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

on monoculture and the structure of crop rotations an issue when seeking to identify rotation choice is persistence in yield enhancement and input saving carry over effects focusing on carry over length and the monoculture decision we use quasi convexity of choice functions to develop price independent and price dependent principles concerning rotation structure iowa corn soybean rotation data suggest corn has one year memory for corn soybeans in the prior year is yield increasing 16 5 bu ac and nitrogen saving 51 lb ac the hypothesis that soybean has two year memory cannot be rejected corn in the prior year two years increases yield by 7 bu ac 11 6 bu ac we simulate to find price and practice subsidy levels that support different rotations

distributional effects of a carbon tax on car fuels in france this paper analyses the distributional effects of alternative scenarios of carbon taxes on car fuels using disaggregated french panel data from 2003 to 2006 it incorporates household price responsiveness that differs across income groups into a consumer surplus measure of tax burden carbon taxation is regressive before revenue recycling however taking into account the benefits from congestion reduction induced by the tax mitigates regressivity we show also that recycling additional revenues from the carbon tax either in equal amounts to each household or according to household size makes poorest households better off

a rational expectations model of agricultural supply this work suggests a dynamic linear rational expectations modeling strategy for using time series observations to study the impact of product prices on agricultural production and land allocation the farmer s decision consists of specifying each period the portion of his land to be devoted to the growing of alternative crops the dynamic element in the farmer s problem comes from the technology a quadratic production technology is used the farmer s optimal land allocation decision rules are derived as linear functions of past land allocations expectations of future product prices and other exogenous variables and they can be interpreted as an optimal crop rotation assuming rational expectations and the exogeneity of prices for a small open economy one obtains closed form linear regression equations representing decision rules and stochastic processes these are then estimated and tested using maximum likelihood methods and aggregate data from the egyptian agriculture

social and political responses to ecological tax reform in europe an introduction to the special issue this paper introduces the special issue on the policies for ecological tax reform assessment of social responses petras project about responses to ecological tax reform etr in europe although etr is widely accepted to be a policy with desirable effects its implementation has been limited by problems of political acceptability the project aimed to address the question of how to make such a policy more acceptable it is the first study to examine in depth the thinking of members of the general public about the etr policies and is also the first international comparative study of the thinking of ordinary business people about etr policies the petras project methodology was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them a number of issues emerged relating to awareness trust understanding of the purpose visibility incentives regressivity levels of taxation terminology communication about etr and the use of alternative instruments together with these similarities a pattern of differences between the countries can also be seen the final section of this paper introduces the national studies described in the following papers

acreage decisions under risk the case of corn and soybeans an acreage supply response model is developed under expected utility maximization the resulting framework is used to specify and estimate a system of risk responsive acreage equations for corn and soybeans in the united states particular attention is given to the truncation effects of government price supports on the distribution of corn and soybean prices also a wealth variable is included in the acreage equations the empirical results indicate that risk and wealth variables play an important role in cornsoybean acreage decisions the analysis also shows that cross commodity risk reduction is important in acreage allocation decisions

public acceptance for environmental taxes self interest environmental and distributional concerns abstract while strongly recommended by economists it has often been politically difficult to impose taxes on externalities there is a substantial literature on public attitudes towards environmental taxes there has however been few comprehensive attempts to understand attitudes towards environmental taxes the main research question in this paper is which factors influence support for fuel taxation we propose a model of attitudes towards fuel taxation and test this model as well as more specific hypotheses using data from a representative survey of the adult norwegian population our results suggest that support for fuel taxation is best predicted by beliefs about environmental consequences followed by beliefs about consequences to others beliefs about consequences to self self interest is the factor that explains the least variation in support for fuel taxation the academically interesting result that support cannot be well explained without capturing a broad range of motivational factors is also highly policy relevant it implies that there is no magic formula for increasing public support for environmental taxes there are however some issues which can be addressed trust in how well the government spends the revenue and the perception that taxation does very little to change behaviour and thus to reduce environmental problems

insurance moral hazard and chemical use in agriculture this paper examines how crop insurance affects corn farmers fertilizer and pesticide use in the u s midwest crop insurance might be expected to affect chemical use because of moral hazard insured farmers may undertake riskier production than do uninsured farmers results suggest that insurance exerts considerable influence on corn farmers chemical use decisions those purchasing insurance applied significantly more nitrogen per acre 19 spent more on pesticides 21 and treated more acreage with both herbicides and insecticides 7 and 63 than did those not purchasing insurance these results suggest that both fertilizer and pesticides may be risk increasing inputs

