed next an attempt is made to infer general findings and lessons from past applied research by means of meta analysis in this context a multi dimensional technique originating from the field of artificial intelligence is deployed it allows us to identify the most important variables responsible for changes in economic estimates of biodiversity

cost effective subsidy incentives for room air conditioners in china an analysis based on a mcfadden type discrete choice model abstract based on a mcfadden type conditional logit cl discrete choice model this paper estimates the most economic subsidy level mesl for room air conditioners racs in china that minimizes the net cost of subsidy per unit of electricity saved the analysis reveals that given the current price and efficiency spectrum of racs in the chinese market as well as the electricity price and cooling demand of chinese households the mesl for racs in china should be around 60 which is much higher than the current subsidy level of 5 15 a sensitivity analysis suggests that the high mesl 60 is mainly a consequence of relatively low electricity price and household cooling demand in the country if china s household cooling demand increases further and its electricity price were to rise to a higher level the mesl for racs could possibly drop to about 5 15 as household cooling demand varies among chinese cities in different climatic zones and at different levels of economic development the rac subsidy incentives should be region specific with necessary modifications the method for analysis proposed in this paper can also be applied to other household appliances to prioritize the types of appliances requiring subsidies

on visible choice sets and scope sensitivity abstract in this paper we argue that the burgeoning empirical debate over scope sensitivity within contingent valuation studies is fundamentally incomplete in that it has neglected a systematic examination of certain effects of study design upon observed scope sensitivity in particular we highlight the fact that in certain study designs the choice set initially offered or visible to respondents is changed in a stepwise manner as they progress through a valuation exercise while other designs involve advance disclosure regarding the full extent of the final visible choice set prior to any choices or values being elicited the issue of changes in the visible choice set is alluded to by smith j environ econom manage 22 1 71 who identifies this as a primary challenge to kahneman and knetsch s j environ econom manage 22 1 57 well known experimental results kahneman and knetsch contend that it seems highly implausible that this minor procedural change would significantly alter results p 61 but do not test this assertion we present experimental and field tests of the impact upon contingent values of varying the visible choice set through stepwise and advance disclosure these dimensions of design are interacted with changes in the order in which nested goods are presented bottom up versus top down when a stepwise disclosure procedure is adopted the observed scope sensitivity is substantially and significantly affected by the order in which goods are presented but such procedural variance is not observed within advance disclosure designs conjectures regarding the origin and implications of such findings are presented

strong tiebout equilibrium under restricted preferences domain abstract we investigate the existence and give a partial characterization of a strong tiebout equilibrium which consists of an endogenously formed partition of the individuals into disjoint jurisdictions with each jurisdiction producing and financing its own public goods and moreover there exists no group of individuals who can all benefit by establishing their own community in particular no single individual finds it desirable to migrate from his equilibrium jurisdiction the existence proof makes use of the notion of consecutive games which we introduce and show that for such games there always exists a partition with a nonempty core

the validity of environmental benefits transfer further empirical testing this paper provides further empirical evidence of the validity of environmental benefits transfer based on cv studies by expanding the analysis to include control factors which have not been accounted for in previous studies these factors refer to differences in respondent attitudes traditional population characteristics were taken into account but these variables do not explain why respondents from the same socio economic group may still hold different beliefs norms or values and hence have different attitudes and consequently state different wtp amounts the test results are mixed the function transfer approach is valid in one case but is rejected in the 3 other cases investigated in this paper we provide further evidence that in the case of statistically valid benefits transfer the function approach results in a more robust benefits transfer than the unit value approach we also show that the equality of coefficient estimates is a necessary but insufficient condition for valid benefit function transfer and discuss the implications for previous and future validity testing

