endogenous growth convexity of damage and climate risk how nordhaus framework supports deep cuts in carbon emissions to slow or not to slow nordhaus 1991 was the first economic appraisal of greenhouse gas emissions abatement and founded a large literature on a topic of worldwide importance we offer our assessment of the original article and trace its legacy in particular nordhaus s later series of dice models from this work many have drawn the conclusion that an efficient global emissions abatement policy comprises modest and modestly increasing controls we use dice itself to provide an initial illustration that if the analysis is extended to take more strongly into account three essential elements of the climate problem the endogeneity of growth the convexity of damage and climate risk optimal policy comprises strong controls

the response of co2 emissions to the business cycle new evidence for the u s abstract this paper investigates the response of co 2 emissions to the business cycle for the u s on a monthly basis between 1973 and 2015 using a rolling regression approach we find that the emissions elasticity with respect to gdp is not constant over time irrespective which filtering method such as the hodrick prescott the baxter king the christiano fitzgerald or the butterworth filter has been employed in order to check whether or not emissions react differently during normal and recession times next we employ a markov switching approach we find first that emissions are significantly more elastic during recessions than in normal times second depending on the filtering method we also obtain parameter estimates of the emissions elasticity above one in recession times and below one in normal times the results are also robust against including monetary policy also in times of the zero lower bound thus environmental policy instruments not turning out to be sub optimal should account for this asymmetric response of emissions due to changes in gdp

decoupling of emissions and gdp evidence from aggregate and provincial chinese data abstract we provide a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between greenhouse gas ghg emissions and gdp in china using both aggregate and provincial data the trend or kuznets elasticity is about 0 6 for china higher than that in advanced countries but below that of major emerging markets the elasticity is somewhat lower for consumption based emissions than for production based emissions providing mild evidence consistent with the pollution haven hypothesis the kuznets elasticity is much lower for the last three decades than for the three previous decades suggesting a longer term trend toward decoupling as china has become richer further evidence of this comes from provincial data richer provinces tend to have smaller kuznets elasticities than poorer ones in addition to the trend relationship we find that there is a cyclical relation also holding in china

future orientation promotes climate concern and mitigation abstract climate change entails uncertainties in the timing and scale of future impacts imposing challenges to decision making with intertemporal trade offs when making intertemporal trade offs future impacts are often considered distant and discounted in present decision making and policy design the future however is not only temporally distant but also perceived in culturally and psychologically different ways based on national statistics and individual level survey data statistical analyses show that both national and individual differences in future orientation affect climate perception and mitigation at the national level countries with languages that grammatically highlight the future are associated with higher climate concern lower carbon emissions and energy use and more progress in climate mitigation individual level evidence suggests that future orientation helps the public understand complicated climate issues make more personal mitigation but not necessarily collective action or policy support the findings indicate the important role that subjective future orientation plays in climate perception and decision making both behavioral intervention and climate communication can be designed based on future orientation to better address climate change

cyclical fluctuation patterns and decoupling towards common eu 28 environmental performance abstract the eu 28 is one of the largest emitters of co2 in the world and the most committed to reducing emissions however the national environmental strategies of the member states are still diverse this study is aimed at evaluating the environmental performance of european economies by analysing the fluctuations of co2 emissions and their links with economic activity over the period 1950 2012 the methodological framework is based on a dynamic factor analysis to determine an index of the eu fluctuation of co2 emissions in parametric form this index can be used to monitor the progress towards common behaviour across member states with a time varying recursive method following this approach we also track the efforts made to decouple co2 emissions from gdp based on these analyses we develop a co2 emissions gdp linkage matrix to attain useful information on the eu member state environmental performance

asymmetric effects of the business cycle on carbon dioxide emissions abstract long term carbon dioxide emissions forecasts rely on the assumption that the economic growth rate is constant over long time horizons and exclude the business cycle thereby ignoring a fundamental component of the macroeconomy this paper considers how the business cycle affects emissions forecasts and shows the implicit assumption in current forecasts that the elasticity of emissions is constant with respect to gdp is wrong in the united states emissions fall more sharply when gdp declines than they rise when gdp increases this is partly due to a decrease in industrial energy intensity as gdp declines a simulation shows that accounting for the business cycle results in 5 lower cumulative emissions through 2050 relative to the baseline forecast

climate change policy what do the models tell us very little a plethora of integrated assessment models iams have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon scc and evaluate alternative abatement policies these models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis certain inputs e g the discount rate are arbitrary but have huge effects on the scc estimates the models produce the models descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc with no theoretical or empirical foundation and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the scc the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome iam based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision but that perception is illusory and misleading jel c51 q54 q58

fiscal interactions and the case for carbon taxes over grandfathered carbon permits this paper provides simple formulas for adjusting the costs of carbon taxes and tradable carbon permits to account for interactions with pre existing tax distortions in the labour market both policies reduce labour supply as they increase product prices and reduce real household wages the resulting efficiency losses in the labour market can be substantial relative to partial equilibrium abatement costs however much of this added cost can be offset and perhaps more than offset when additional distortions from the tax system are considered if revenues from carbon taxes or auctioned permits are used to reduce distortionary taxes consequently there can be a strong case on efficiency grounds for using carbon taxes or auctioned permits over grandfathered carbon permits copyright 2003 oxford university press

