offset carbon emissions or pay a price premium for avoiding them a cross country analysis of motives for climate protection activities abstractthis article contributes to the economic literature on pure and impure public goods by considering two alternatives for contributing to the public good climate protection offsetting carbon emissions from conventional consumption or paying higher prices for climate friendly products we empirically examine a wide range of motives and their impact on individuals choice in favour of these two alternatives relying on data from representative international surveys our results indicate that environmental awareness warm glow motives and the desire to set a good example have the most robust effects on both climate protection activities in germany and the united states however some motives differ considerably between both alternatives and the two countries a green identity enhances the willingness to pay a price premium for climate friendly goods or services in germany while social norms seem to be of much higher relevance in the united states our results further suggest that the choice of climate

the influence of collective action on the demand for voluntary climate change mitigation in hypothetical and real situations in this experiment we investigate determinants of the individual demand for voluntary climate change mitigation subjects decide between a cash prize and an allowance from the eu emissions trading scheme for one ton of co2 that will be deleted afterwards we vary the incentives of the decision situation in which we distinguish between real monetary incentives and a hypothetical decision situation with and without a cheap talk script furthermore decisions were implemented either as purely individual or as a collective action using majority voting we observe a significant hypothetical bias in the demand for voluntary climate change mitigation in case of the individual decision situation this bias is caused solely by subjects with low income collective decision making affects demand positively in the hypothetical decision situation only

secrecy signalling and the accuracy of expectations during the borrowed reserves operating regime abstract this paper demonstrates that the information in the undisclosed federal open market committee fomc policy directive is not completely incorporated into the yield curve one day before fomc meetings but is incorporated one day after meetings during the borrowed reserves operating regime these results suggest that monetary policy changes are informally but effectively disclosed to market participants through signals from the open market desk these findings indicate that the legislation before congress that would mandate the immediate release of the fomc policy directive would have had little impact on the accuracy of financial market expectations over the sample

why interest rates react to money announcements an explanation from the foreign exchange market abstract when the fed announces a money supply greater than had been expected interest rates rise why one explanation is that the market raises its estimate of the future rates of money growth and inflation and bids up nominal interest rates we offer contrary evidence on such days the dollar appreciates not depreciates an alternative explanation is that the market perceives the change in the money stock as a transitory fluctuation that the fed will reverse in the future the anticipated future tightening raises today s real interest rate causes a capital inflow and appreciates the dollar the result in fact observed

testing for the survey mode effect on contingent valuation data quality a case study of web based versus in person interviews this paper addresses the lack of empirical evaluation of the use of web based surveys in the context of contingent valuation surveys we compare using a case study in person interviews with web based surveys regarding response rate information additivity effects and respondents attitudes towards paying the web based survey had a much lower response 5 1 than the in person interviewing 84 we find the web based contingent valuation surveys to be neither more susceptible to information additivity effects nor more prone to zero protest responses we conclude in favor of the use of web based surveys namely in portugal where the number of internet users is rapidly increasing although further research efforts are required on their use

does central bank transparency impact financial markets a cross country econometric analysis blinder et al 2001 argues that more open public disclosure of central bank policies may enhance the efficiency of markets we examine this claim by studying for a set of seven industrialized countries whether selected central banks moves toward more open disclosure during the 1990s improved or worsened the predictability of the corresponding national financial markets employing methodologies analogous to campbell and schiller 1991 we find that for all countries the forecasting error has decreased for interest rates on the respective government bonds across most maturity lengths and that the expectations hypothesis has generally performed better at the short end of the yield curve our results also tentatively show that the effects are stronger for central banks that made the move to greater disclosure compared to those banks that resisted increasing the public s information set these findings are consistent with tabellini s 1987 view that central bank secrecy will hinder the smooth functioning of financial markets

