in defence of historical accountability for greenhouse gas emissions abstract this commentary argues in defence of equal per capita emissions with historical accountability as a general rule for allocating the right to emit greenhouse gases historical accountability takes into account historical inequalities in per capita emissions implicitly it gives every human being an equal share of the global resource atmosphere independent of place or time three reasons are put forward to argue why historical accountability should be the guiding principle for an international agreement allocating rights of emissions in addition as it has been dismissed by many scholars six arguments are given to refute objections against historical accountability

consumer market segments for biofortified iron beans in rwanda evidence from a hedonic testing study an understanding of consumer market segments is important for efficient and effective targeting of new technologies such as biofortified foods in this paper we use cluster analysis to identify distinct consumer segments in rwanda for four biofortified iron bean varieties data on consumer liking of various sensory attributes of beans was collected by using a 7 point hedonic scale through the application of home use and central location tests implemented in two rural and two urban locations cluster analysis reveals the existence of several distinct consumer segments in each one of the four study locations further analysis is conducted by using multinomial probit and logit models to predict consumer segment membership based on the consumer characteristics results reveal that depending on the location consumer s source of income and whether or not they received information about nutritional benefits of the iron bean varieties have a bearing on their preference of these varieties the paper presents a profile of each one of the consumer market segments identified to assist targeting of various iron bean delivery marketing and promotion efforts in rwanda

does financial education impact financial literacy and financial behavior and if so when in a meta analysis of 126 impact evaluation studies we find that financial education significantly impacts financial behavior and to an even larger extent financial literacy these results also hold for the subsample of randomized experiments rcts however intervention impacts are highly heterogeneous financial education is less effective for low income clients as well as in low and lower middle income economies specific behaviors such as the handling of debt are more difficult to influence and mandatory financial education tentatively appears to be less effective thus intervention success depends crucially on increasing education intensity and offering financial education at a teachable moment

measuring rural consumers willingness to pay for quality labels using experimental auctions the case of aflatoxin free maize in kenya aflatoxins are a common health hazard in tropical countries especially in rural areas new methods to reduce aflatoxin levels in food staples as well as cheaper test methods are being developed but consumers willingness to pay wtp for these improvements is unknown a survey was conducted with a representative sample of rural consumers 1 344 in total 63 women in all major maize production zones of kenya the survey included an experimental auction with maize products of different qualities the results showed that many rural consumers were aware of aflatoxins but few understood their health risks respondents were willing to pay a premium for maize tested for aflatoxins and labeled but asked a high discount for maize that was visibly contaminated with moldy grain the premium was higher for respondents with education and in regions with aflatoxicosis outbreaks knowledge of aflatoxins substantially reduced the overall wtp but did not increase the wtp for tested maize welfare analysis indicates that mandatory testing would result in substantial benefits if the cost of testing can be lowered to below the premium

the symmetry between controlling pollution by price and controlling it by quantity under ideally competitive conditions both controlling pollution by price using a combined charge subsidy scheme and controlling it by quantity using a marketable permit scheme can achieve short and long run efficiency and also political acceptability provided that both schemes embody the same degree of environmental ownership the resulting full symmetry between control by price and control by quantity a symmetry overlooked in the literature because of the entry exit assumptions automatically made for most subsidy schemes allows a useful practical choice to be made between the two control systems

sharing the burden for climate change mitigation in the canadian federation dividing the burden for greenhouse gas abatement amongst the provinces has proven challenging in canada and is a major factor contributing to canada s poor historic performance on greenhouse gas abatement as the country aims to achieve substantial cuts to emissions over the next decade and by mid century such burden sharing considerations are likely to be elevated in importance this paper uses a calibrated multi region multi sector computable general equilibrium model to compare a number of archetypal rules for sharing the burden of a joint commitment amongst members for the case of greenhouse gas reductions in canada because of the substantial heterogeneity amongst canadian provinces these different burden sharing rules imply signifcantly different relative abatement effort amongst provinces and also signifcantly different welfare implications when emission permits are allocated on an equal per capita basis welfare is increased in ontario british columbia quebec and manitoba and signifcantly reduced in alberta and saskatchewan in contrast when emission permits are allocated based on historic emissions alberta and saskatchewan are made better off and ontario british columbia quebec and manitoba are made worse off we compare these archetypal burden sharing rules to existing provincial emission reduction commitments and find that none of the standard burden sharing rules comes close to existing commitments we argue that the debate on burden sharing of greenhouse gas abatement in canada could be objectified if informed by coherent quantitative analysis such as the one presented here