utilizing the broader agency perspective for studying headquarters subsidiary relations in multinational companies the nature of global business today increases the complexity of multinational companies and highlights the challenges of managing headquarters subsidiary hq sub relationships we identify key unresolved issues in hq sub relations including closing the gap between headquarters expectations and subsidiary performance managing the nested hierarchical relationships across multiple organizational layers and aligning these relationships across diverse subunits embedded in different social contexts we propose that agency theory particularly its more recent progressions can advance our understanding of these issues and we offer a perspective to guide such research we discuss several research implications of the static bilateral static multilateral dynamic and social and contextual streams of agency theory

synergizing china s energy and carbon mitigation goals general equilibrium modeling and policy assessment abstract in this work we enrich the technical details of the energy sector by extending the conventional framework of computable general equilibrium cge modeling and we take into account uncertainty regarding fossil fueled technologies and endogenous nonfossil energy technological change which provides us with formidable benefits to explore the policy synergy of china s multiple energy development and carbon control targets we find that carbon pricing policy plays a consistently negative role in economic growth while the economic impacts of nonfossil investment incentives differ in their policy stringency compared to energy intensity reduction goals that could be easily attained given the baseline effort achieving carbon peaking targets may be relatively difficult without additional policy intervention and the policy efforts required to reach energy consumption control targets in 2030 and nonfossil energy development targets in 2050 are even stricter this research also identifies significant policy effect differences in carbon pricing and nonfossil investment incentives

economic development and co2 emissions a nonparametric panel approach we examine the empirical relation between co2 emissions per capita and gdp per capita during the period 1960 1996 using a panel of 100 countries relying on the nonparametric poolability test of baltagi et al baltagi b h hidalgo j li q 1996 a nonparametric test for poolability using panel data journal of econometrics 75 345 367 we find evidence of structural stability of the relationship we then specify a nonparametric panel data model with country specific effects estimation results show that this relationship is upward sloping nonparametric specification tests do not reject monotonicity but do reject the polynomial functional form which leads to the environmental kuznets curve in several studies

up scaling formative phases and learning in the historical diffusion of energy technologies the 20th century has witnessed wholesale transformation in the energy system marked by the pervasive diffusion of both energy supply and end use technologies just as whole industries have grown so too have unit sizes or capacities analysed in combination these unit level and industry level growth patterns reveal some consistencies across very different energy technologies first the up scaling or increase in unit size of an energy technology comes after an often prolonged period of experimentation with many smaller scale units second the peak growth phase of an industry can lag these increases in unit size by up to 20 years third the rate and timing of up scaling at the unit level is subject to countervailing influences of scale economies and heterogeneous market demand these observed patterns have important implications for experience curve analyses based on time series data covering the up scaling phases of energy technologies as these are likely to conflate industry level learning effects with unit level scale effects the historical diffusion of energy technologies also suggests that low carbon technology policies pushing for significant jumps in unit size before a formative phase of experimentation with smaller scale units are risky

managing the mne subsidiary advancing a multi level and dynamic research agenda abstract multinational enterprise mne subsidiaries abroad are important organizations in their own rights they typically hold some of the mne s most critical resources and operate at the forefront of complex international environments in this review we identify and organize theoretical and empirical research on subsidiary management based on over 600 articles in leading academic journals we develop a conceptual framework that integrates complementary streams of theoretical and empirical research with the subsidiary as its focal unit of analysis in particular we review six lines of research on subsidiary scope practices knowledge management engagement with local market and nonmarket actors performance and individuals within subsidiaries we highlight theoretical perspectives that have contributed to and been advanced by research on mne subsidiaries based on the review we explore future research agendas linking the contemporary research themes with two main thrusts first subsidiary management is a multi level phenomenon that would benefit from more microfoundational research second subsidiary management operates at key interfaces of technology paradigm shifts and of disruptions in the political and institutional environment research into the dynamics of subsidiary management would thus enhance our understanding of international business in a volatile global economy

comparison of integrated assessment models carbon price impacts on u s energy abstract integrated assessment models iams are increasingly used to evaluate carbon policy impacts on energy structure but different models can yield considerably different results this paper seeks to frame model results for policymakers and other consumers of model outputs in this analysis we compare three models gcam merge and eppa we apply diagnostic carbon price scenarios such as ramps and shocks to identify key differences in model behavior that drive inter model variability in projected policy impacts on the u s energy system we report model results using several economic parameterizations and find that variation in carbon emissions across models results primarily from differences in carbon intensity of energy supply these differences arise because models include different low carbon energy technology options and vary widely in how flexible the electricity supply sector is at adapting to a change in policy the timing of emissions abatement is also strongly influenced by whether the model is a simulation or an inter temporal optimization scheme and the amount of foresight exhibited in the model our analysis demonstrates the usefulness of novel iam diagnostic indicators and clarifies model features that are highly relevant for consumers of model results