environmental policies and innovation a knowledge based perspective on cooperative approaches the purpose of this article is to analyse to growing interest in the field of the environment for new cooperative approcahes that make use of negotiated instruments such as voluntary agreements using an interpretation framework that puts the emphasis on collective learning and monitoring devices we highlight the value of this type of approach in situations of great uncertainty where a coordinated process of innovation is required to achieve ambitious environmental targets the implementation of this theoretical approach in the end of life vehicles elv case which has been the subject of several voluntary agreements in europe offers a fuller understanding of the characteristics and driving forces of the collective innovation process in action as well as the obstacles that have still to be overcome in particular we explain why monitoring of innovation by the authorities focusing on coordination mechanisms is a crucial issue on which further research should be carried out

predicting consumer demand responses to carbon labels abstract providing carbon footprint labels for all food products is a daunting and potentially infeasible project knowing how consumers substitute away from high carbon goods and what they choose as substitutes is essential for understanding which goods are likely to result in meaningful reductions in carbon emissions this paper proposes a model to systematically estimate how consumers will respond to information from a carbon footprint label our model uses consumers value of their individual carbon footprint with own and cross price elasticities of demand data on carbon emissions from life cycle analysis to simulate shifts in consumer demand for 42 food products and a non food composite and subsequent changes in carbon emissions from different labeling schemes our simulation results have several findings including 1 carbon labels can reduce emissions but labeling only some items could lead to perverse impacts where consumers substitute away from labeled goods to unlabeled goods with a higher carbon footprint 2 carbon labels can inform consumers such that their previous beliefs about carbon footprints matter and 3 carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions among the 42 food products studied

monetary mystique secrecy and central banking abstract the paper contains a discussion of the role of secrecy in the implementation of monetary policy it documents the federal reserve s defense of secrecy as argued in a recent freedom of information act suit the federal reserve s arguments are evaluated on the basis of economic theory theoretical papers related to the secrecy issue are reviewed the discussion highlights a number of potential benefits and costs of central bank secrecy and identifies some conditions under which secrecy could be socially beneficial

why interest rates rise when an unexpectedly large money stock is announced ment of an unexpectedly large growth in the money supply will lead to an immediate increase in interest rates this announcement effect is often taken as confirmation of the monetarist view that the way to bring down interest rates even in the short run is to reduce the rate of money growth in this paper we provide an alternative explanation of the announcement effect that is consistent with the keynesian view that in the short run the way to bring down interest rates is to expand the money supply we do not address the issue of inflationary expectations in a formal way though in the long run we would expect the well known fisher effect to hold looking closely at the announcement effect it is clear that whatever may be the true short run relationship between money growth and interest rates it cannot be inferred from a simple correlation of announcements of changes in the money stock with the resulting changes in interest rates this is because of several properties of the announcement phenomenon that we capture in the model

ethical differentiation and market behavior an experimental approach abstract does ethical differentiation of products affect market behavior we examined this issue in triopolistic experimental markets where producers set prices one producer s costs were higher than the others in two treatments the additional costs were attributed to compliance with ethical guidelines in the third no justification was provided many consumers reduced their experimental gains by purchasing the ethically differentiated products at higher prices individual differences were important business economics students paid smaller premia finally we speculate about the observed demand function for ethics and emphasize using experimental methodology to complement empirical studies in assessing markets for ethically differentiated products

regional innovation systems within a transitional context evolutionary comparison of the electronics industry in shenzhen and dongguan since the opening of china abstract this paper which is positioned in the interface of innovation economics and economic geography contributes to the debate about the path dependent evolution of regional innovation systems ris in emerging and transitional economies drawing on an empirical study conducted in shenzhen and dongguan china a path dependent nature of governance modality for initiating industrialization within the transitional context has been uncovered the paper shows that the dirigiste globalized production system in shenzhen where the government exerted strong directive influence in the 1980s has gradually evolved and reached a higher form of interactive ris than the grassroots globalized production system in dongguan where innovation activities are few and are still passively managed by global players the review of the evolutionary path of the electronics industry in shenzhen and dongguan reveals that the locational first mover advantage in shenzhen is further strengthened by the institutional first mover advantage incubating competitive and diversified firms in the business sector which facilitate the interactive learning mechanism in ris finally policy implication is discussed for the construction of ris under different governance modalities in the initial industrialization phase

