energy market liberalization and renewable energy policies in oecd countries abstract this paper investigates the effect of energy liberalization compared to other drivers on policies that support renewable energy in a long panel of oecd countries we estimate this effect by accounting for the endogeneity of liberalization related to joint decisions within a country s energy strategy using regulation in other industries as instruments we find that energy liberalization increases public support for renewable energy the effect of liberalization is the second largest after the effect of per capita income and is mostly driven by reductions in entry barriers while the effect of privatization is unclear this finding suggests that a reduction in the monopolistic power of state owned utilities has a positive effect on renewable energy policies when various types of actors are ensured access to the grid instead of it being provided to only a few large private firms

the environmental kuznets curve and flow versus stock pollution the neglect of future damages in this paper we offer a possible explanation for the empirical finding that the pollution income relationship pir for flow pollutants is an environmental kuznets curve ekc i e inverted u shaped but that the pir for stock pollutants is monotonically rising we analyse an overlapping generations model with two pollutants the flow pollutant causes immediate damages but the stock pollutant harms the environment only in the future hence a succession of myopic governments lets stock pollution grow with income in contrast the flow pollutant follows an ekc whose downturn might be caused by the neglect of future damages and by ever rising stock pollution without the stock pollutant the pir for the flow pollutant can increase monotonically we also show that the turning point of the ekc for the flow pollutant lies at lower levels of income and of flow pollution if stock pollution is high and harmful this casts doubts on most empirical ekc studies because they assume that the turning point occurs at the same income level in all countries however it is consistent with recent empirical findings that the income level at the turning point of the ekc varies across countries

waste performance of nuts 2 regions in the eu a conditional directional distance benefit of the doubt model abstract this paper attempts to benchmark the municipal solid waste msw management performance of the nuts 2 regions in the eu by constructing a composite indicator in order to account for commensurability weighting and aggregation issues of the performance indicators in regional waste and materials management this paper advocates a conditional directional distance version of the benefit of the doubt weighting technique in addition the waste management hierarchy defined by the eu is strongly embedded in the construction of our composite indicator the results reveal considerable differences in the aggregate performance of the regions even within member states in general waste sectors of the nuts 2 regions in austria belgium and germany generally do well in terms of msw management our results also reveal that some differences in the operating environment of the regions such as the number of tourist overnight stays are related to the aggregate performance of the regions however the observation that other conditions are not significantly related to the performance on a regional level is interesting as many policy makers frequently argue that the level of performance in their regions cannot be compared to that in other regions precisely due to this difference in operating conditions

generation of household solid waste in oecd countries an empirical analysis using macroeconomic data while there are numerous studies that use household level and community level data to examine the determinants of household solid waste generation rates little empirical work has been previously undertaken using macroeconomic data using a cross sectional time series database of solid waste in countries that are part of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd we provide evidence on the economic and demographic determinants of generation rates of household solid waste with respect to economic activity and population density the results are largely consistent with results found in previous studies however additional insights are gained on the effects of factors such as household size and composition as well as the degree of urbanization

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

does european union environmental policy pass a costâ benefit test most european union countries are committed to some form of regulatory impact assessment and in some cases these assessments involve the formal use of cost benefit analysis the european treaty of union also calls for a comparison of costs and benefits for all european regulations despite this only a limited number of regulations have been subject to cost benefit analysis using a variety of sources this paper investigates whether or not a selection of major environmental regulations would pass a cost benefit test the general answer is that while some do most do not this finding has major implications for the efficiency of european environmental legislation and reflects on the willingness of member states to sign up to inefficient regulation

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

a post consumer waste management model for determining optimal levels of recycling and landfilling the present study examines the optimal recycling rate for municipal solid waste first an optimal control model is developed to account for the physical costs of recycling the social costs of landfilling and consumers environmental preferences second an optimal solution is simulated using waste disposal data from the helsinki region in finland the benefits from recycling are included in the simulation using the results of a recent contingent valuation study the results of the present research suggest that mandates for achieving 50 recycling in municipalities are not far fetched and are both economically and environmentally justified

an econometric analysis of global waste paper recovery and utilization the main purpose of this paper is to provide aneconometric analysis of the most importantdeterminants of inter country differences inwaste paper recovery and utilization rates byemploying pooled t

a consumption based theory of the environmental kuznets curve abstract most theories about the inverted u relationship between pollution and income termed the environmental kuznets curve ekc are production side theories emphasizing pollution and abatement technologies production side theories are implicitly based on the assumption of low factor mobility and the absence of pollution as a variable in the utility function both assumptions are called into question by the empirical evidence of ekcs for i pollutants that are long lived and not easily shiftable and ii regional cross sections with free labor mobility hazardous waste sites are a prime example this paper develops a stylized model of the ekc based on perfect mobility of households and labor it represents the first attempt at developing a consumption side model of the ekc

