an open economy model of the effects of unilateral environmental policy by a large developing country abstract in this paper we pose the following question why is it that despite the universal recognition of the need for global environmental protection developing countries have been lax in instituting stringent environmental regulations addressing this question from an economic standpoint we show that there are plausible theoretical circumstances in which a large developing country can be worse off if it chooses to implement environmental policy in an uncoordinated fashion the empirical dimension of this question is stressed and the key parameters such as elasticities and marginal propensities to consume which are germane to any policy discussion regarding this issue are identified second we study once again from the perspective of a large developing country the possibility of using the domestic tax structure optimally to attain environmental policy objectives in a second best environment this scenario involves taxing pollution indirectly by using product taxes finally keeping the empirical dimension of the question in mind we show how to compute optimal externality correcting taxes these taxes are primarily a function of different kinds of elasticities

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

future inequality in co2 emissions and the impact of abatement proposals this paper analyzes future carbon emissions inequality using a group decomposition of the gini index business as usual projections to the year 2100 for 135 countries show inequality in per capita emissions declines slowly next the impact on emissions levels and inequality of the kyoto protocol and other abatement proposals for annex ii countries in 2010 are measured with a focus on the gap narrowing and reranking effects substantial reranking of per capita emissions between annex ii and non annex ii countries will not occur unless the former reduce their emissions by at least 50 versus 1990 levels and the latter continue growing unabated

international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions a decomposition methodology by kaya factors in this paper we provide a methodology for decomposing international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions into kaya multiplicative factors and two interaction terms we use the theil index of inequality and show that this decomposition methodology can be extended for analyzing between and within group inequality components we can thus analyze the factors behind inequalities in per capita co2 emissions across countries between groups of countries and within groups of countries the empirical illustration for international data suggests some points firstly international inequality in per capita co2 emissions is mainly attributable to inequalities in per capita income levels which helps to explain its recent reduction while differences in carbon intensity of energy and energy intensity have made a less significant contribution this result is strongly influenced by the performance of china and india secondly the between group inequality component which is the biggest component is also largely explained by the income factor thirdly the within group inequality component increased slightly during the period something mainly due to the change in the income factor and the interaction terms in a few regions

assessing global co2 emission inequality from consumption perspective an index decomposition analysis abstract co2 emission inequality among countries is a key issue in international climate negotiations in view of the growing popularity of the consumption based emission accounting system in climate policy studies analyzing the emission inequality from the consumption perspective can help policymakers design emission abatement scenarios that are fairer to all parties using a new approach based on the theil index and the index decomposition analysis ida technique this paper examines global per capita consumption based emission inequality in 1995 2009 the sources and determinants of both the status and evolution of the emission inequality are quantified the empirical results show that the global emission inequality was sourced mainly from the emerging economies particularly china and india the global inequality decreased at an accelerating rate during the period studied the narrowing disparity among countries in per capita consumption level drove while the expanding disparity in consumption based emission intensity largely hindered the inequality reduction comparing the consumption based emission inequality with that under the production based principle reveals that the latter partly masked the inequality in the distribution of global co2 emissions through production outsourcing more detailed results and discussions are presented

distributional aspects of emissions in climate change integrated assessment models the recent failure of copenhagen negotiations shows that concrete actions are needed to create the conditions for a consensus over global emission reduction policies a wide coalition of countries in international climate change agreements could be facilitated by the perceived fairness of rich and poor countries of the abatement sharing at international level in this paper i use two popular climate change integrated assessment models to investigate the path and decompose components and sources of future inequality in the emissions distribution results prove to be consistent with previous empirical studies and robust to model comparison and show that gaps in gdp across world regions will still play a crucial role in explaining different countries contributions to global warming

international inequality in energy intensity levels and the role of production composition and energy efficiency an analysis of oecd countries abstract this paper analyses the inequality of energy intensity levels between oecd countries its causes and evolution the paper develops a methodology which allows the inequality in energy consumption per capita to be decomposed into explanatory factors it also analyses the contribution of different groups of countries to this inequality the results show that although differences in affluence are the most significant factor in explaining inequality in energy consumption per capita the inequality in energy intensity levels plays a prominent role in reducing the inequality in energy consumption per capita over the analysed period the paper also develops a methodology which determines the importance of different production structures and energy efficiency of productive sectors in the differences in energy use per unit of gdp between the countries analysed the results show that sector specialisation becomes increasingly important in explaining the inequality of energy intensity while there is a significant trend towards the convergence of energy efficiency between countries sector by sector this trend would explain the decreasing weight of energy intensity as an explanatory factor of the inequalities in energy consumption per capita