a dynamic analysis of the marketable permits approach to global warming policy a comparison of spatial and temporal flexibility abstract this paper presents a generalized dynamic model of greenhouse gas emissions trading under constraints on the volume of transactions an empirical version of the model is used to evaluate potentially cost saving flexibility mechanisms joint implementation and clean development mechanism and potentially cost adding restrictions supplementarity of the kyoto protocol the results indicate the greatest gains would stem from extending permit trading spatially among industrialized nations although sizable gains would also emanate from the inclusion of developing countries gains from intertemporal trading banking and borrowing are meager restrictions on the volume of permit purchases have by far the most costly effect when developing countries are incorporated into trading sensitivity tests with respect to differential discount rates across countries and technological change indicate the results are robust

using contests to allocate pollution rights in this paper we advocate a new initial allocation mechanism for a tradable pollution permit market we outline a permit allocation contest pac that distributes permits to firms based on their rank relative to other firms this ranking is achieved by ordering firms based on an observable external action where the external action is an activity or characteristic of the firm that is independent of their choice of emissions in the tradable permit market we argue that this mechanism has a number of benefits over auctioning and grandfathering using this mechanism efficiently distributes permits allows for the attainment of a secondary policy objective and has the potential to be more politically appealing than existing alternatives

prices or knowledge what drives demand for financial services in emerging markets this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled prices or knowledge what drives demand for financial services in emerging markets conducted in 2008 in indonesia the study observed that financial development is critical for growth but its micro determinants are not well understood financial literacy training has no impact on the probability of opening a bank account although it does have an impact among those with low levels of education and financial literacy a change from 3 to 14 led to a 7 6 percent increase in the probability of owning a bank account the results hold two years after a study funding for the study derived from world bank hbs division of research and faculty development

the kyoto protocol a review and perspectives international concern about climate change has led to the kyoto protocol negotiated in 1997 which contains legally binding emission targets for industrialized countries to be achieved during the commitment period 2008 2012 while proponents of the protocol celebrate it as a breakthrough in international climate policy opponents criticize that its approach namely setting targets and timetables for emission reductions is seriously flawed this paper provides a critical assessment of the protocols potential performance and discusses amendments to foster its effectiveness and efficiency it concludes that even without any effective emission reductions in the initial commitment period the ratification of kyoto is important for the further policy process of climate protection the kyoto protocol has established a flexible broad based international mechanism that provides a valuable starting point for shaping efficient climate policies in the future

welfare specifications and optimal control of climate change an application of fund the sensitivity of the optimal control of carbon dioxide emissions to the specification of the social welfare function is systematically explored using the fund model increasing risk aversion emphasises climate change damages relative to emission reduction costs but at the same time increases the discount rate of consumption without international co operation the discount rate effect dominates so that optimal control decreases with increasing risk aversion with international co operation optimal control first increases then decreases with increasing risk aversion since climate change falls heaviest on the poor optimal control increases with increasing inequity aversion full fledged intergenerational welfare functions on the one hand emphasise climate change damages but on the other hand place more weight on current poorer generations in fund the two tendencies almost cancel

impact of ex ante hypothetical bias mitigation methods on attribute non attendance in choice experiments in this article we use survey data from nigeria on consumers preferences for organic products to investigate the impact of ex ante hypothetical bias mitigation methods cheap talk and honesty priming on respondents attribute non attendance we employ a framework that allows us to jointly examine the response to the stated choice component and the response to the attribute processing questions while avoiding the potential endogeneity bias and measurement error problems arising from some attribute non attendance methods our results show that the incidence of attribute non attendance varies across the treatments in general with significant difference in attribute non attendance rates between respondents exposed to the mitigation strategies honesty priming and cheap talk and the baseline group we also find that the low willingness to pay values for the honesty priming task appear to correspond with the lowest attribute non attendance rates reported for all the attributes especially price and might reflect a more realistic valuation of the attributes

regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in china evidence from the shapley value method abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions so as to realize its carbon reduction targets and establish the national cap and trade carbon market meanwhile it is supposed to be cost effective to jointly reduce china s carbon emissions through some collaborative activities among regions then a natural question is how to allocate the quotas among regions in light of the collaboration for this purpose the shapley value method is adopted and the results show that first the regions with higher gdp higher carbon outflow and higher carbon reduction connection should be allocated more carbon quotas moreover when the collaboration is considered the optimal allocation of carbon quotas among regions will change significantly compared to the basic quotas by the entropy method and the central region is allocated the largest proportion of carbon quota among regions which indicates its largest radiation effect besides the collaboration between the central region and northern coast region and that between the central region and the eastern region should be paid close attention these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in china

who should abate carbon emission we review the optimal pattern of carbon emission abatements across countries in a simple multi country world we model explicitly with the model in chichilnisky 4 the fact that the atmosphere is a public good within this framework we establish conditions for it to be necessary for optimality that the marginal cost of abatement be the same in all countries these condition are quite restrictive and amount to either ignoring distributional issues between countries or operating within a framework within which lump sum transfers can be made between countries these results have implications for the use of tradeable emission permits which as normally advocated will lead to the equalization of marginal abatement costs across countries the observation that the atmosphere is a public good implies that we may need to look at a lindahl equilibrium rather than a walrasian equilibrium in tradeable permits