money supply announcements and interest rates does monetary policy matter abstract most current explanations of the effect of money supply announcements on the rate of interest center on central bank policy this paper analyzes a flexible price macroeconomic model where present and future monetary policy have no influence on either interest rates or real output but monetary data signal information about real economic activity which influences both short and long term real rates of interest the magnitude of the interest rate response is shown to depend on the difference in the income elasticities of currency and deposit demand and the relative size of monetary and real disturbances to the economy

central bank secrecy in the foreign exchange market abstract this paper argues that with sticky goods prices and a forward looking exchange rate the central bank will only want a partial dissemination of its information about shocks to the economy it is shown that in such a model the central bank may prefer to intervene secretly in the foreign exchange markets when responding in anticipation of future shocks but openly when reacting to current shocks the model thus provides a rationale for secrecy in central bank foreign exchange operations the model also elucidates the relationship between the signaling and portfolio balance channels of sterilized intervention

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

globalizing carbon lock in this paper extends the arguments surrounding carbon lock in elaborated in unruh energy policy 28 2000 817 30 2002 317 to countries currently undergoing industrialization it argues that for numerous reasons industrializing countries are unlikely to leapfrog carbon intensive energy development on the contrary carbon lock in may be globalizing and could further constrain climate change mitigation options it is then argued that many policy recommendations ignore carbon lock in possibly limiting their potential for successful implementation the paper then discusses four policy approaches that appear to have advantages given lock in conditions it is recognized however that relative ease of implementation does not necessarily equate with superiority instead it is merely a path dependent outcome of past development decisions pursuing policies on the basis of relative implementation ease may help address the issue of climate change but could also result in sub optimal outcomes along other dimensions of sustainable development

can a low carbon energy transition be sustained in post fukushima japan assessing the varying impacts of exogenous shocks abstract in the aftermath of the fukushima nuclear crisis japan began contemplating energy policy reforms that drew inspiration from low carbon research this article focuses on a question central to advancing low carbon research in japan and elsewhere namely how does an exogenous shock affect the onset magnitude and permanence of changes in electricity consumption the article employs intervention analysis with an autoregressive moving average arma model to answer this question the data analysis reveals that post fukushima electricity use underwent a sudden significant and sustained reduction across japan the shock not only affected the tokyo electric power company tepco coverage area but the more distant kansai electric power company kepco coverage area large electricity users responded with an immediate and significant reduction in electricity consumption that rebounded to below pre crisis levels households responded more gradually with no rebound two of the more interesting results from the data analysis the persistence in reductions in the more distant kepco coverage area and the rebound among large users are then explained with a review of survey data and policy trends overall the quantitative and qualitative evidence suggests that an exogenous shock may give rise to a reduction in electricity consumption but cannot sustain a low carbon transition

secrecy of monetary policy and the variability of interest rates this paper addresses the issue of how secrecy of the short run monetary policy objectives affects the behavior of the federal funds rate secrecy is modeled by assuming that financial markets are unc ertain about a parameter in the federal reserve reaction function th ey learn over time about this parameter by means of bayes rule and this learning process is reflected in the time path of interest rates and of reserve aggregates the main result of the paper is that secr ecy tends to increase the volatility of the funds rate and of reserve aggregates copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

preferences for distributional impacts of climate policy what role do people think distributional aspects should play in the design of climate policy the literature assessing climate policies has shown that assumptions regarding peoples distributional preferences for climate change policy impacts are central for policy assessment but empirical evidence for such preferences is lacking we design a discrete choice experiment that varies how climate policies affect the income of future generations living in three geographical regions with distinctly different current and predicted future income levels the experiment is implemented on a sample of the danish population and preferences are modelled in a latent class model our results show that a small majority of the sample 60 hold preferences consistent with inequity aversion with respect to future income effects of climate policies across regions for the same group we find that preferences for co benefits for current generations reflect a form of altruism but not inequity aversion in both cases the altruistic aspects are moderated by an element of preferences for positive outcomes in own region too the remaining classes display preferences with a varying focus on impacts in their own region or simply no support for further climate policy our results provide some support for the inclusion of social preferences regarding distributional effects of climate change policies in policy assessments and hence for the significant impact on policy this inclusion will have