end use technology choice in the national energy modeling system nems an analysis of the residential and commercial building sectors abstract the national energy modeling system nems is arguably the most influential energy model in the united states the u s energy information administration uses nems to generate the federal government s annual long term forecast of national energy consumption and to evaluate prospective federal energy policies nems is considered such a standard tool that other models are calibrated to its forecasts in both government and academic practice as a result nems has a significant influence over expert opinions of plausible energy futures nems is a massively detailed model whose inner workings despite its prominence receive relatively scant critical attention this paper analyzes how nems projects energy demand in the residential and commercial sectors in particular we focus on the role of consumers preferences and financial constraints investigating how consumers choose appliances and other end use technologies we identify conceptual issues in the approach the model takes to the same question across both sectors running the model with a range of consumer preferences we estimate the extent to which this issue impacts projected consumption relative to the baseline model forecast for final energy demand in the year 2035 in the residential sector the impact ranges from a decrease of 0 73 quads 6 0 to an increase of 0 24 quads 2 0 in the commercial sector the impact ranges from a decrease of 1 0 quads 9 0 to an increase of 0 99 quads 9 0

rethinking the costs related to global warming a survey of the issues one approach to the economic analysis of global warming seeks to balance the costs of damage from or adaptation to it with the costs of mitigating it the costs of adaptation and damage have been estimated using techniques of environmental evaluation but are subject to a wide margin of uncertainty the costs of mitigation principally by reducing the emissions of co2 have been estimated using different kinds of economic models some of the results of which have suggested that very little abatement of carbon emissions is justified before the costs of abatement exceed the benefits of it in terms of foregone damage and adaptation costs the paper analyses the extent to which this conclusion is a function of the modelling assumptions and techniques used rather than likely practical outcomes with regard to the models treatment of unemployed resources revenue recycling prior distortions in the economy due to the tax system and possible dynamic effects from the introduction of a carbon energy tax it concludes that with different and arguably more appropriate treatment of the above issues especially when the secondary benefits of reducing co2 emissions are also taken into account it is not clear that even substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels will incur net costs especially if there is the prospect of even moderate costs from global warming

competitor analysis and foothold moves a foothold is a small position that a firm intentionally establishes within a market in which it does not yet compete we extend theory on competitive dynamics to examine relationships between comp

international co2 emissions control an analysis using ceta abstract this paper explores issues of international cooperation in co2 emission control we consider three cases selfish in which region 1 controls optimally given its own damage costs and region 2 does not control altruistic in which region 1 controls optimally given total worldwide damage costs while region 2 does not control and optimal in which regions 1 and 2 exercise jointly optimal control of emissions and region 1 pays region 2 to participate we find that neither region gains much in the selfish case but both regions are better off in the optimal case than in the altruistic case though region 1 s benefits are negative in both these cases

competitive parity status disparity and mutual forbearance securities analysts competition for investor attention most studies of responses to change in competitive environments focus on competitor specific adaptations however rivals are often acutely aware of one another and this awareness should influence their competitive behavior in this study we focus on three market structures that affect competitive behavior competitive parity status disparity and multipoint contact in particular we examine how securities analysts responded to a regulatory discontinuity regulation fair disclosure reg fd which promotes competitive parity by eliminating privileged access to proprietary firm information as a critical source of competitive advantage we predict and find that reg fd activated mutual forbearance among analysts linked through multipoint contact we also predict and find that high status analysts forbear more strongly analysts responses to heterogeneity in competitive advantage thus depend importantly on their competitive overlap and status which has implications for both their behavior and the information they provide to investors

the structure of economic modeling of the potential impacts of climate change grafting gross underestimation of risk onto already narrow science models scientists describe the scale of the risks from unmanaged climate change as potentially immense however the scientific models because they omit key factors that are hard to capture precisely appear to substantially underestimate these risks many economic models add further gross underassessment of risk because the assumptions built into the economic modeling on growth damages and risks come close to assuming directly that the impacts and costs will be modest and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes a new generation of models is needed in all three of climate science impact and economics with a still stronger focus on lives and livelihoods including the risks of large scale migration and conflicts

competing globally allying locally alliances between global rivals and host country factors an emerging literature highlights the relationship between competitive intensity and the likelihood that two rival firms will form an alliance placing this argument in an international context we first suggest that the global competitive intensity between two rival multinationals positively affects the likelihood that they will ally in any host country additionally we highlight how a number of host country contextual factors moderate the relationship between global competitive intensity and alliance formation in a given host country we test our hypotheses with a sample of 13 global automobile companies operating in 27 countries and the results largely support our predictions

an optimal greenhouse tax in an optimal growth model in the past several years economists have developed a body of research concerning optimal economic policy in response to the possibility of global warming due to greenhouse gas ghg emissions contributors include nordhaus 9 10 11 12 poterba 14 manne and richels 8 cline 1 jorgenson slesnick and wilcoxen 6 goulder 3 4 gaskins and weyant 2 in this paper we attempt to assist policy makers who face the practical problem of estimating the magnitude of the socially optimal initial greenhouse gas tax and the corresponding magnitude of emission control to do this we adapt the optimal growth framework developed by nordhaus 12 in his dice model to investigate the initial optimal tax and emissions control as well as their evolution over a long planning horizon we perform sensitivity analysis not included in his monograph