information branding certification and consumer willingness to pay for high iron pearl millet evidence from experimental auctions in maharashtra india abstract in this paper we use hedonic testing methods adopted from food science literature and the becker degroot marschak mechanism adopted from economic valuation literature to estimate consumer demand for biofortified high iron pearl millet hipm in maharashtra india unlike biofortification with provitamin a biofortification with minerals such as iron and zinc does not change the color or the appearance of the biofortified crop therefore we test the impact of both nutrition information and branding and certification as well as the nature of the brand and of the certifying authority state level versus international on consumer demand for hipm we find that even in the absence of nutrition information consumers assign a small but significant premium to the hipm variety relative to the local variety this is consistent with consumers more favorable rating of the sensory characteristics of the high iron variety nutrition information on the health benefits of hipm increases this premium substantially and regression analysis reveals that consumers prefer international branding and international certification authority to their state level counterparts

the effects of education on financial outcomes evidence from kenya abstractwe study the effects of education on the financial outcomes of young people using kenya s introduction of free primary education fpe in 2003 as an exogenous shock to schooling our identi

optimal intensity targets for greenhouse gas emissions trading under uncertainty uncertainty is an obstacle for commitments under cap and trade schemes for emission permits we assess how well intensity targets where each country s permit allocation is indexed to its future realized gdp can cope with uncertainties in international greenhouse emissions trading we present some empirical foundations for intensity targets and derive a simple rule for the optimal degree of indexation to gdp using an 18 region simulation model of a cooperative global cap and trade treaty in 2020 under multiple uncertainties and endogenous commitments we show that optimal intensity targets could reduce the cost of uncertainty and achieve significant increases in global abatement the optimal degree of indexation to gdp would vary greatly between countries including super indexation in some advanced countries and partial indexation for most developing countries standard intensity targets with one to one indexation would also improve the overall outcome but to a lesser degree and not in all individual cases although target indexation is no magic wand for a future global climate treaty gains from reduced cost uncertainty and the potential for more stringent environmental commitments could justify the increased complexity and other potential downsides of intensity targets

are choice experiments incentive compatible a test with quality differentiated beef steaks this study compares hypothetical and nonhypothetical responses to choice experiment questions we test for hypothetical bias in a choice experiment involving beef ribeye steaks with differing quality attributes in general hypothetical responses predicted higher probabilities of purchasing beef steaks than nonhypothetical responses thus hypothetical choices overestimate total willingness to pay for beef steaks however marginal willingness to pay for a change in steak quality is in general not statistically different across hypothetical and actual payment settings

entrepreneurship social mobility and income redistribution in south india development economists have been preoccupied with the problem of increasing the size of the gnp pie to the relative neglect of its distribution despite the recent disenchantment with the viewpoint that all classes share in the benefits of industrial growth empirical data on the distribution of income business opportunity and economic power are in short supply many of the studies on entrepreneurship and economic development when they are not apologetics for ruthless capitalist exploitation as paul baran suggests extol the achievements of the capitalist entrepreneur without examining class origins and monopoly advantage joseph schumpeter sees entrepreneurs irrespective of class origin as heroic figures with the dream and will to found a private kingdom to conquer adversity to achieve success for its own sake and to experience the joy of creation for gustav papanek 1967 the private entrepreneur who is frugal diligent far sighted remarkably able and willing to take political risks is in large part responsible for the success of pakistan in achieving rapid industrialization

measuring heterogeneity survey engagement and response quality in preferences for organic products in nigeria abstractthe identification of the market potentials of organic products is important in the drive towards a sustainable agricultural development in sub saharan africa ssa however available evidence shows that valuing attributes of credence goods such as organic products while using stated preference methods faces additional obstacles compared to other normal goods in this study we examine consumers preferences and willingness to pay wtp for health and environmental attributes of organic products in nigeria we employ an approach that allows us to adequately capture the value of organic products by linking part of the heterogeneity across respondents to differences in scale while making use of indicators of survey engagement without risks of endogeneity bias and measurement error that arise from the deterministic methods the empirical results show that market for organic products exists in nigeria with reduction in pesticide residues attribute attracting the highest value followed by the ce

are consumers in developing countries willing to pay more for micronutrient dense biofortified foods evidence from a field experiment in uganda vitamin a deficiency is a major health problem in africa and in many other developing countries biofortified staple crops that are high in pro vitamin a have the potential to reduce the prevalence of vitamin a deficiency using a choice experiment with the real product in uganda we quantify the magnitude of the premium or discount in consumers willingness to pay wtp that may be associated with it results suggest that taste plays an important role in consumer acceptance and the provision of nutrition information does translate into substantial premiums for the biofortified variety there is a substantial hypothetical bias in the wtp for the new varieties and while cheap talk mitigates this bias it does not eliminate it