testing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for e waste in the eu28 2 countries abstract this paper investigates the kuznets curve hypothesis for e waste using a balanced panel of 30 european countries eu28 2 over the period 2000 2016 to account for the dynamic and the time invariant characteristics we employed the generalized method of moments gmm estimator as a core method and used the 2sls estimator and cross section method to analyze the robustness of results we found that the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is well supported for e waste generated in the eu28 2 area in addition this relationship is robust and is not sensitive to the choice of control variables and the estimation methods all three methods evidenced ekc in e waste for the studied european area this reveals that e waste generation increases with an increasing gdp up to a certain gdp level turning point but thereafter decreases despite further economic growth while this suggests that e waste generation and the related adverse environmental impacts will decline at elevated gdp levels the results of this study highlight that the turning point occurs at rather exceptionally high levels of gdp the evidence of ekc in e waste contributes to better understanding the interlinkage between economic growth and e waste generation but it does not diminish the urgent need to implement effective e waste collection and valorization schemes

explaining the variation in household recycling rates across the uk household waste recycling rates vary significantly both across and within regions of the uk this paper attempts to explain the variation by using a new data set of waste recycling rates and policy determinants for all of the uk s 434 local authorities over the period 2006q2 to 2008q4 our results suggest that the method of recycling collection chosen by policy makers is an important factor influencing the recycling rate we also find an inverse relationship between the frequency of the residual waste collection and the recycling rate

embedding landfill diversion in economic geographical and policy settings we analyse the process of landfill diversion embedding the dynamics in a frame where economic geographical and policy variables enter the arena we aim at investigating in depth what main drivers may be responsible for such a phenomenon we exploit a rich panel dataset covering all the 103 italian provinces the case study on italy is worth being considered provided that italy is a main country in the eu thus offering important pieces of information on the evaluation of policies evidence shows that the observed decoupling between economic growth and landfilling is driven by a mix of structural factors as population density and waste management strategies if on the one hand the landfill tax is not arising as a significant driver of the phenomenon other waste management instruments are associated with high significant negative effect on landfilled waste in association to the features of the tariff system we also underline the key role played by the share of separated collection in driving down land

the siting of hazardous waste facilities in federal systems the political economy of nimby this paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system we first show that a decentralized systemyields the first best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions in our model each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions this leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large and in thegovernment s weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities the centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level since compensation has proved difficult a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system

energy price reform in saudi arabia modeling the economic and environmental impacts and understanding the demand response abstract saudi arabia has regulated domestic energy prices for decades setting them below international market levels energy subsidies in saudi arabia are generally implicit because they lead to foregone revenues for the government low energy prices also encourage rapid energy demand growth and wasteful consumption while limiting incentives to invest in energy efficiency saudi arabia recently started to reform energy prices leading to large increases in gasoline and residential electricity prices in 2018 to measure the economic and environmental impacts of energy price reform we econometrically model gasoline and residential electricity demand using harvey s 1990 structural time series model our estimated equations reveal that gasoline demand and residential electricity demand in saudi arabia are strongly price and income inelastic despite the major reforms that were recently implemented our welfare analysis also shows that the energy price reforms in 2018 in gasoline and residential electricity respectively delivered welfare gains of 8 8 and 3 8 billion sar annually 2 3 and 1 0 billion us additionally our decomposition analysis reveals that these energy price reforms were the largest contributors to the observed decreases in gasoline and residential electricity consumption in 2018

landfill construction and capacity expansion we study the optimal capacity and lifetime of landfills taking into account their sequential nature such an optimal capacity is characterized by the so called optimal capacity condition particular versions of this condition are obtained for two alternative settings first if all the landfills are to have the same capacity and second if each of them is allowed to have a different capacity in the second case we obtain an optimal control problem with mixed elements of both continuous and discrete time the resulting optimization problems involve dividing a time horizon of planning into several subintervals of endogenously decided length the results obtained may be useful to address other economic problems such as private and public investments consumption decisions on durable goods etc

adopting a unit pricing system for municipal solid waste policy and socio economic determinants concerns about the environmental and aesthetic damages of municipal solid waste pollution have triggered policy reform at all levels of government as part of this effort public officials are integrating market based policy instruments such as unit pricing into their solid waste plans despite the economic advantages of unit pricing constituency response has been mixed and hence adoption rates have been below expectations if the associated gains are to be realized public officials must identify the key factors that influence this decision to that end this research empirically estimates the determinants of unit pricing adoption at the community level of analysis based on data for all cities and towns in massachusetts the results indicate that demographics socio economic attributes fiscal capacity and policy instruments influence this decision