eu climate policy up to 2020 an economic impact assessment in its fight against climate change the eu is committed to reducing its overall greenhouse gas emissions to at least 20 below 1990 levels by 2020 to meet this commitment the eu builds on segmented market regulation with an eu wide cap and trade system for emissions from energy intensive installations ets sectors and additional measures by each eu member state covering emission sources outside the cap and trade system the non ets sector furthermore the eu has launched additional policy measures such as renewable energy subsidies in order to promote compliance with the climate policy target basic economic reasoning suggests that emission market segmentation and overlapping regulation can create substantial excess costs if we focus only on the climate policy target in this paper we evaluate the economic impacts of eu climate policy based on numerical simulations with a computable general equilibrium model of international trade and energy use our results highlight the importance of initial market distortions and imperfections as well as alternative baseline projections for the appropriate assessment of eu compliance cost

moral hazard cycles in individual coverage crop insurance this paper examines the moral hazard implications of individual coverage crop insurance contracts individual coverage contracts are informationally superior to standard contracts because the farmer s coverage is proportional to his average historical yield despite this apparent benefit the steady state solution is shown to be characterized by moral hazard cycles where moral hazard is practiced in alternative periods the amplitude of the cycle and thus the variability in planned production is shown to be larger the lower the degree of production uncertainty the fewer the number of years used in the averaging process the higher the coverage threshold and the lower the level of co insurance

co2 taxes equity and the double dividend macroeconomic model simulations for austria abstract this paper investigates the impacts of co2 tax schemes on co2 emissions equity and macroeconomic indicators in austria with the macroeconomic model dynk aut our scenarios focus on non ets co2 emissions and comprise different tax rates and revenue recycling options lower labor taxes lower vat and lump sum payments the short term comparative scenario analysis indicates that co2 taxes without recycling lead to significant co2 emission reductions at moderate economic costs equity impacts on households depend on the indicator used but can be regressive without recycling most recycling schemes can achieve a double dividend i e emission reductions and increases in gdp lump sum payments are less efficient than reducing the vat or labor taxes equity impacts are progressive with lump sum payments rather proportional with lower vat and regressive with lower labor taxes a combination of recycling schemes and or a restriction of lump sum payments to lower income households can minimize the trade off between equity and efficiency our simulations suggest that well designed co2 tax schemes could be a crucial and socially acceptable element within a comprehensive policy package to achieve ghg emission targets for non ets sectors in austria

review the economics of soil health abstract soil health plays an important role in agricultural productivity food quality environmental resiliency and ecosystem sustainability consequently there is great interest from policymakers for evidence based research on the benefits and costs of investing in healthy soils in this article i endeavor to build a common understanding between economists soil scientists and policymakers about how to pursue research on the economics of soil health first i summarize the current understanding of soil health as a holistic and multidimensional concept beyond that of mere soil fertility second i argue that optimal control models are particularly well suited to capture the underlying economics of soil management finally i outline relevant implications of such an approach for setting soil health policy

selective intervention and internal hybrids interpreting and learning from the rise and decline of the oticon spaghetti organization infusing hierarchies with elements of market control has become a much used way of simultaneously increasing entrepreneurialism and motivation in firms however this paper argues that such internal hybrids particularly in their radical forms are inherently hard to successfully design and implement because of a fundamental incentive problem of establishing credible managerial commitments to not intervene in delegated decision making this theme is developed and illustrated using the case of the world leading hearing aids producer oticon in the beginning of the 1990s oticon became famous for its radical internal hybrid the spaghetti organization recent work has interpreted the spaghetti organization as a radical attempt to foster dynamic capabilities by organizational means neglecting however that about a decade later the spaghetti organization has given way to a more traditional matrix organization in contrast an organizational economics interpretation of oticon organizational changes is developed this lens suggests that a strong liability of the spaghetti organization was the above incentive problem frequent managerial meddling with delegated rights led to a severe loss of motivation and arguably caused the change to a more structured organization refutable implications are developed and the discussion is broadened to more general issues of economic organization

distributional impacts of carbon pricing a general equilibrium approach with micro data for households article i nfo many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices a complete analysis requires taking both effects into account the impact of carbon pricing is determined by heterogeneity in household spending patterns across income groups as well as heterogeneity in factor income patterns across income groups it is also affected by precise formulation of the policy how is the revenue from carbon pricing distributed as well as the treatment of other government policies e g the treatment of transfer payments what is often neglected in analyses of policy is the heterogeneity of impacts across households even within income or regional groups in this paper we incorporate 15 588 households from the u s consumer and expenditure survey data as individual agents in a comparative static general equilibrium framework these households are represented within the mit usrep model a detailed general equilibrium model of the u s economy in particular we categorize households by full household income factor income as well as transfer income and apply various measures of lifetime income to distinguish households that are temporarily low income e g retired households drawing down their financial assets from permanently low income households we also provide detailed within group distributional measures of burden impacts from various policy scenarios