the demand for environmental quality in driving transitions to low polluting energy sources the purpose of this paper is to understand the long run demand for energy related environmental quality its influence on legislation and on transitions to low polluting energy sources it starts by presenting a simple framework of the relationship between the demand for and supply of environmental quality environmental legislation and energy this forms the structure for presenting a series of episodes in british history where a demand for improvements in energy related environmental quality existed this analysis proposes that markets can drive transitions to low polluting energy sources in specific economic conditions however most probably governments will need to push them and this cannot be expected without strong and sustained demand for environmental improvements yet while demand is a prerequisite it is not enough it must also be spearheaded by strong creative and sustained pressure groups i e powerful lobbying and the weakening of the counter lobby to introduce legislation to enforce it and to avoid it being over turned by future governments

escaping carbon lock in this article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in understanding carbon lock in unruh 2000 which posited that industrial countries have become locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale carbon lock in arises through technological organizational social and institutional co evolution culminating in what was termed as techno institutional complex tic in order to resolve the climate problem an escape from the lock in condition is required however due to the self referential nature of tic escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required

discount window borrowing monetary policy and the post october 6 1979 federal reserve operating procedure abstract a demand schedule for discount window borrowing based on profit maximizing bank behavior is derived a feature of non price rationing at the discount window making longer duration borrowing more costly is shown to make lagged borrowing and expected future spreads between the federal funds rate and the discount rate relevant to the current borrowing decision consequently both the size of the coefficients in the borrowing functions as well as the form of the function itself depend on expected fed policy toward the spread the demand function for discount window borrowing provides the critical link by which non borrowed reserve control affects short term interest rates and ultimately the money supply under post october 6 1979 reserve targeting the analysis suggests some reasons why the fed has experienced difficulty in specifying estimating and utilizing a discount window borrowing function in the non borrowed reserve operating procedure

technology systems and technology policy in an evolutionary framework the central purpose of this paper is to outline an evolutionary theory of technology policy and to connect it with the emerging literature on national systems of innovation any understanding of technology policy must be based on a clear understanding of the nature of technology and the important differences between science and technology technology can be treated in terms of knowledge skills and artifacts and in each case there are different variety generating mechanisms different selection processes and different institutional structures for policy purposes the degree of connection between these different dimensions of technology is at the core of technology policy c 1995 academic press inc copyright 1995 by oxford university press

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

is the conventional view of discount window borrowing consistent with the behavior of weekly reporting banks discount window borrowing by weekly reporting banks disaggregated by federal reserve district is used to estimate marvin goodfriend s 1983 model of borrowed reserves little evidence is found to support the argument that a bank s borrowing decision is determined by the spread between the funds rate and the discount rate and by prior bank borrowing a weekly reporting bank has only a 2 7 percent chance of visiting the discount window during any given maintenance period this result is consistent with the presence of considerable harassment costs imposed by the discount window officer copyright 1994 by mit press

willingness to pay for carbon offset certification and co benefits among high flying young adults in the uk voluntary carbon offsets represent a growing share of the carbon market as a whole and have the potential to contribute to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets and reducing anthropogenic climate change certain offset project types may also deliver co benefits including safeguarding or promoting biodiversity supporting human development and poverty reduction and enabling market and technology development in low carbon sectors these co benefits might encourage consumers to participate in the voluntary offset market depending on their effects both on consumers willingness to pay wtp for offsets and on implementation costs however the offset market is not yet sufficiently developed to give a clear indication of consumer wtp for offsets with varying attributes this exploratory stated preference study therefore uses a choice experiment to estimate wtp for certified and uncertified offsets with or without these specific co benefits in an aviation context it is to the best of our knowledge the first to do so our results suggest that uptake of voluntary offsets may be encouraged by investing in projects with co benefits and by emphasising those co benefits to consumers they also suggest that certification regimes will add value to offsets helping compensate for increased costs provided that consumers are made fully aware of them