comparing model results to national climate policy goals results from the asia modeling exercise abstract while the world has yet to adopt a single unified policy to limit climate change many countries and regions have adopted energy and climate policies that have implications for global emissions in this paper we discuss a few key policies and how they are included in a set of 23 energy and integrated assessment models that participated in the asia modeling exercise we also compare results from these models for a small set of stylized scenarios to the pledges made as part of the copenhagen accord and the goals stated by the major economies forum we find that the targets outlined by the united states the european union japan and korea require significant policy action in most of the models analyzed for most of the models in the study however the goals outlined by india are met without any climate policy the stringency of climate policy required to meet china s copenhagen pledges varies across models and accounting methodologies

coalitional strategy proof house allocation abstract we consider house allocation without endowments we show that there is a unique maximal domain including all strict preferences on which efficiency and coalitional strategy proofness are compatible a preference relation belongs to the unique maximal domain if it is a strict descending ranking of houses to a certain house and indifference holds over it and the remaining houses we also show that on this domain mixed dictator pairwise exchange rules are the only rules satisfying efficiency and coalitional strategy proofness journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 d63 d71

pareto optimality in coalition formation abstract a minimal requirement on allocative efficiency in the social sciences is pareto optimality in this paper we identify a close structural connection between pareto optimality and perfection that has various algorithmic consequences for coalition formation based on this insight we formulate the preference refinement algorithm pra which computes an individually rational and pareto optimal outcome in hedonic coalition formation games our approach also leads to various results for specific classes of hedonic games in particular we show that computing and verifying pareto optimal partitions in general hedonic games anonymous games three cyclic games room roommate games and b hedonic games is intractable while both problems are tractable for roommate games w hedonic games and house allocation with existing tenants

sequencing and the adding up property in contingent valuation of endangered species are contingent non use values economic values this paper presents tests of the theoretical validity of the contingent valuation cv method the validity of cv is especially a concern when involving environmental goods with a predominant non use value one test of theoretical validity is the adding up property that implies that a specific good should be equally valued irrespectively of it is being valued directly or built up sequentially in this cv study four independent sub samples stated willingness to pay for the same composite good or package using different sequences one sub sample valued the composite good directly while two sub samples faced built up sequences valuing first subsets of this composite good a fourth sub sample valued the composite good from a dividing out approach facing first the valuation of a larger multi package theoretically expected sequencing effects were observed the subset goods obtained higher values earlier in a sequence and the dividing out approach decreased the stated value for the composite good most importantly these cv data did pass the tests of the adding up property

a strategic model of social and economic networks we study the stability and efficiency of social and economic networks when self interested individuals can form or sever links first for two stylized models we characterize the stable and efficient networks there does not always exist a stable network that is efficient next we show that this tension persists generally to assure that there exists a stable network that is efficient one is forced to allocate resources to nodes that are not responsible for any of the production we characterize one such allocation rule the equal split rule and another rule that arises naturally from bargaining of the players

r d investment strategy for climate change abstract the economic costs of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations over the coming century depend critically on the development of new technologies in the energy sector our research and development r d investment strategy is the control variable for technology availability this paper proposes an analytic framework for determining optimal r d investment allocation and presents some numerical results to demonstrate the implementation of the methodology the value of technological advance in three targeted areas fossil based generation renewables and carbon capture and storage is represented by the increase in expected welfare in the presence of an emissions policy constraint of initially uncertain stringency r d expenditure increases the probability of advance optimal investment is determined by its relationship with success probability which is assumed to exhibit decreasing returns to scale relative to the value of success while the numerical results are speculative the paper offers insights into the nature of an optimal technology strategy for addressing climate change

the benefit from reduced energy import bills and the importance of energy prices in ghg reduction scenarios abstract the poles energy model has been used to assess asia s role in combating climate change and the benefits it stands to gain this paper focuses on the role of major asian economies in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the benefits to their economies from reduced energy import bills the costs of reaching ambitious emission reduction targets are offset by significant ancillary benefits such as reduced energy import bills lower energy prices account for a share of the import bill reductions