public acceptability of personal carbon trading and carbon tax abstract climate change is one of the greatest challenges confronting the international community requiring action to achieve deep cuts in carbon emissions the implementation of potentially uncomfortable but necessary policy measures is though critically dependent upon public acceptability this paper reports a novel application of stated preference techniques to explore the influence of key design attributes on the acceptability of a personal carbon trading scheme in isolation and when compared to a carbon tax illustrative forecasts from the models developed indicate the importance of design attributes especially the basis of the initial permit allocation for personal carbon trading and the use to which revenues are put for carbon tax results indicate that the best scheme designs could be acceptable to a majority of respondents

optimal sequential plantings of corn and soybeans under price uncertainty we examine crop choice and fertilizer applications as the solution to stochastic dynamic optimization problem for an innite stream of discounted prots the ecient decision rule depends on the stochastic evolution of commodity prices fertilizer prices and the agronomic eects of rotation versus monoculture this decision rule includes an account of real option values associated with maintaining soil quality and disposition in an environment with highly uncertain future prices and irreversible past planting decisions we parameterize a baseline model for a representative acre in iowa and compare the model s predictions and prots to relatively naive shorter horizon decision rules and a eld managed with optimal fertilizer applications conditional on corn and soybeans always being rotated we also examine the

history and social responses to environmental tax reform in the united kingdom abstract this paper gives a short history of fuel taxation and the climate change levy in the uk the research described was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them interviews were conducted with selected policy makers and companies focus groups were conducted with quota samples of the general public the research shows that the problem that etr faces in terms of public acceptance is not so much outright hostility to environmental taxation as conceptual problems with the design similar conceptual problems were also found in the interviews with business people these can be summarised as lack of trust about use of the revenues difficulty in understanding the purpose of a tax shift and a desire for incentives for good behaviour as well as perceived penalties for bad behaviour

a rural myth sources and implications of the perceived unfairness of carbon taxes in rural communities abstract since british columbia s carbon tax was implemented in 2008 local interest groups and municipal politicians have claimed that the tax places an unfair burden on rural communities we investigate the sources of this perception of unfairness and its implications for policymaking we examine the distributive effects of british columbia s carbon tax using a computable general equilibrium model of the canadian economy we find that the rural population would indeed have experienced a disproportionate burden had the carbon tax been introduced without redistributive measures but that the revenue recycling program introduced in parallel with the tax was sufficient to balance the inequity hence the northern and rural homeowner benefit program a transfer program introduced later in response to public protests was unnecessary additionally analysis of polling data shows that the new program failed to increase support for the carbon tax in rural communities despite making these households better off on average than households in large urban centers we therefore conclude that this ongoing opposition is based on a rural myth policymakers should carefully investigate distributive impacts of carbon policies and address evidential inequities yet before overcompensating groups that still feel disadvantaged policymakers should address the myth of unfairness at its source

switching to perennial energy crops under uncertainty and costly reversibility we study a farmer s decision to convert traditional cropland into land for growing dedicated energy crops taking into account sunk conversion costs and uncertainties in crop returns the optimal decision rules differ significantly from the expected net present value rule which ignores uncertainties and from real options models that allow only one way conversion into energy crops these models also predict drastically different patterns of land conversions into and out of energy crops over time using corn soybean rotation and switchgrass as examples we show that the model predictions are sensitive to assumptions about stochastic processes of the returns government policies might have unintended consequences subsidizing conversion costs into switchgrass may not much affect proportions of land in switchgrass in the long run

competitive storage and commodity price dynamics by buying cheap and selling dear risk neutral commodity speculators can smooth commodity prices and induce serial dependence in price even when none would exist under a simple process of supply and demand commodity prices are variable and strongly positively correlated from one year to the next the variability is often explained by supply factors and the autocorrelation by the activities of speculators we show that this explanation is not consistent with the evidence speculation can substantially increase autocorrelation for prices that are weakly autocorrelated in its absence but not to the high levels that are observed in the data

can carbon taxes be progressive abstract most studies have assessed the distributional impact of carbon taxes through their effects on commodity prices alone while ignoring their impact on individual welfare brought about by changes in factor prices yet the remunerations of capital and labor are not affected by these taxes similarly and their shares in earned incomes are not uniform across households this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the incidence of carbon taxes on inequality by considering simultaneously the commodity and the income channels we propose a decomposition of the change in individual welfare metrics then we develop a general equilibrium model to assess the impact of carbon taxes on factor and commodity prices and subsequently their distributional impact on households using the lorenz and concentration curves and the gini index our results suggest that changes in factor prices and changes in commodity prices especially those of energy commodities have opposing effects on inequality carbon taxes tend to reduce inequality through the changes in factor prices and tend to increase inequality through the changes in commodity prices hence we find a non monotonic u shaped relationship between carbon taxes and inequality our results suggest that the traditional approach of assessing the impact of carbon taxes on inequality through changes in commodity prices alone may be misleading the findings cast light on the desirability of using both channels in the assessment of carbon taxes on inequality