can leviathan governments mitigate the tragedy of the commons this paper explores the conjecture whether the leviathan motive of politicians to tax for the purpose of raising revenues rather than for benevolent pigovian motives helps to overcome the inefficiency of international pollution spillovers such as in the cases of acid rain and global warming it turns out that this conjecture is true in a static context that captures flow externalities e g acid rain as long as environmental damages are not too high in contrast leviathan motives aggravate the already existing inefficiency in the case of stock externalities e g global warming despite probably high taxes at the beginning

the welfare effects of environmental taxation recent literature has investigated whether the welfare gains from environmental taxation are larger or smaller in a second best setting than in a first best setting this question has mainly been addressed indirectly by asking whether the second best optimal environmental tax is higher or lower than the first best pigouvian rate even this indirect question has itself been approached indirectly comparing the second best optimal environmental tax to a proxy for its first best value marginal social damage msd on closer examination however msd becomes ambiguously defined and variable in a second best setting making it an unreliable proxy for the pigouvian rate given these observations the current analysis reevaluates these welfare questions and finds that when compared directly to its first best value the second best optimal environmental tax generally rises with increased revenue requirements even in cases where the second best environmental tax is lower than its first best value the welfare gains may be greater than in a first best setting these results suggest that the marginal fiscal benefit revenue recycling effect exceeds the marginal fiscal cost tax base effect over a range of environmental tax rates that for benchmark models extends above the first best pigouvian rate these findings reinforce the intuition that environmental policy complements rather than competes with the provision of other public goods

environmental policy and the economic downturn this paper considers how environmental policies should respond to macroeconomic downturns it first explores the implications of the global economic downturn of 2008 09 for environmental policies focusing in particular on the example of action against climate change the arguments for and against activist fiscal policies in general are then reviewed and the case made that a demand induced downturn provides a very good opportunity to undertake a necessary step change in the public spending component of environmental policies and to start working through a backlog of public investment to improve the environment fiscal policy should be used to improve the allocation of resources across time and space recent fiscal stimuli are considered in the light of this discussion it is also argued that there is little cause to delay the introduction of price signals to internalise environmental externalities but the levels at which such signals should be set requires careful analysis changes over the business cycle may be warranted depending on the nature of the environmental externality and the cause s of the business cycle in question

leviathan governments and carbon taxes costs and potential benefits abstract this paper addresses positive aspects of the global warming debate that so far has been concerned by and large with normative issues the paper considers a consumers government that appreciates tax revenues as such leviathan in addition to conventional measures of welfare i e carbon taxes serve the dual purpose of correcting for externalities here global warming or more generally a stock externality from energy use and of raising revenues this government faces either a competitive or a perfectly cartelized supply the major findings are 1 i consumers may benefit from a leviathan government that appropriates some of the monopoly rent by deterring preemption to some extent 2 ii the leviathan motive raises initial taxes and thereby lowers initial emissions but increases the long run stock externality in a play with linear strategies 3 iii there exists a continuum of equilibria in nonlinear markov strategies which are however pareto inefficient compared with the linear strategies 4 iv but in case of a binding resource constraint nonlinear strategies are the only feasible ones

a multivariate cointegration analysis of the role of energy in the us macroeconomy abstract this paper extends my previous analysis of the causal relationship of gdp and energy use in the usa in the post war period a majority of the relevant variables are integrated justifying a cointegration analysis the results show that cointegration does occur and that energy input cannot be excluded from the cointegration space the results are plausible in terms of macroeconomic dynamics the results are similar to my previous granger causality results and contradict claims in the literature based on bivariate models that there is no cointegration between energy and output

energy consumption and economic growth the case of oil exporting countries this paper examines the causal relationship between the per capita energy consumption and the per capita gdp in a panel of 11 selected oil exporting countries by using panel unit root tests and panel cointegration analysis the results show a unidirectional strong causality from economic growth to energy consumption for the oil exporting countries the findings have practical policy implications for decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning in most major oil exporting countries government policies keep domestic prices bellow free market level resulting in high levels of domestic energy consumption the results imply that the energy conservation through reforming energy price policies has no damaging repercussions on economic growth for this group of countries

economic and environmental impacts of the kyoto protocol in 2003 the kyoto protocol which imposes legally binding greenhouse gas emission constraints on industrialized countries is likely to enter into force the protocol has been celebrated as a milestone in climate protection but standard economic theory casts doubt that it will go beyond symbolic policy in this paper we show that the final concretion of the kyoto protocol is consistent with the theoretical prediction kyoto more or less boils down to business as usual without significant compliance costs to ratifying parties jel classification d58 q43 q58 consequences economiques et environnementales du protocole de kyoto en 2003 le protocole de kyoto qui impose aux pays industrialises l obligation de reduire leurs emissions de gaz a effet de serre entrera probablement en vigueur si le protocole a ete accueilli comme un grand pas en avant dans le combat pour proteger l environnement la theorie economique jette un regard sceptique sur la portee reelle d un tel accord et le considere comme un geste symbolique dans ce memoire on montre que la concretisation finale de l accord de kyoto s arrime aux predictions theoriques kyoto n est rien de plus que business as usual et n impliquera pas de couts significatifs pour les parties qui ont signe le protocole