an equity assessment of introducing uncertain forest carbon sequestration in eu climate policy large emissions of greenhouse gases are expected to cause major environmental problems in the future european policy makers have therefore declared that they aim to implement cost efficient and fair policies to reduce carbon emissions the purpose of this paper is to assess whether the cost of the eu policies for 2020 can be reduced through the inclusion of carbon sequestration as an abatement option while equity is also improved the assessment is done by numerical calculations using a chance constrained partial equilibrium model of the eu emissions trading scheme and national effort sharing targets where forest sequestration is introduced as an uncertain abatement option fairness is evaluated by calculation of gini coefficients for six equity criteria to policy outcomes the estimated gini coefficients range between 0 11 and 0 32 for the current policy between 0 16 and 0 66 if sequestration is included and treated as certain and between 0 19 and 0 38 when uncertainty about sequestration is taken into account and policy makers wish to meet targets with at least 90 per cent probability the results show that fairness is reduced when sequestration is included and that the impact is larger when sequestration is treated as certain

revealing the political decision toward chinese carbon abatement based on equity and efficiency criteria abstract china s economic reform over the past 30 years has allowed the free market to drive economic development however government still plays a key role in the energy sector by allocating energy conservation and emissions abatement how does the government make an equity decision as a tradeoff to market efficiency this is an unanswered question the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the government s preference toward equity and efficiency using the provincial level co 2 intensity allocation data we investigate the political decision that the government made based on the equity and efficiency criteria we find that the equity index plays a more important role than the efficiency index in determining the co 2 intensity target in addition political factors such as social stability are found to be important factors

is hypothetical bias a universal phenomenon a multinational investigation a concern with the contingent valuation method cvm is the finding that hypothetical and real statements of value often differ we test whether hypothetical bias broadly defined is independent of location by comparing real and hypothetical votes on a dichotomous choice referendum in china france indiana kansas and niger we find significant differences in hypothetical bias across locations and reject the hypothesis that hypothetical bias is independent of location as opposed to the typical finding reported in the literature subjects in niger significantly understated their willingness to pay in the hypothetical referendum

tradeable emission permits and the control of greenhouse gases this article reiterates the case for tradeable permits as a global policy option for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and considers the detailed design of a global tradeable permit regime emphasising the importance of the initial assignment of property rights and arguing that the relevant property rights in this case are the rights of every member of the world community to share in a sustainable global atmosphere and climate the allocation of permits should therefore be done on a per capita basis across the world community with the result that rents generated by the process of reducing carbon emissions would accrue to non polluters most of whom live in the south the international transfers of income and wealth implied by the proposed scheme are large but feasible there is therefore a real prospect that an international convention on carbon dioxide emissions could end the debt crisis and finance sustainable development in the south

the financial education fallacy research to date does not demonstrate a causal chain from financial education to welfare enhancing financial behavior in part due to biases heuristics and emotional influences on decisions yet the search for effective financial education continues but it is time to ask whether giving every person effective financial education would make us better off two reasons it might not are discussed here first the time expense and invasion of privacy required would be enormous second such a world would entail a decrease in individual autonomy alternative tools could potentially increase household financial welfare and security at lower social and individual expense

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

integrated weighting approach to carbon emission quotas an application case of beijing tianjin hebei region abstract the coordinated development of beijing tianjin hebei region has been included in the chinese 12th five year plan as a national strategy accordingly the cooperation of energy saving and environmental protection is an important part at the present stage establishing carbon emission trading market in china is regarded as an effective measure to reduce and control carbon dioxide emission meanwhile it is an important task for government to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions in order to explore the cross provincial carbon trading market mode of china this paper aims to construct a comprehensive index and use the integrated weighting approach to simulate the carbon quota allocation of beijing tianjin hebei region the results show that firstly the indicator of responsibility which is about 0 56 is given relatively more weight among the three indicators by comparison the weights of capacity and potential are 0 13 and 0 30 secondly the provinces with strong economic ability and lower carbon reduction potential may get fewer proportions of carbon emission quotas such as beijing thirdly since undertaking the function transfer and dispersal of beijing and tianjin hebei should have a relatively high carbon emission quotas in the future carbon trading market these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in beijing tianjin hebei region of china