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

making sense of institutions as a factor shaping economic performance abstract there has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance a review of this literature reveals that the concept of an institution means different things to different scholars both within economics and across the social sciences we discuss what factors unify the different definitions of institutions and develop a concept of institutions useful for the analysis of economic performance and economic growth in particular specifically we develop the notion of institutions as standard social technologies economic growth results from the co evolution of physical and social technologies

central bank secrecy interest rates and monetary control we construct a dynamic rational expectations model of the federal funds and deposit market that provides a rationale for central bank secrecy about current monetary aggregate objectives in this analysis the trading desk values secrecy because it reduces the influence of monetary control policy on interest rates we then examine actual u s experience with monetary control and determine that the reserve bias predicted by the model is present in the data from 1978 to 1985 finally we demonstrate that central bank secrecy may not lower the value of commercial banks

evolutionary policies for sustainable development adaptive flexibility and risk minimising abstract an evolutionary perspective on policies to foster sustainable development is presented it is argued that policies suggested by the traditional economic theory of environmental policy can stimulate unsustainable socio economic structures and patterns in addition they are unable to remove undesired locked in systems and technologies drawing on evolutionary thinking characterised by diversity selection innovation path dependence and bounded rationality an alternative partly complementary theory of environmental policy is suggested specific attention is given to the role of strategies that are aimed at increasing diversity and adaptive flexibility and at reducing risk

stated versus revealed knowledge determinants of offsetting co2 emissions from fuel consumption in vehicle use abstract this paper examines the role of prior knowledge in offsetting co2 emissions from fuel consumption in vehicle use the main result of our econometric analysis on the basis of unique representative data from drivers license holders in the usa and germany refers to the strong discrepancy between the stated and revealed knowledge of co2 offsetting the revealed knowledge measured by the correct estimation of the costs for this offsetting practice has a positive impact on the stated purchase of corresponding offsetting credits in both countries in contrast the effect of the stated knowledge of offsetting is not robust and in some cases even negative surprisingly it cannot even be confirmed that drivers license holders who claim that they are more than sufficiently informed estimate these costs more accurately

does skewed pattern of income distribution matter for the environmental quality evidence from selected brics economies with an application of quantile on quantile regression qqr approach abstract using annual data from 1980 to 2014 the study explores the relationship between carbon emissions and skewed pattern of income distribution among 4 selected brics economies e g brazil india china and south africa using quantile on quantile regression qqr technique of sim and zhou 2015 it tries to contribute towards an empirical understanding on the quantile structure of both the variables for the selected brics countries it finds for india and brazil that as income rises although both lower and upper income people degrade the environmental quality by releasing more co2 emissions but interestingly it is the poor who intensively degrade the environmental quality than the rich in sharp contrast for china and south africa it finds that it is the poor who relatively contribute less to the environmental degradation by reducing co2 emissions than the rich these findings have greater policy significances which are discussed at the concluding section in greater detail

a theory of fed watching in a macroeconomic policy game this paper examines the phenomenon of fed watching within the context of a macroeconomic policy game following a cukierman and a h meltzer s 1986 article the policymaker s preferences are private information and noisy monetary control causes past observations of money growth to be a noisy signal of the monetary authority s future intentions individuals are allowed to acquire additional information about the monetary authority s preferences thus both past observations of money growth and costly information about the policymaker s preferences are used by agents in forming expectations about policy the public s acquisition of information alters the monetary authority s strategic calculus making noisy monetary control less desirable copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

monetary policy secrecy and federal funds rate behavior abstract the behavior of the federal reserve system can be characterized as secretive one common justification for this secrecy is the financial markets will overreact to information causing undue variability in interest rates this paper examines the credibility of this assertion under the post october 1979 non borrowed reserves operating procedure the major result is that conditional on this operating procedure secrecy can reduce the variability of the federal funds rate however in a result analogous to barro 1976 secrecy raises the variance of the forecasting error of the federal funds rate