innovation system strengths and weaknesses in progressing sustainable technology the case of swedish biorefinery development based on the combination of economic challenges and uncertain policy conditions in the united states european union and elsewhere the development of advanced biorefineries has progressed slower than anticipated this has delayed the transition to a more sustainable and less carbon intensive economy in this article we adopt the technological innovation system tis approach to analyze advanced biorefinery development in sweden a front runner country in current development the analysis highlights a number of system strengths e g long term research funding significant research infrastructure strong actor networks that have contributed to developing the swedish tis but also important system weaknesses e g weak coordination among ministries lack of industrial absorptive capacity unclear roles inhibiting it the article highlights a combination of four policy measures that build on the system strengths to address the system weaknesses a the implementation of a deployment policy for creating domestic niche markets b improved policy timing and more structured coordination among different governmental agencies c the provision of stronger incentives for mature industries to invest in rd and d improved organization and financing of existing research infrastructure in addition to the empirical contribution the article contributes with novel insights into the tis framework by highlighting the dynamics between system strengths and weaknesses and suggests that system strengths should be better emphasized in future tis studies

international benefit transfer methods and validity tests abstract the use of value estimates measured in one country to value policy changes in another country would seem to introduce some unique issues and challenges even when the good being valued is identical these issues include how should values be converted from one currency to another how to account for differences in measurable characteristics when those can vary markedly between countries especially income and how to account for differences between countries in culture and shared experiences that are difficult to quantify however these challenges in international benefit transfer are not that different from those encountered in transfers between regions within a country and transfer errors are comparable to those seen in intra country transfers

an analysis of company choice preference to carbon tax policy in china abstract this paper summarizes an analysis of choice preferences of chinese companies to the design options of carbon tax policy the data were collected from 201 companies with around half of them based in the western shanxi province and the other half from the eastern jiangsu province modeling analysis of the discrete choice dataset confirms the statistically significant relationships between the company s preferences to carbon tax policy with the policy attributes including tax rate tax relief measures and the revenue utilization from the viewpoint of chinese businesses the option of carbon tax policy with tax rate at 10 30 yuan t co 2 allowing tax relief to energy intensive sectors using the revenues specific for climate change and starting as early as the 13th five year plan period 2016 2020 would be preferable and realistic the results of this research may be referred for the discussions and development of carbon tax policy in china

decomposing the impact of alternative technology sets on future carbon emissions growth abstract what are the drivers of future global carbon dioxide co 2 emissions growth and how would the availability of key energy supply technologies change their relative importance in this paper we apply a novel index number decomposition technique to the results of a multi region multi sector computable general equilibrium model to quantify the influence of five factors on the growth of future carbon emissions 1 growth in global economic activity 2 shifts in the regional composition of gross world product 3 shifts in the sectoral composition of regions gdp 4 changes in sectors energy output ratios and 5 changes in the co 2 intensity of energy sources we elucidate how the relative importance of these factors changes in response to the imposition of a global carbon tax and alternative assumptions about the future availability of key energy supply technologies rising global economic activity and shifts in regional composition put upward pressure on emissions while changes in energy and emission intensity and the sectoral output mix have attenuating effects a global emission tax that increases over time slows economic expansion and shifts the fuel mix with the most pronounced impacts on china india and russia limited availability of carbon capture and storage nuclear and hydroelectric generation all lead to upward shifts in the long run marginal abatement cost curve causing some countries to choose to pay the tax rather than abate

top trading with fixed tie breaking in markets with indivisible goods abstract we study markets with indivisible goods where monetary compensations are not possible each individual is endowed with an object and a preference relation over all objects when preferences are strict gale s top trading cycles algorithm finds the unique core allocation when preferences are not necessarily strict we use an exogenous profile of tie breakers to resolve any ties in individuals preferences and apply gale s top trading cycles algorithm for the resulting profile of strict preferences we provide a foundation of these simple extensions of gale s top trading cycles algorithm from strict preferences to weak preferences we show that gale s top trading cycles algorithm with fixed tie breaking is characterized by individual rationality strategy proofness weak efficiency non bossiness and consistency our result supports the common practice in applications to break ties in weak preferences using some fixed exogenous criteria and then to use a good and simple rule for the resulting strict preferences