reducing conflicts between climate policy and energy policy in the us the important role of the states the absence of us national action on global climate change policy has prompted initiatives by the us congress cities states and regions toward what is likely to become a long term collaborative effort to harmonize national energy and climate policies this upward evolution in the face of a reluctant administration is historically consistent with the development of national legislation on other environmental and social issues in the us at the heart of this movement is the need to resolve conflicts between high intensity use of low cost fossil energy supplies and the dominating impact of carbon dioxide emissions on global climate change us states are among the largest carbon dioxide emitters in the world and play a critical role in supplying and transforming energy as well as consuming it for economic advantage state governments are also likely to have to shoulder some of the cost of potentially extensive climate damages and bear the brunt of the cost of implementing future federal mandates as a result many are taking proactive stances on the development of climate mitigation policy to prepare for accelerate and or guide national policy as us states show leadership on addressing greenhouse gas emissions they also play an important role in forging policies and measures that reduce economic conflict between energy and climate goals a number have launched or completed greenhouse gas mitigation plans and other major policies in the past few years that address these conflicts through 1 finding ways to reduce mitigation costs including the use of incentive based policy instruments 2 promoting an open and democratic policy process that includes major stakeholders 3 promoting equity across socioeconomic groups regions and generations and 4 promoting interregional cooperation the results are promising and suggest that the state arena for climate and energy policy is evolving quickly and constructively toward alternatives that reduce conflict regional efforts are also unfolding along with greater congressional attention to the lessons learned and commitments made by sub federal actions in the next few years many national energy and climate conflicts are likely to be tested and addressed by states among these pennsylvania is likely to be an important player due to its high profile of energy production and potential for leadership

equitable cost benefit analysis of climate change greenhouse gas emissions and vulnerability to climate change show a strong negative correlation this is the moral issue at the heart of the climate problem however little attention has been paid to this in the literature see banuri et al 1996 for an overview the literature on equity issues in climate change is largely confined to the distribution of emissions reduction targets this literature takes the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for granted and takes a parametric approach to the required reductions on the other hand the literature that tries to derive how much emissions abatement is desirable largely ducks the equity issue this paper is an attempt to combine the two problems

biofortification crop adoption and health information impact pathways in mozambique and uganda biofortification breeding staple food crops to be dense sources of essential micronutrients is fast emerging as a strategy to fight micronutrient malnutrition large scale biofortification investments are being made in several developing countries but until recently little rigorous evidence about the impact of these investments has been available in this paper we report findings from randomized impact evaluations conducted in both mozambique and uganda to study the impact of large scale pilot projects conducted between 2006 and 2009 to introduce provitamin a rich orange fleshed sweet potato ofsp as a strategy to reduce vitamin a deficiency in both countries projects randomly assigned interventions of di erent cost and intensity to distribute ofsp vines train households to grow ofsp and disseminate the health benefits of vitamin a we compare the impact of the interventions within and across the two countries on ofsp adoption knowledge about vitamin a and dietary intake of vitamin a by children and use causal mediation analysis imai et al 2011 to examine the impact pathways on vitamin a consumption after two years of intervention in both countries the project led to ofsp adoption rates of 61 68 percent among project households improved household knowledge about vitamin a and nearly doubled average dietary intake of vitamin a with no di erence between the more and less intense intervention models evidence suggests that vine access played the most important role in explaining the impact on vitamin a consumption in both countries consequently future programs can be designed to have similar impacts at even lower costs

equity development and climate change control the paper analyzes the effects of different equity principles on the decision of developing countries to join a world coalition whose aim is to control greenhouse gas emissions a game theoretic framework is proposed to assess the incentives for different countries to sign an international treaty on climate change control then the effects of different equity rules on these incentives are evaluated by using a dynamic integrated growth and climate model policy proposals based on transfers from developed to developing countries are also analyzed jel c7 h0 h3 q38

the abcs of financial education experimental evidence on attitudes behavior and cognitive biases this paper uses a large scale field experiment in india to study attitudinal behavioral and cognitive constraints that stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes the study complements financial education with i participant classroom motivation with pay for performance on a knowledge test ii intensity of treatment with personalized financial counseling and iii behavioral nudges with financial goal setting the analysis finds no impact of pay for performance but significant effects of both counseling and goal setting on real financial outcomes these results identify important complements to financial education that can bridge the gap between financial knowledge and financial behavior change

international equity and differentiation in global warming policy ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries long standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden sharing moreover individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations this paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits a non linear programming model which distinguishes between allocation based and outcome based rules is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes the model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications

who should abate carbon emissions an international viewpoint abstract we review the optimal pattern of carbon emission abatements across countries in a simple multi country world we model explicitly with the model in chichilnisky 1993b the fact that the atmosphere is a public good within this framework we establish conditions for it to be necessary for optimality that the marginal cost of abatement be the same in all countries these conditions are quite restrictive and amount to either ignoring distributional issues between countries or operating within a framework within which lump sum transfers can be made between countries these results have implications for the use of tradeable emission permits which as normally advocated will lead to the equalization of marginal abatement costs across countries the observation that the atmosphere is a public good implies that we may need to look at a lindahl equilibrium rather than a walrasian equilibrium in tradeable permits

greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries an analysis of policies to bring developing countries to the bargaining table this paper examines the aggregate net costs and individual country cost savings of greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries we propose emission permit allocation rules designed to entice developing countries to participate absence of developing country involvement has served as an excuse for the lack by participation by the united states in the first compliance period of the kyoto protocol and may serve as a disincentive to even more countries in subsequent periods our analysis specifies permit allocation rules that could result in no net costs and even cost savings to developing countries for their involvement in the emissions trading market while at the same time providing extensive benefits to industrialized countries through access to lower cost mitigation alternatives

demographic variables in demand analysis in this paper the authors discuss five procedures for incorporating demographic variables into theoretically plausible demand systems translating scaling and the gorman reverse gorman and implicit prais houthakker procedures these five procedures are used to incorporate a single demographic variable the number of children in a household into the generalized ces demand system using household budget data for the united kingdom for the period 1966 1972 excerpt

using cheap talk as a test of validity in choice experiments abstract in two experiments on the choice of consumer goods the estimated marginal willingness to pay for food is found to be lower in the survey version with cheap talk our test can be seen as a test of hypothetical bias this implies that we cannot reject the hypothesis of a hypothetical bias for marginal wtp in choice experiments

abatement costs of post kyoto climate regimes abstract this article analyses the abatement costs of three post kyoto regimes for differentiating commitments compatible with stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations at 550 ppmv co 2 equivalent in 2100 the three regimes explored are 1 the multi stage approach assumes a gradual increase in the number of parties involved who are adopting either emission intensity or reductions targets 2 the brazilian proposal approach i e the allocation or reductions based on countries contribution to temperature increase 3 contraction convergence with full participation in convergence of per capita emission allowances in 2050 the global costs increase up to about 1 of the world gdp ranging from 0 5 to 1 5 depending on baseline scenario and marginal abatement costs four groups of regions can be identified on the basis of similar costs expressed as the percentage of gdp these are 1 oecd regions with average costs 2 fsu the middle east and latin america with high costs 3 south east asia and east asia incl china with low costs and 4 south asia incl india and africa with net gains from emissions trading for most regimes the brazilian proposal approach gives the highest costs for groups 1 and 2 the distribution of costs for the contraction convergence approach highly depends on the convergence year the multi stage approach and contraction convergence convergence year 2050 seem to result in relatively the most even distribution of costs amongst all parties

information and consumer willingness to pay for biofortified yellow cassava evidence from experimental auctions in nigeria in this article we use the becker degroot marschak mechanism to estimate consumer demand for biofortified yellow cassava varieties in two states of nigeria imo in the southeast and oyo in the southwest these two states exhibit distinct habitual product color preferences for staple food made with cassava we estimate the effect of nutrition information campaigns and nature of planting material delivery institutions on consumer demand willingness to pay estimations account for the effect of product endowment censoring in bids and nonpayment in oyo consumers are willing to pay a premium for light yellow cassava variety even in the absence of nutrition information the article finds that nutrition information results in a large and significant price premium for biofortified cassava in both states and the nature of delivery institution has no significant effect

global environmental risks the need to manage climate risks is not a new it has shaped social institutions for many centuries in medieval england a peasant farmer s land was broken into many widely dispersed parcels economic historians interpret this as a way of hedging climate risk see references in bromley 9 land in different locations would be affected differently by droughts floods and frosts by spreading land holdings over different locations as well as by organizing agricultural cooperatives and buying insurance farmers have managed climate risk for many centuries

descriptive prescriptive and second best approaches to the control of global greenhouse gas emissions a prescriptive second best approach is developed for determining the control of greenhouse gas emissions in an inter temporal multi region model of the world concerns about inter and intra generational equity are reflected in the rate of time preference and regional weights of a social welfare function choices are narrowed down by the ethical principle of anonymity a third dimension of equity inequality aversion is subject to greater variation the aggressiveness of recommended abatement can be made to bracket results for a common descriptive model by the choice of inequality aversion in this manner the perception of a sharp dichotomy between descriptive and prescriptive approaches is moderated

the impact of financial literacy training for migrants remittances are a major source of external financing for many developing countries but the cost of sending them remains high in many migration corridors despite efforts to lower these costs by offering new products and developing cost comparison information sources many new and promising inexpensive remittance methods have relatively low adoption rates the lack of financial literacy among migrants has been identified as one potentially important barrier to competition and new product adoption this paper presents the results of a randomized experiment designed to measure the impact of providing financial literacy training to migrants training appears to increase financial knowledge and information seeking behavior and reduces the risk of switching to costlier remittance products but it does not result in significant changes in the frequency of remitting or in the remitted amount