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

the role of education in the environmental kuznets curve evidence from australian data abstract this paper is based on the underlying idea that the use of energy resources in a society significantly depends on their level of education then it is hypothesized that education might directly affect environmental quality by worsening it at early stages and improving it once education expands from its certain level thus we pursue an extension of the standard environmental kuznets curve by including an indicator of the evolution of citizens education this empirical strategy might avoid bias on income coefficients and in turn assess the value of education as environmental policy an application for australia is given to illustrate this possibility by using higher education data for a large time span 1950 2014 empirical results suggest that in most of the studied period expansion in education rate has increasingly compensated the rise of per capita co 2 emissions stemming from the economic growth moreover only in recent years both per capita income and education expansion have been proved to reduce emissions however provided that income growth is difficult to manage it would be worth considering the possibility of promoting education in order to achieve environmental objectives

how carbon offsetting scheme impacts the duopoly output in production and abatement analysis in the context of carbon cap and trade abstract in the context of addressing climate change the carbon emission trading scheme has become one of the main measures adopted by many countries and regions to achieve emission reduction goals noticing this current lack of research based on a duopoly model this paper quantitatively explores the impact of carbon offsetting scheme on both emission trading participants profits and industry s output by drawing on advanced experience of carbon offsetting scheme from developed countries such as us switzerland and eu and thus provides a perspective for government to design optimal aggregate standard for carbon cap and trade results show a negative correlation between enterprises carbon intensity and their equilibrium output in the product market and indicate a threshold for the relative magnitude of the duopoly enterprises carbon intensity above which their absolute output will differ dramatically the incorporation of carbon offsetting scheme into a non offset quota trading scheme will reduce its equilibrium carbon price thereby mitigate its negative impact on industry s total output in the product market by an either linear or quadratic form depending on the design for the proportion ceiling of offsetting quota

offsetting versus mitigation activities to reduce hbox co _ 2 emissions a theoretical and empirical analysis for the u s and germany this paper studies the voluntary provision of public goods that is partially driven by a desire to offset for individual polluting activities we first extend existing theory and show that offsets allow a reduction in effective environmental pollution levels while not necessarily extending the consumption of a polluting good we further discuss the impact of an increased environmental preference on purchases of offsets and mitigation activities several theoretical results are then econometrically tested using a novel dataset on activities to reduce hbox co 2 emissions for the case of vehicle purchases in the u s and germany we show that environmental preference triggers the stated use of hbox co 2 offsetting and mitigation channels in both countries however we find strong country differences for the stated purchase of hbox co 2 offsets while such activities are mainly triggered by a high general awareness of the climate change problem in the u s the perception that road travel is responsible for hbox co 2 emissions to a large extent is more important for driver s license holders in germany

prospective voluntary agreements for escaping techno institutional lock in the paper looks for evolutionary policy responses to techno institutional lock in a persistent state that creates systemic market and policy barriers to technological alternatives we address the coordination role for authorities rather than corrective optimisation and elaborate three evolutionary policy objectives including fostering of i the diversity of technological options ii common vision for the implementation of technological alternatives and iii changes in social and physical networks we use these objectives to analyse documented experiences from environmental voluntary agreements and foresight activities we argue that combining the virtues of these tools into a new policy tool named prospective voluntary agreement can help facilitate an escape from techno institutional lock in the merit of the prospective voluntary agreement lies with the enhancement of collaborative policy cultures and inter sectoral and interdisciplinary stakeholder learning that creates commitment to desired action for escaping lock in d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

environmental policy reconsidered the role of technological innovation abstract this paper discusses recent environmental policy wisdom in the light of technological and organizational innovation starting from empirical evidence it argues that the main econometric models which are used in environmental policy analysis do not consider properly the determinants and effects of innovation and offer unreliable estimates of policy effects some solutions to the latter problem show that the integration between environmental policy and industrial policy can be more efficient than traditional environmental policies in the protection of the environment technological cooperation moreover can be an important instrument to stabilize international environmental agreements

recreation demand models with taste differences over people we estimate random parameter logit models of anglers choice of fishing site the models generalize logit by allowing coefficients to vary randomly over anglers rather than being fixed the models do not exhibit the restrictive independence from irrelevant alternatives property of logit and can represent any substitution pattern estimation explicitly accounts for the fact that the variation in coefficients over anglers induces correlation in unobserved utility over trips by the same angler willingness to pay for improved fish stock and the value to anglers of specific sites are calculated from the models and compared with the estimates obtained from a standard logit model