decomposing inequality in co2 emissions the role of primary energy carriers and economic sectors emission inequality across countries and the contribution of the energy mix and the sectoral composition of a country s energy use are of central importance to the climate debate we analyze the evolution of inequality in global co2 per capita emissions using both historical data on energy related co2 emissions and future emission scenarios generated with the integrated assessment model remind within our sample of 90 countries the results indicate that the gini index declined from about 0 6 in 1971 to slightly above 0 4 in 2008 a decomposition of the gini index of total emissions into primary energy carriers indicates that this reduction is mainly attributed to declining shares of emissions from coal peat and oil in total emissions and decreasing emission inequality within all fossil primary energy sources from the perspective of economic sectors the decline in overall inequality is almost entirely due to a decline of the contribution of emissions from manufacturing construction our analysis also suggests that an equally spread emission reduction from any one source would not have a major impact on overall emission inequality the analysis of future scenario data indicates that climate policy reduces absolute emission inequality while inducing drastic progressive emission reductions in all regions

on the possibility of attaining environmental and trade objectives simultaneously with the greening of political debate around the world large nations precluded from using trade instruments explicitly have become aware of the fact that they can manipulate their domestic tax structure to attain environmental and trade objectives simultaneously in this note we show how such nations can attain these two targets with one instrument specifically we show how to construct dual purpose taxes we then focus on the empirical determinants of these taxes

the evolution of cooperation through imitation we study evolutionarily stable outcomes for a class of games that admit cooperation and conflict as possible nash equilibria we make use of two ideas existing strategies are more likely to be imitated than new strategies are to be introduced players are able to identify opponents behavior prior to interaction the long run evolutionary limit is efficient for the case of perfect recognition of opponents behavior for the case of imperfect recognition efficiency is not achieved and long run outcomes are more efficient the more accurate is the information strategies that emerge in the long run are those where players reward opponents who are likely to play the same way and punish opponents who are likely to play differently

geographical spread of global emissions within country inequalities are large and increasing abstract in spite of the extensive literature on greenhouse gas emission inequalities at the world wide level most of the evidence so far has been based on country level data however the within country dimension matters for both the implementation and the policy formation of climate policies as a preliminary step towards a better understanding of within country inequalities this paper measures their extent for the two major greenhouse gases co2 and ch4 over the 1970 2008 period using theil index decompositions we show that within country inequalities account for the bulk of global inequality and tend to increase over the sample period in contrast with diminishing between country inequalities including differences across sectors reveals that between sector inequalities matter more than between country inequalities and between sector inequalities become the dominant source of global inequality at the end of the sample period in the co2 case finally estimated social tensions arising from the disconnection between emissions and future damages turn out to be increasing as soon as within country disparities are taken into account these orders of magnitude should be kept in mind while discussing the efficiency and fairness of alternative paths in combating global warming

inequality in co2 emissions across countries and its relationship with income inequality a distributive approach this paper analyses the inequality in co2 emissions across countries and groups of countries and the relationship of this inequality with income inequality across countries for the period 1971 1999 the research employs the tools that are usually applied in income distribution analysis the methodology used here gives qualitative and quantitative information on some of the features of the inequalities across countries that are considered most relevant for the design and discussion of policies aimed at mitigating climate change the paper studies the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and shows that income inequality across countries has been followed by an important inequality in the distribution of emissions this inequality has diminished mildly although the inequality in emissions across countries ordered in the increasing value of income inequality between rich and poor countries has diminished less than the simple inequality in emissions lastly the paper shows that the inequality in co2 emissions is mostly explained by the inequality between groups with different per capita income level the importance of the inequality within groups of similar per capita income is much lower and has diminished during the period especially in the low middle income group