disaggregating energy use cap among china s provinces the 2015 paris climate change negotiations represents the most ambitious worldwide effort to date to combat climate change as the largest energy consumer and carbon emitter china pledges 60 65 cut in carbon intensity below 2005 levels by 2030 to accelerate china s climate efforts china has also committed to cap its primary energy use at 4 8 billion tons of coal equivalent in 2020 this paper proposes an equitable and efficient scheme to disaggregate this national goal among provinces a three step disaggregation procedure is proposed which takes into account the initial allocation national redistribution and inter provincial adjustment first this study allocates the incremental energy quota taking 2010 as the base year second part of the energy quota is set aside by the central government for redistribution purposes while an incremental energy quota index comprising equity and efficiency criteria is used for initial allocation among provinces finally historical efforts and inter provincial energy flows are considered for inter provincial adjustment this disaggregation scheme is flexible and can be easily extended to allocation and management of other resource and environmental targets the empirical findings can assist decision makers in identifying which provinces are likely to over consume the energy quota relative to the proposed allocation and which provinces are likely to perform better in energy conservation moreover the results show that the energy cap set for 2020 is unachievable without further action market based instruments such as an energy allowance trading market are strongly recommended to achieve the energy use target in an equitable and cost effective manner

the minimal impact of a large scale financial education program in mexico city abstract we conduct randomized experiments around a large scale financial literacy course in mexico city to understand the reasons for low take up among a general population and to measure the impact of this financial education course our results suggest that reputational logistical and specific forms of behavioral constraints are not the main reasons for limited participation and that people do respond to higher benefits from attending in the form of monetary incentives attending training results in a 9 percentage point increase in financial knowledge and a 9 percentage point increase in some self reported measures of saving but in no impact on borrowing behavior administrative data suggests that any savings impact may be short lived our findings indicate that this course which has served over 300 000 people and has expanded throughout latin america has minimal impact on marginal participants and that people are likely making optimal choices not to attend this financial education course

equity in climate change an analytical review how global emissions reduction targets can be achieved equitably is a key issue in climate change discussions this paper presents an analytical framework to encompass contributions to the literature on equity in climate change and highlights the consequences in terms of future emissions allocations of different approaches to equity progressive cuts relative to historic levels for example 80 percent by industrial countries and 20 percent by developing countries in effect accord primacy to adjustment costs and favor large current emitters such as the united states canada australia oil exporters and china in contrast principles of equal per capita emissions historic responsibility and ability to pay favor some large and poor developing countries such as india indonesia and the philippines but hurt industrial countries as well as many other developing countries the principle of preserving future development opportunities has the appeal that it does not constrain developing countries in the future by a problem that they did not largely cause in the past but it shifts the burden of meeting climate change goals entirely to industrial countries given the strong conflicts of interest in defining equity in emission allocations it may be desirable to shift the emphasis of international cooperation toward generating a low carbon technology revolution equity considerations would then play a role not in allocating a shrinking emissions pie but in informing the relative contributions of countries to generating such a pie enlarging revolution

analysis of the eu policy package on climate change and renewables abstract in 2009 the eu decided to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least by 20 in 2020 compared to 1990 and to supply 20 of energy needs by 2020 from renewable energy sources this paper uses an energy model coupled with a non co 2 greenhouse gas model to assess the range of policy options that were debated to meet both targets policy options include trading of renewable targets carbon trading in power plants and industry and the use of the clean development mechanism to improve cost efficiency the models also examined fairness by analysing the distribution of emission reduction in the non emission trading sector the distribution of co 2 allowances in the emission trading sector and the reallocation of renewable targets across member states the overall costs of meeting both targets range from 0 4 to 0 6 of gdp in 2020 for the eu as a whole the redistribution mechanisms employed significantly improve fairness compared to a cost effective solution

the fundamentals of the future international emissions trading system the study aims to analyze the sectoral marginal abatements cost curves for a number of eu countries as well as to examine the efficiency aspects and the economic impacts for the major sectors of the ets under different carbon market configurations in 2010 and 2020 to produce a consistent and realistic assessment we employ sources such as ghg national inventories naps and poles world energy model to constitute the sectoral base year and 2010 2020 emission levels in different countries and regions we then use the market analysis tool aspen which enables to derive supply and demand from sectoral maccs produced with the poles model and to evaluate the economic impacts on the carbon market participants the paper shows that in compliance with the kyoto targets the benefits of an enlarged carbon market are significant since more than 50 of the abatement in the short term have to be achieved in ets sectors which may indeed use cdm or ji credits a second major conclusion is that in 2020 the new flexibility margins provided by the adjustment of investments in new capacities compensate for the increase in pressure towards stronger emission reductions this reduces the relative importance of the enlarged carbon market