model uncertainty in climate change economics a review and proposed framework for future research we review recent models of choices under uncertainty that have been proposed in the economic literature in particular we show how different concepts and methods of economic decision theory can be directly useful for problems in environmental economics the framework we propose is general and can be applied in many different fields of environmental economics to illustrate we provide a simple application in the context of an optimal mitigation policy under climate change

carbon taxes and carbon emissions trading this paper surveys the literature on and examples of current implementation of carbon taxes and carbon emission permits it sets out the theoretical basis for these instruments with special reference to the revenue recycling and tax interaction effects this theoretical work concludes that instruments which raise revenue which can be recycled so as to reduce pre existing distortionary taxes are significantly less costly than those which do not the paper then reviews the sizable literature on the distributional effects of these instruments especially with regard to industrial competitiveness and regressive effects on low income groups evaluating attempts to mitigate these where they are perceived as unacceptable the paper concludes that such efforts at mitigation while possible can substantially reduce the efficiency benefits of the instruments the projected costs of carbon taxes depend on a wide range of assumptions this is still a contested area but the paper concludes that on a range of plausible assumptions these costs need not be high finally the paper notes that early evaluations of the environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes have been generally positive this suggests that if concern about anthropogenic climate change continues to increase more countries will introduce carbon taxes and emission permits with the latter increasingly auctioned

optimal taxes on fossil fuel in general equilibrium we analyze a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model with an externality through climate change from using fossil energy our central result is a simple formula for the marginal externality damage of emissions or equivalently for the optimal carbon tax this formula which holds under quite plausible assumptions reveals that the damage is proportional to current gdp with the proportion depending only on three factors i discounting ii the expected damage elasticity how many percent of the output flow is lost from an extra unit of carbon in the atmosphere and iii the structure of carbon depreciation in the atmosphere thus the stochastic values of future output consumption and the atmospheric co2 concentration as well as the paths of technology whether endogenous or exogenous and population and so on all disappear from the formula we find that the optimal tax should be a bit higher than the median or most well known estimates in the literature we also formulate a parsimonious yet comprehensive and easily solved model allowing us to compute the optimal and market paths for the use of different sources of energy and the corresponding climate change we find coal rather than oil to be the main threat to economic welfare largely due to its abundance we also find that the costs of inaction are particularly sensitive to the assumptions regarding the substitutability of different energy sources and technological progress

emissions and economic development in commodity exporting countries abstract this paper uses data for 46 commodity exporting countries between 1990 and 2014 to show that in order to get a clear picture of decoupling between emissions and economic development it is important to distinguish cycles from trends by means of time series and panel data techniques our results suggest that there is a cyclical relationship between emissions and output what we call the environmental okun s law that policymakers may fail to see strong is some countries absent in others moreover while the sample average trend or kuznets elasticity is 0 6 some countries have negative elasticities suggesting that they had managed to transition to a low carbon path finally globalization has played a relevant role and that accounting for cross border trade that is for net emission transfers from international trade matters

efficiency sustainability and global warming abstract economic analyses of global warming have typically been grounded in the theory of economic efficiency such analyses may be inappropriate because many of the underlying concerns about climate change are rooted not in efficiency but in the intergenerational allocation of economic endowments a simple economic model is developed which demonstrates that an efficient economy is not necessarily a sustainable economy this result leads directly to questions about the policy relevance of several economic studies of the issue we then consider policy alternatives to address global warming in the context of economies with the dual objectives of efficiency and sustainability with particular attention to carbon based taxes

effects of carbon tariffs trading policy on duopoly market entry decisions and price competition insights from textile firms of developing countries abstract some developed countries are considering to implement a controversial climate policy called the carbon tariffs policy on the developing country firms which produce in their own countries and transport goods such as textiles to the developed country markets this policy has significant impacts on international trade and business to examine this policy we consider the scenario in which a developing country firm and a developed country firm both manufacture the same type of textile products which are differentiated but partially substituted thus the cost differences between these two firms establish a price competition model this model is solved through a two stage game where each firm chooses its emissions reduction technology in the first stage and decides its price in the second stage we explore the effects of carbon tariffs on developing country firms and offer coping strategies for them furthermore the effects of carbon tariffs on total carbon emissions and global social welfare are also analyzed we conclude that i carbon tariffs greatly threaten the survival of developing country firms in the developed country market ii both total carbon emissions and global social welfare are reduced in the presence of carbon tariffs iii the textile firms of developing countries should make efforts to 1 choose the appropriate technology for emissions reduction 2 reduce their cost of emissions reduction and 3 reduce the product differences with those developed country firms