the economic benefits of reducing the environmental effects of landfills heterogeneous distance decay effects this paper estimates the economic benefits of different alternative policies considered for reducing the external effects caused by the utilization of landfills in solid waste management the preferences of the local population in the surrounding areas of a landfill are evaluated utilizing a discrete choice experiment in which subjects are presented with alternative policy decisions that involve reducing the material processed through the landfill various models were employed in order to capture heterogeneous preferences resulting in a mixture of normals modelling approach mn mnl outperforming other alternative models of heterogeneity the results show that the policy of moving the landfill away from the population does not provide the most benefits when compared to a policy of increasing recycling in the household the economic benefits of the waste management policies are heterogeneous across the population surrounding the landfill and so the distance decay functions thus the economic benefits for most waste management policies can increase or decrease the further away the subject lives from the landfill depending on the preferences of his her segment and the type of policy employed

how price inelastic is demand for gasoline in fuel subsidizing economies abstract in recent years governments that have historically subsidized domestic fuel consumption face an ever growing challenge in maintaining fuel subsidies and have embarked on subsidy reform this paper estimates the price and income elasticity of demand for gasoline in countries where fuel prices are government subsidized we make use of biennial panel road sector data for 32 countries over the 1998 2010 period and find demand for gasoline to be price inelastic both in the short run and long run we estimate the short run price and income elasticities at 0 05 and 0 16 and the long run price and income elasticities at 0 25 and 0 81 respectively it is our contention that concerned governments should play an active role in identifying and committing to a road map to progressively abandoning fuel subsidies they should also not be discouraged by relatively small consumption corrections in the short run a reduction in subsidies can eventually release considerable amount of resources for more crucial and potentially growth enhancing public services such as education and health

landfilling versus backstop recycling when income is growing the paper considers a dynamic model in which an income stream growing over time is optimally divided into consumption andexpenditures on waste disposal the latter being optimally dividedbetween recycling and landfilling recycling is thoughtof as a backstop waste disposal technology it does notrequire landfill space but is a relatively expensive method ofwaste disposal landfilling uses up scarce landfill capacity while conserving landfill space is the major reason themunicipality recycles another motive for recycling might be thatrecycling itself generates utility our analysis suggests thatthe optimal recycling program varies considerably with bothlandfill capacity and initial income for example richermunicipalities are likely to introduce recycling much earlier inthe planning period than poorer municipalities thus whenlegislating recycling national or regional governments must besensitive to the differences between municipalities

municipal waste kuznets curves evidence on socio economic drivers and policy effectiveness from the eu waste generation and waste disposal are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis in general waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation incineration and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the eu25 to assess the effects of different drivers economic structural policy and the eventual differences between western and eastern eu countries we show that for waste generation there is still no waste kuznets curve wkc trend although elasticity to income drivers appears lower than in the past landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention and in terms of landfill and incineration as expected they are respectively decreasing and increasing with policy acting as a strong driver eastern countries appear to be performing generally quite well thus benefiting from eu membership and related policies in terms of environmental performance we can conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation there are some first positive signs of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and robust landfill diversion and varying evidence of a significant role of the eu waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s our evidence suggests that if while landfill diversion is currently associated to a delinking partly explained by eu policies waste prevention must be the next objective of waste regulation efforts

industrial electricity demand for turkey a structural time series analysis abstract this research investigates the relationship between turkish industrial electricity consumption industrial value added and electricity prices in order to forecast future turkish industrial electricity demand to achieve this an industrial electricity demand function for turkey is estimated by applying the structural time series technique to annual data over the period 1960 to 2008 in addition to identifying the size and significance of the price and industrial value added output elasticities this technique also uncovers the electricity underlying energy demand trend uedt for the turkish industrial sector and is as far as is known the first attempt to do this the results suggest that output and real electricity prices and a uedt all have an important role to play in driving turkish industrial electricity demand consequently they should all be incorporated when modelling turkish industrial electricity demand and the estimated uedt should arguably be considered in future energy policy decisions concerning the turkish electricity industry the output and price elasticities are estimated to be 0 15 and 0 16 respectively with an increasing but at a decreasing rate uedt and based on the estimated equation and different forecast assumptions it is predicted that turkish industrial electricity demand will be somewhere between 97 and 148 twh by 2020

using choice question formats to determine compensable values the case of a landfill siting process abstract siting noxious facilities such as community landfills is a challenging problem for local planners who recognize the importance of economic efficiency and equity political acceptance and meeting federal regulatory standards meeting these criteria requires technical and socio economic analyses in conjunction with public input planners may also recognize that political acceptance requires compensation for the host community either in the form of monetary or in kind transfers following breffle and rowe breffle w s rowe r d 2002 comparing choice question formats for evaluating natural resource tradeoffs land econ 78 2 298 314 we use a resource to resource paired comparison survey method to estimate compensatory values associated with an in county landfill for both the host and non host communities our results indicate that while a host community household s minimum willingness to accept payment for hosting a landfill may exceed a non host community household s maximum willingness to pay a large difference in population sizes between the two communities enables the landfill to pass a kaldor potential compensation test