taxes and subsidies for pollution intensive industries as trade policy abstract this paper constructs a model of international oligopoly with negative externalities in production in which optimal environmental policy responses to foreign emission tax and subsidy programs can be calculated it is shown that by granting subsidies for abatement efforts or for a heavily taxed polluting input domestic net welfare is improved by capturing a greater share of the world market since the subsidy programs are supposed to improve the quality of the global environment they can be justified on environmental grounds in addition we show that a pigouvion emission tax restores efficiency in natural resource allocation whereas subsidy programs are in principle used as instruments in imperfectly competitive international markets

will history repeat itself economic convergence and convergence in energy use patterns in this paper a difference in differences estimator on panel data for 30 developing and 21 industrialized countries is employed over the period 1971 2005 to examine how patterns of energy use characterized by the consumption of primary energy carriers sectoral energy use and carbon emissions are changing in the process of economic development for the average developing country in our sample the results indicate that economic catch up has been accompanied by above average growth of the use of most primary energy carriers the consumption of final energy in most sectors and total co2 emissions for industrialized countries we find that economic growth is partially decoupled from energy consumption and that above average rates of economic growth were accompanied by larger improvements in energy efficiency these results emphasize the need to identify the relevant engines of economic growth their implications for energy use and possibilities to achieve low carbon growth centered on productivity and efficiency improvements rather than on capital accumulation

estimates of trends in global income and resource inequalities it is often argued that the inequality in the world is increasing we study the global income and resource inequality between 1960 and late 1990s income is measured in gdp capita in terms of both current market exchange rate and purchasing power parity ppp consumption of paper energy electricity food animal food as well as emissions of carbon dioxide is also studied changes in the absolute and relative gap between the top and bottom 20 consumers as well as the atkinson measure are used as inequality indicators some remarks are made on how to compare income across countries and how inequality should be measured we find that the inequality in terms of gdp capita measured in ppp terms is rather stable in relative terms but increasing in absolute terms we conclude that inequality as measured by the atkinson index is decreasing for all resources but that the gap in resource consumption in absolute terms is increasing for paper and electricity consumption

comparison of energy transitions in the united states and developing and industrializing economies summary we compare the energy transitions of the united states with several developing and industrializing economies the analysis reveals three important differences between trends first the developing world experiences energy related transitions at lower levels of income with faster rates of change in conditions over time and in a more simultaneous fashion than that of the united states second over similar income ranges i e segments of economic growth current developing economies are using less energy per capita than the united states did historically finally this more efficient economic growth translates into lower systemic environmental impact per capita than that of the united states

polarization of co2 emissions in china s electricity sector production versus consumption perspectives abstract the inter provincial inequality of per capita co2 emissions in china s electricity sector means that their responsibilities for co2 emission reduction are different considering the spatial separation of co2 emissions in power production and consumption with respect to the large scale inter provincial electricity trade in china this paper innovatively investigates the sub national inequality and polarization degree of per capita co2 emissions in china s electric power sector from the perspectives of both production and consumption the overall tendencies of the sub national polarization degrees of per capita co2 emissions embodied in the both electric power consumption and production in china show an increasing trend the results indicate that the polarization distribution of per capita co2 emissions is still one of the important factors leading to difficulties in achieving the new reduction arrangements the evolution of the bi polarization analysis shows that the grouping results of per capita co2 emissions are different from production and consumption perspectives as well as the high and low emission groups have significantly different characteristics the inequality and polarization degree of per capita co2 emissions in china s electric power sector have changed as the co2 emissions embodied in the electricity trade had been taken into account one size fits all strategies are unlikely to be successful in advancing the provincial cooperation on co2 emissions reduction

decomposing inequality in energy related co2 emissions by source and source increment the roles of production and residential consumption abstract using provincial data on energy related co2 emissions in china from 1997 to 2014 and the co2 emission gini coefficient ceg this study evaluates china s spatial inequality in energy related co2 emissions further we decompose this inequality and its variation from the perspectives of production and residential energy consumption using the source decomposition and source increment decomposition methods this paper presents a new ceg source increment decomposition method that can achieve complete decomposition the results reveal a downward trend in china s overall production sector and residential sector co2 emissions inequality although the gini coefficient of co2 emissions from the residential sector is larger than that from the production sector the contribution of the latter to the overall ceg is higher the impacts of the spatial inequality of co2 emissions from china s production and residential sectors depend on the type of energy the concentration effect is the primary factor responsible for inducing changes in china s overall and production sector co2 emissions inequality but it is not the only dominant factor for the residential sector co2 emissions inequality