when can carbon abatement policies increase welfare the fundamental role of distorted factor markets abstract this paper employs analytical and numerical models to assess the welfare effects of a revenue neutral carbon tax and nonauctioned carbon emissions permits taking into account preexisting tax distortions in factor markets the presence of preexisting taxes significantly raises the general equilibrium costs of both policies this cost increase is much greater under emissions permits since this policy does not generate revenues to reduce distortionary taxes under our central estimates emissions permits cannot increase welfare unless environmental damages exceed about 18 per ton of carbon in contrast an appropriately scaled carbon tax is welfare improving so long as environmental damages are positive

buying greenhouse insurance the economic costs of carbon dioxide emission limits in recent years a growing concern that the increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases will lead to undesirable changes in global climate has resulted in a number of proposals both in the united states and internationally to set physical targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but what will these proposals cost based on the authors earlier ground breaking work buying greenhouse insurance outlines a way to think about greenhouse effect decisions under uncertainty it describes an insightful model for determining the economic costs of limiting carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning fossil fuels and provides a solid analytical base for rethinking public policy on the farreaching issue of global warming manne and richels present region by region estimates of the costs that would underlie an international agreement using a computer model known as global 2100 they analyze the economic impacts of limiting c02 emissions under alternative supply and conservation scenarios the results clearly indicate that a reduction in emissions is not the sole policy response to potential climate change following a summary of the greenhouse effect its likely causes and possible consequences manne and richels take up issues that concern the public at large they provide an overview of global 2100 look at how the u s energy sector is likely to evolve under businessas usual conditions and under carbon constraints and describe the concept of greenhouse insurance they consider possible global agreements including an estimate of benefits that might result from trading in an international market in emission rights they conclude with a technical description directed toward modeling specialists alan manne is professor of operations research at stanford university richard richels is director of the energy analysis and planning department at the electric power research institute

the energy gdp nexus addressing an old question with new methods abstract this paper reassesses the causal relationship between per capita energy use and gross domestic product while controlling for capital and labour productivity inputs in a panel of 30 oecd countries over the past 40 years the paper uses panel unit root and cointegration testing and specifies an appropriate vector error correction model to analyse the nexus between income and energy use in doing so we contribute to an old debate using modern tools that shed a new light there is some evidence that over the very short run bidirectional causality exists our results also show a strong unidirectional causality running from capital formation and gdp to energy usage in the long run the reverse causality found in recent work is lost we then show that we can reproduce these earlier results in our data if we reproduce a slightly misspecified model for the engle granger two step procedure used in these earlier papers our findings thus imply that results are very sensitive to model misspecification and careful testing of specifications is required our results have some strong policy implications they suggest that policies aimed at reducing energy usage or promoting energy efficiency are not likely to have a detrimental effect on economic growth except over the very short run

poverty and distributional effects of carbon pricing in low and middle income countries a global comparative analysis abstract even though concerns about adverse distributional implications for the poor are one of the most important political challenges for carbon pricing the existing literature reveals ambiguous results for this reason we assess the expected incidence of moderate carbon price increases for different income groups in 87 mostly low and middle income countries building on a consistent dataset and method we find that for countries with per capita incomes of below usd 15 000 per year at ppp adjusted 2011 usd carbon pricing has on average progressive distributional effects we also develop a novel decomposition technique to show that distributional outcomes are primarily determined by differences among income groups in consumption patterns of energy rather than of food goods or services we argue that an inverse u shape relationship between energy expenditure shares and income explains why carbon pricing tends to be regressive in countries with relatively higher income since these countries are likely to have more financial resources and institutional capacities to deal with distributional issues our findings suggest that mitigating climate change raising domestic revenue and reducing economic inequality are not mutually exclusive even in low and middle income countries

co2 mitigation potential of ccs in china an evaluation based on an integrated assessment model abstract carbon capture and storage ccs has been viewed as an emission abatement option with great potential in china as coal has dominated china s energy consumption china has already started to pay attention to ccs as well as to the proposed the concept of ccus which adds co 2 utilization into the chain of capture transportation and storage however ccs is still in the early stages of its technological development and the high cost with several internal and external uncertainties make the role that ccs can play in china s future emission reduction unclear from the perspective of general equilibrium analysis this paper introduces ccs into a regional energy economy environment integrated assessment model and makes a comprehensive evaluation of ccs s potential for future development and contribution to emission abatement in china at climate policy level the potential contribution of ccs in emission abatement has been evaluated against different future emission constraint scenarios in china at technological level the effects of endogenous learning and policy incentives on ccs have been investigated and the substitution capacities of ccs and non hydro renewables to fossil energy have been discussed as well as their technology penetration rates furthermore the impact of co 2 utilization on the development of ccs has also been discussed

emissions targets and the real business cycle intensity targets versus caps or taxes for reducing greenhouse gas emissions intensity targets are attracting interest as a flexible mechanism that would better allow for economic growth than emissions caps for the same expected emissions however the economic responses to unexpected productivity shocks differ using a real business cycle model we find that a cap dampens the effects of productivity shocks in the economy on all variables except for the shadow value of the emissions constraint an emissions tax leads to the same expected outcomes as a cap but with greater volatility certainty equivalent intensity targets maintain higher levels of labor capital and output than other policies with lower expected costs and no more volatility than with no policy