gasoline demand the case of saudi arabia this paper specifies a partial adjustment model to estimate the demand for gasoline in saudi arabia for the period 1970 1985 it is found that the demand for gasoline is inelastic with respect to price in the short and long run as compared to other countries the kingdom s gasoline demand elasticities more closely resemble those of industrial countries

effects of environmental regulation on separate waste collection dynamics empirical evidence from italy abstract this paper aims to evaluate the extent to which current italian legislation has been able to achieve the goals set for separate waste collection within the context of the ongoing revision of european union eu policy in italy waste management is regulated by legislative decree 152 2006 which has set the main regulatory pillars the responsibilities among the actors at different territorial levels regions provinces and municipalities the waste tariff structure penalties and incentives such as the landfill tax and green certificates to promote energy recovery focussing on separate collection of municipal waste the italian law set three targets to achieve 35 by 2006 45 2008 and 65 by 2012 we propose a two step analysis focussing on 103 italian provinces using the longitudinal data provided by the italian national institute of statistics istat for the period 1999 2011 first using the transition probability matrix we analyse the transition probabilities among three different separate waste collection states low medium and high second by using a generalised ordered probit model we verify the magnitude and significance of the parameter associated to the legislative decree 152 2006 and of some other selected variables in allowing provinces to move from a low separate collection state to a higher one our results show that the legislative decree has had the positive effect of driving italy s provinces towards higher separate waste collection rates but has not proved effective in lowering the gap among provinces those in southern italy remain the least dynamic finally we show that citizen participation in ecological associations and voluntary activities has a positive effect on separate collection rates

on impatience economic growth and the environmental kuznets curve a dynamic analysis of resource management the paper presents a dynamic analysis of natural resource management and investigates some key factors that affect optimal management and resource conservation using a recursive specification of time preferences we show how endogenous discounting and impatience can affect the motivation for both capital investments and environmental preservation we examine the relationships between economic growth and environmental quality endogenous discounting provides new insights in the economic dynamics underlying the environmental kuznets curve by treating growth as endogenous we examine how externalities and economic growth interact with each other we investigate how economic development can contribute to an increased demand for environmental preservation as an important new result we also show how poverty can contribute to environmental degradation

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

tracking environmental innovations and policy regulations in japan case studies on dioxin emissions and electric home appliances recycling taking dioxin emissions from incineration and the recycling of home electric appliances in japan as two case studies this paper aims to clarify the impact of environmental policy on technological innovation for our case studies relevant japanese patent data were gathered and analyzed for the period 1990 2008 to demonstrate that environmental regulations induce technology innovation we conducted statistical analysis to compare the number of patents related to each regulation between the period under regulation and period outside the regulation the results show that after the regulations were introduced new technological developments occurred for most technological types and the total number of related patent applications was larger even when controlling for other exogenous and endogenous factors such as business cycles and expenditures in research and development r d we finally argue that while a possible weakness in these types of direct regulations is the lack of incentives for further innovations they can still induce innovation if they are flexible and with specific targets

is environmental innovation embedded within high performance organisational changes the role of human resource management and complementarity in green business strategies abstract this paper investigates whether firms joint implementation of organisational innovation and training may foster their adoption of environmental innovation ei and if this correlation falls within porter hypothesis ph framework we study the relationship of complementarity between strategies of high performance work practices hpwp and human resource management hrm when ei adoption is the firms objective using an original dataset on 555 italian industrial firms regarding ei hpwp and hrm coherent with the last cis2006 2008 survey results show that sector specificity matter the only case in which strict complementarity is observed in organisational change concerns co 2 abatement a relatively complex type of ei but this is true only when the sample is restricted to more polluting and regulated sectors this evidence is coherent with the porter hypothesis complementarity related adoption of ei is an element of organisational change in firms that are subject to more stringent environmental regulations nevertheless the fact that strict complementarity is not a diffuse factor behind the adoption of all environmental innovation indeed does not come as a surprise at this stage in the development of green strategies the share of eco firms is still limited even in advanced countries that are seeking tools for a new competitiveness the full integration of eis within the internal capabilities and firm s own assets is far from being reached even in advanced and competitive industrial settings

an economic analysis of household waste management abstract this paper provides a comprehensive model of household waste management policy incorporating the possibility of waste reduction effort by the firm and the household and of illegal waste disposal by the household when household waste reduction effort is insignificant the first best optimum can be achieved using various combinations of environmental tax on the firm and waste collection charge on the household however when household waste reduction effort is significant the first best optimum is not achievable and explicit monitoring of illegal waste disposal is needed rendering a simple pigouvian tax sub optimal this paper solves for the second best optimal policy and provides some comparative statics of the optimal policy