central bank secrecy fed watching and the predictability of interest rates abstract a common criticism of central bank secrecy is the assertion that it will lead to lower forecast accuracy on the part of private agents the model considered here demonstrates that reducing central bank secrecy can actually reduce the forecasting accuracy of many of the private agents in the economy when it is recognized that some agents engage in fed watching and others do not this result comes about because the interest rate process depends in part on the information that agents use in forecasting future interest rates

statistical approaches to the fat tail problem for dichotomous choice contingent valuation if a cumulative density function esti mated from dichotomous choice data has an unre alistically fat right hand tail mean willingness to pay wtp will be overestimated truncating the range of integration results in a lower bound esti mate of the true mean wtp a normalization pro cedure proposed by boyle welsh and bishop 1988 unnecessarily depresses the estimate further a new statistical approach is presented that allows a best guess estimate of mean wtp because this estimate involves extrapolation beyond the range of the data it tends to be highly variable jel q21

escalation of commitment to fossil fuels abstract the use of fossil fuels has been a great boon to human civilization however given the issue of climate change it has become clear that this is a time limited strategy and that we will at some point need to severely curtail and perhaps ultimately eliminate this strategy of meeting our energy needs given this long term perspective the authors argue that continued public investment in fossil fuel industries and infrastructures reflects escalation of commitment continued investment in a failing strategy in this context this paper reviews the research on escalation of commitment and factors that encourage de escalation highlighting strategies that citizens can use to encourage politicians and public administrators to protect long term civic well being by shifting investments away from fossil fuel industries

evolutionary approaches for sustainable innovation policies from niche to paradigm fostering technological innovation is considered as an important element of policies towards sustainable development in the past 10 years evolutionary policy approaches have been increasingly advocated for several reasons they seem well equipped to underpin sustainable innovation policies they focus on dynamics of change and their drivers they allow for a substantive perspective on technologies beyond mere input output relations taking into account trajectories and different characteristics of innovation and they are able to describe circumstances under which established technologies might persist even when they are to some extent inferior to their new competitors lock in however the policy effectiveness of evolutionary approaches in cases in which radical or systemic changes are involved is not yet proven in this paper we assess the theoretical rationale instrumental aspects and the coping with policy constraints of three evolutionary policy approaches which have also been used in empirical studies strategic niche management transition management and time strategies each approach has its strengths and specific problems and all three have to be further developed and tested out but they hold promise for contributing to non incremental change with economic and environmental benefits by shaping processes of variation selection and retention with the outcomes feeding back into policy they may also be used in other areas in which innovation direction is important for instance health care or food

toward prospective voluntary agreements reflections from a hydrogen foresight project abstract there is substantial interest in promoting the emergence of a hydrogen based energy economy if successful this would represent a policy led discontinuous transition away from existing fossil fuel based systems such a move has few precedents and few policy tools exist to manage such a complex and uncertain endeavour furthermore existing hydrocarbon energy systems can be considered techno institutional complexes tic which have developed through the path dependent co evolution of physical technologies and social institutions these complexes have numerous structures that ensure their perpetuation and create important barriers to the implementation of alternatives like hydrogen based systems the authors explore the application of prospective voluntary agreements pva as a policy tool process that can help facilitate a move towards a hydrogen based economy through foresight and negotiation from this perspective we look at the recent case of the nordic hydrogen energy foresight project for evidence

respondent uncertainty in a contingent market for carbon offsets abstract the main objective of this paper is to provide additional empirical evidence of what explains respondent uncertainty in contingent valuation cv and how this in turn affects stated willingness to pay wtp air travelers asked to pay a carbon travel tax to offset carbon emissions from flying were asked how likely it is that they will actually pay if the tax is voluntary when changing the market compliance imperative from a mandatory carbon tax to a voluntary contribution a third of all air travelers consider it unlikely they will actually pay their stated wtp amount an ordered probit estimation approach is applied to identify the sources of respondent uncertainty besides the bid price respondent sense of responsibility and belief in the effectiveness of the voluntary carbon market are among the main reasons for the experienced uncertainty