effects of heterogeneous technological progress on haze pollution evidence from china abstract technological progress plays an important role in combating haze pollution in the long run however existing studies often ignore the inconsistent effects on the reduction of haze brought by different types of technological progress considering the potential heterogeneity among technological progress this paper constructs a theoretical framework to analyse the impact of heterogeneous technological progress on haze pollution using annual data from 30 provinces and cities in china for the period of 2003 to 2016 a systematic gmm method is applied to empirically test the effects of neutral technological progress and biased technological progress on haze pollution the results show that first due to cost reduction effect and income effect neutral technological progress and labour saving technological progress are conducive to haze reduction while the impact of capital saving technological progress on haze pollution is insignificant second because of the energy rebound effect energy saving technological progress cannot effectively reduce haze pollution third the haze reduction effects of different types of technological progress show significant regional heterogeneity in china last in terms of the control variables strengthening environmental regulation is the only factor that can be helpful in haze reduction others intensify haze pollution

welfare as equity equivalents equity or its counterpart inequity plays a fundamental role in the evaluation of social welfare in different dimensions in this paper we revisit the concept of inequity in the sense of unequal distributions across individuals time and states of the world using a unified framework that generalizes the standard expected discounted utilitarianism approach we propose a general measure of welfare as equity equivalents and a corresponding inequity index we show that allowing for different attitudes toward inequity across different dimensions covers a scope of possible inequity preferences with different interpretations we then prove that the order of aggregation across the different dimensions matters for welfare evaluations finally we show that many of the welfare theoretical approaches recently developed in the literature can be interpreted as special cases of this general framework

growth and competition in renewable energy industries insights from an integrated assessment model with strategic firms abstract this article describes the development implementation and application of an integrated assessment modeling framework featuring renewable technology markets with producers engaged in cournot competition scenario results reveal how climate policy and inter firm learning spillovers interact with market structure to affect wind and solar pv prices adoption producer profits and carbon emissions competitive markets yield consistently lower markups than concentrated markets leading to significantly more adoption and lower emissions widespread solar pv adoption is a key component of the largest emissions reductions but this requires substantial price reductions that only occur if the solar pv market is competitive and learning spills over across producers whether a leading firm has a profit incentive to facilitate or obstruct learning spillovers depends on the availability of cost competitive substitute technologies if such a substitute exists the firm prefers strong spillovers that help its industry compete against the substitute if not the firm prefers weak spillovers that prevent competitors in its industry from seizing market share the relationship between price and cumulative capacity is endogenous in the modeling framework regression analysis of scenario results yields price learning rates which are similar to unit production cost learning rates in competitive markets but substantially lower even negative in concentrated markets

dynamics of energy technologies and global change technological choices largely determine the long term characteristics of industrial society including impacts on the natural environment however the treatment of technology in existing models that are used to project economic and environmental futures remains highly stylized based on work over two decades at iiasa we present a useful typology for technology analysis and discuss methods that can be used to analyze the impact of technological changes on the global environment especially global warming our focus is energy technologies the main source of many atmospheric environmental problems we show that much improved treatment of technology is possible with a combination of historical analysis and new modeling techniques in the historical record we identify characteristic l such network e ects yield high barriers to entry even for superior competitors these simple observations allow three improvements to modeling of technological change and its consequences for global environmental change one is that the replacement of long lived infrastructures over time has also replaced the fuels that power the economy to yield progressively more energy per unit of carbon pollution from coal to oil to gas such replacement has d they also include endogenous generation of s we show that doing so can yield projections with lessened environmental impacts without necessarily incurring negative e ect on the economy arriving on that path by the year 2100 depends on intervening actions such as incentives to promote greater diversity in technology and lower barriers to entry for new infrastructures that could accelerate historical trends of decarbonization 1999 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

co2 response to business cycles new evidence of the largest co2 emitting countries in asia and the middle east abstract this paper examines co2 response to business cycles of six large co2 emitting countries in asia and the middle east namely china india japan iran saudi arabia and south korea by using a markov switching autoregressive models emissions are cyclically more volatile than gdp in a typical country except for iran it is observed that emissions are procyclical in all studied countries except for india but the elasticity of the emission with respect to gdp significantly depends on regimes in japan and south korea elasticity of co2 emissions with respect to gdp during expansions is significantly larger than during recessions in iran and saudi arabia elasticity of co2 emissions with respect to gdp is significantly smaller than 1 but the co2 emissions response to gdp during recessions is significantly larger than during expansions in china elasticity of co2 emissions to gdp is significantly larger than 1 during recessions and normal and co2 emissions response to gdp during recessions is significantly larger than during expansions these results have implications for environmental policy makers the optimal response of pollution abatement costs in japan and south korea should be high low during expansions recessions and in china iran and saudi arabia should be low high during expansions recessions after releasing a positive productivity shock