explanatory factors of co2 per capita emission inequality in the european union the design of european mitigation policies requires a detailed examination of the factors explaining the unequal emissions in the different countries this research analyzes the evolution of inequality in co2 emissions per capita in the european union eu 27 in the period 1990 2009 and its explanatory factors for this purpose we decompose the theil index of inequality into the contributions of the different kaya factors the decomposition is also applied to the inequality between and within groups of countries north europe south europe and east europe the analysis shows an important reduction in inequality to a large extent due to the smaller differences between groups and because of the lower contribution of the energy intensity factor the importance of the gdp per capita factor increases and becomes the main explanatory factor however within the different groups of countries the carbonization index appears to be the most relevant factor in explaining inequalities the policy implications of the results are discussed

if homo economicus could choose his own utility function would he want one with a conscience reply in my model of the evolution of honesty 1 i assumed the existence of a signal a blush perhaps extreme values of which served to identify some individuals as being honest with certainty joseph harrington notes that without this assumption honest individuals have difficulty invading a population initially dominated by defectors for readers who do not wish to work through the algebra in his comment the argument is easily summarized in nontechnical terms suppose two honest mutants a and b arrive in an uncountably large population consisting entirely of dishonest persons and suppose that the probability that an honest person exhibits an intense blush is say 0 999 while the corresponding probability for everyone else is only 0 001 when a sees an intense blush on the face of b what will then be his estimate of the probability that b is honest assuming that a knows the laws of elementary probability and corrects for the base rate of honest persons in the population it will be zero when virtually everyone in the population is dishonest even a person with an intense blush will be pegged as dishonest provided that even the smallest fraction of dishonest persons also shows an intense blush with

ecological footprint inequality across countries the role of environment intensity income and interaction effects recently white 2007 analysed the international inequalities in ecological footprints per capita ef hereafter based on a two factor decomposition of an index from the atkinson family atkinson 1970 specifically this paper evaluated the separate role of environment intensity ef gdp and average income as explanatory factors for these global inequalities however in addition to other comments on their appeal this decomposition suffers from the serious limitation of the omission of the role exerted by probable factorial correlation york et al 2005 this paper proposes by way of an alternative a decomposition of a conceptually similar index like theil s 1967 which in effect permits clear decomposition in terms of the role of both factors plus an inter factor correlation in line with duro and padilla 2006 this decomposition might in turn be extended to group inequality components shorrocks 1980 an analysis that cannot be conducted in the case of the atkinson indices the proposed methodology is implemented empirically with the aim of analysing the international inequalities in ef per capita for the 1980 2007 period and amongst other results we find that indeed the interactive component explains to a significant extent the apparent pattern of stability observed in overall international inequalities

the interface between environmental and trade policies last march i gave the frank paish lecture to the society under the title economic life in a greenhouse in my lecture i tried both to survey professional opinion as to some of the possible climatic implications of the greenhouse effect and also to draw out the economic consequences which might follow towards the end of my talk i made reference to some preliminary joint work with randy wigle 2 a colleague at wilfrid laurier university in canada on the global consequences of carbon tax schemes designed to limit and or reduce the build up of co2 emissions a key element underlying the greenhouse effect the written version of the lecture consciously does not reproduce the survey material which made up the first part of the lecture instead it elaborates on the issues raised towards the end it incorporates the work by randy wigle and myself and offers some thoughts on what seems to be a growing issue for the iggos namely the consequences for the international trading system of interactions between trade issues and both future global and current national environmental policies what follows emphasises that if they occur in the next few decades global policy responses3 carbon taxes tradeable permit schemes to environmental concerns will almost certainly have large economic effects among these are likely to be significant effects on trade patterns and trade volumes large interregional effects will also accompany such policies depending upon how such policies are implemented also the i99os may see a growing use of trade measures to achieve objectives set for environmental policies environmental policies towards such countries as brazil the philippines and others where deforestation is a concern may increasingly take the form of threatened trade sanctions unless compliance with global environmental policy objectives occurs 4