the stability of hedonic coalition structures we consider the partitioning of a society into coalitions in purely hedonic settings i e where each player s payoff is completely determined by the identity of other members of her coalition we first discuss how hedonic and nonhedonic settings differ and some sufficient conditions for the existence of core stable coalition partitions in hedonic settings we then focus on a weaker stability condition individual stability where no player can benefit from moving to another coalition while not hurting the members of that new coalition we show that if coalitions can be ordered according to some characteristic over which players have single peaked preferences or where players have symmetric and additively separable preferences then there exists an individually stable coalition partition examples show that without these conditions individually stable coalition partitions may not exist we also discuss some other stability concepts and the incompatibility of stability with other normative properties journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 a14 d20

affordability of energy cost increases for korean companies due to market based climate policies a survey study by sector this paper estimates the affordability of energy cost increases for energy intensive companies due to the introduction of market based climate policies in korea data were collected from 62 respondents from iron steel cement and petrochemical industries over 90 of which are under control of the target management scheme an ongoing mandatory system limiting the greenhouse gases ghg emissions of large energy consuming entities the affordable energy cost increase was estimated using the multiple bounded discrete choice mbdc format results of which show that a mean energy cost increase of 2 6 is acceptable for all the entities sampled companies from the three sectors had similar affordability with an average acceptable energy cost increase of 2 5e2 8 the affordable policy induced energy cost in creases equate to carbon prices of 2500e4000 krw t co2 about 2 3e3 5 usd t co2 for the companies surveyed econometric analysis confirmed a strong correlation between energy price level and company ownership with cost affordability with a view to developing carbon tax policy and a domestic ghg emissions trading scheme in korea this research provides a basis from an industrial perspective for carbon pricing

advanced solar r d combining economic analysis with expert elicitations to inform climate policy the relationship between r d investments and technical change is inherently uncertain in this paper we combine economics and decision analysis to incorporate the uncertainty of technical change into climate change policy analysis we present the results of an expert elicitation on the prospects for technical change in advanced solar photovoltaics we then use the results of the expert elicitations as inputs to the minicam integrated assessment model to derive probabilistic information about the impacts of r d investments on the costs of emissions abatement

the damage costs of climate change toward more comprehensive calculations it is argued that estimating the damage costs of a certain benchmark climate change is not sufficient what is needed are cost functions and confidence intervals although these are contained in the integrated models and their technical manuals this paper brings them into the open in order to stimulate discussion after briefly reviewing the benchmark climate change damage costs region specific cost functions are presented which distinguish tangible from intangible losses and the losses due to a changing climate from those due to a changed climate furthermore cost functions are assumed to be quadratic as an approximation of the unknown but presumably convex functions results from the damage module of the integrated climate economy model fund are presented next uncertainties are incorporated and expected damages are calculated it is shown that because of convex loss functions and right skewed uncertain ties the risk premium is substantial calling for more action than analysis based on best guess estimates the final section explores some needs for further scientific research

stable coalition structures with a unidimensional set of alternatives abstract we identify a class of economic and political environments that admit an s equilibrium where both free mobility and free entry are allowed we further study the relationship between the set of s equilibria and the sets of strong and coalition proof nash equilibria in the noncooperative coalition formation game which is closely related to the one originally studied by j von neumann and o morgenstern theory of games and economic behaviour princeton univ press princeton nj 1944 we also show that the set of s equilibria induces a proper subset of the coalition structure core of the corresponding characteristic function form journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 c72

incentive compatibility in a market with indivisible goods abstract in a market in which each trader s initial endowment is one unit of an indivisible good there exists an incentive compatible procedure for reaching a competitive allocation this contrasts with some recent results for similar problems