the allocation of co2 emissions as a claims problem abstract in the context of multilateral negotiations on climate change this paper proposes to use the claims approach as a reasonable and practicable alternative in order to allocate the admissible co2 emissions per region the proposed methodology entails analyze the application of a broad group of theoretical solutions through the establishment of equity and stability criteria to this regard the empirical analyzing combines several co2 world endowments from meinshausen et al 2009 together with claims forecasts associated with the rcp representative concentration pathways scenarios the results obtained indicate that the constrained equal awards and minimal solutions are clearly equity sensitive given that the co2 emission reduction imposed by the constrained equal awards solution on asia and the oecd are very important and considering the better balance between equity and proportionality associated with the min solution it could be that this latter solution would be the most practicable and acceptable

accounting for changes in tastes health concerns are thought by many to have shifted consumption away from red meats though econometric evidence is mixed testing for structural change is difficult especially when one time series is used for both estimating demand equations and testing their stability specification errors may suggest a shift where none has occurred using nonparametric demand analysis we find that meat consumption patterns in the united states and australia can be explained using only relative prices and expenditures only imposing particular functional forms can reverse the conclusion suggesting that specification errors in econometric demand studies can account for findings of taste changes

stochastic carbon sinks for combating carbon dioxide emissions in the eu abstract this paper carries out numerical calculations on the potential of carbon sinks in the eu emissions trading scheme ets and national commitments under conditions of stochastic carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and carbon sequestration by forests chance constraint programming is used to analyze the role of stochastic carbon sinks for national and eu wide compliance costs the analytical results show that the inclusion of the carbon sink option can reduce costs for low enough marginal cost and risk discount but also that costless carbon sinks as by products from forestry are not part of a cost effective solution under a high reliability concern cost savings are reduced due to risk discounting under a reliability concern in particular when assigning chebyshev s inequality as compared with a normal probability distribution it is also shown that the supply of forest sinks on the market depends on the differences in marginal abatement cost between the trading and the non trading sectors and in risk discounting between achievements of the ets cap and the national commitment relatively low marginal abatement cost in the non trading sector and high risk discounting of national commitment achievements increase the supply of sinks in the market and hence reduces the equilibrium price the empirical application illustrates the importance of risk discounting for the magnitude of cost savings obtained from introducing forest carbon sinks in the eu ets and national commitments

reducing conflict in global warming policy the potential of equity as a unifying principle abstract international agreement on global warming mitigation is likely to prove difficult efficiency based policies will result in disparate costs and benefits among nations and thus hinder cooperation this paper suggests that consideration be given to an equitable sharing of the economic impacts of global warming policy acknowledging that there is no universally held concept of equity the policy implications of several alternatives are explored because there is considerable variation in these implications it will be important for decision makers to clarify their preferred concepts of equity during the course of their negotiations on policies to address global warming

coherence causality and effectiveness of the eu environmental policy system results of complementary statistical and econometric analyses this paper presents the first empirical test of coherence i e consistency of policies within a framework causality i e logical priority of objectives over policies and effectiveness i e ability of policies to tackle challenges as defined by objectives of the overall eu environmental policy system to do so i applied complementary statistical cross sectional and time series and econometric dynamic tri probit analyses to an original panel dataset based on addressed issues i e pollution vs resource trans boundary vs domestic flow vs stock rather than on implemented policies i e eu legislation aiming at optimal pollution production optimal resource use and market competition it would be impossible to perform similar analyses by referring to realized policies rather than tackled issues due to the unbalanced sample characterizing the former with respect to the latter as well as due to overlapping objectives interrelated policies and non univocal relationships between objectives and policies in contrast with previous studies of single eu environmental policies characteristics of the eu environmental policy or eu environmental objectives i found that the overall eu environmental policy system is internally coherent dynamically causal and ex ante effective moreover the evidence suggests that many issues are correlated trans boundary issues became more relevant in 2012 pollution production was more significant than resource use and flow issues were more important than stock issues from 1995 to 2010 finally i show that few objectives overlapped a safe environment objective 1987 1997 was preferred to a greenhouse gas ghg reduction objective 2003 2012 but pursued with a 2 year lag although the latter has recently become preferred to the former in addition a ghg reduction objective was preferred to a sustainable development objective 1998 2002

using an economic experiment to estimate willingness to pay for a new maternal nutrient supplement in ghana scaling up access to supplements designed to prevent undernutrition such as new small quantity lipid based nutrient supplements sq lns may require distribution via both public channels and retail markets the viability of sq lns retail markets will hinge on household level demand we use an economic experiment to characterize initial willingness to pay wtp for a maternal sq lns product in ghana wtp is positive for most participants though below the estimated cost of production for many wtp varies depending on income assets and parity status these findings have implications for the design of public health policy and hybrid public private delivery mechanisms