the structure of the climate debate first best climate policy is a uniform carbon tax which gradually rises over time civil servants have complicated climate policy to expand bureaucracies politicians to create rents environmentalists have exaggerated climate change to gain influence other activists have joined the climate bandwagon opponents to climate policy have attacked the weaknesses in climate research the climate debate is convoluted and polarized as a result and climate policy complex climate policy should become easier and more rational as the paris agreement has shifted climate policy back towards national governments changing political priorities austerity and a maturing bureaucracy should lead to a more constructive climate debate

sustainable land use management under biodiversity lag effects the destruction of natural habitats for agricultural production results in local biodiversity loss biodiversity loss in turn affects agricultural production indirectly through a range of biodiversity dependent ecosystem services land conversion thus results in a negative externality mediated by changes in biodiversity when the consequences of this externality are delayed in time lack of internalization results in overshoot and collapse dynamics which are undesirable from a sustainability perspective here we emphasize the importance of forward looking policies for the long term sustainability of human nature interactions we show that the internalization of this externality through a land tax can result in several win win effects in the long run first more biodiversity is preserved at equilibrium which increases the carrying capacity and total well being of the human population second a taxation path that maximizes the discounted sum of human utilities prevents or greatly alleviates overshoot and collapse crises thus increasing the sustainability of the system in particular this result holds in the case of imperfect information regarding the precise temporal dynamics of biodiversity loss suggesting that the design of efficient land use management policies is possible despite incomplete ecological data this study highlights the need to internalize biodiversity dependent externalities through economic incentives especially under uncertainty regarding long term ecological dynamics

climate change policy s interactions with the tax system abstract this paper presents a range of insights from recent literature on how climate change policies and other environmental policies interact with the fiscal system it explores four issues associated with fiscal interactions first it examines how these interactions influence the prospects for a double dividend both an environmental improvement and a reduction in the costs of the tax system second it analyzes how the use of revenues from a carbon tax or from a cap and trade system involving auctioned emissions allowances influences these policies economic costs third it addresses the question whether carbon taxes or cap and trade programs represent more efficient sources of government revenue than other more traditional revenue sources such as income sales or payroll taxes finally it analyzes how fiscal interactions affect the choice between co 2 emissions pricing instruments carbon taxes and cap and trade and other climate policy instruments

optimal climate change mitigation under long term growth uncertainty stochastic integrated assessment and analytic findings abstract economic growth over the coming centuries is one of the major determinants of today s optimal greenhouse gas mitigation policy at the same time long run economic growth is highly uncertain this paper is the first to evaluate optimal mitigation policy under long term growth uncertainty in a stochastic integrated assessment model of climate change the sign and magnitude of the impact depend on preference characteristics and on how damages scale with production we explain the different mechanisms driving optimal mitigation under certain growth under uncertain technological progress in the discounted expected utility model and under uncertain technological progress in a more comprehensive asset pricing model based on epstein zin weil preferences in the latter framework the dominating uncertainty impact has the opposite sign of a deterministic growth impact the sign switch results from an endogenous pessimism weighting all of our numeric scenarios use a dice based assessment model and find a higher optimal carbon tax than the deterministic dice base case calibration

comparing specific and ad valorem pigouvian taxes and output quotas when the production or use of a good creates an external cost an unregulated market produces a socially inefficient quantity of output one remedy for this inefficiency is to impose a pigouvian tax equal to the marginal external damage associated with the good in many circumstances privately optimizing agents facing a pigouvian tax make decisions that are consistent with the maximization of social welfare

in praise of frank ramsey s contribution to the theory of taxation frank ramsey s brilliant 1927 paper modestly entitled a contribution to the theory of taxation is a landmark in the economics of public finance nearly a half century later through the work of diamond and mirrlees 1971 and mirrlees 1971 his paper can be thought of as launching the field of optimal taxation and revolutionising public finance ramsey f p 1927 a contribution to the theory of taxation economic journal vol 37 145 pp 47 61

co2 stabilization may be a no regrets policy restricting co2 emissions requires changing today s consumption pattern away from energy and emission intensive commodities towards cleaner goods the cost of stabilizing co2 emissions at the 1990 level by the year 2000 say as compared to a business as usual trend is estimated by several researchers to be on the order of 1 of gnp we will argue that the cost may be overestimated because of a too simple model describing the working of the economic system and the evaluation of welfare we demonstrate that by expanding a model to include the actual tax system and negative externalities the cost to present generations from restricting emissions by a co2 tax may be negative that is some reduction may actually correspond to a no regrets policy the reasons are inefficiencies in today s tax system and non optimal handling of negative externalities our analysis suggests that a co2 tax and reduced emissions will lessen such inefficiencies

the exploitation of fossil fuels under the threat of global warming and carbon taxes a dynamic game approach this paper considers efficient and monopolistic extraction of non renewable energy resources when the resource consumption leads simultaneously to a stock externality global warming the case of monopolistic supply leads to a dynamic game between cartelised producers and a consumers government for this game we compute linear markov perfect strategies that are characterized by preemption of the tax at the wellhead when compared with the open loop solution unfortunately the general asymmetric two state variable model does not allow for an explicit analytical solution therefore a simplified version with one state variable neglecting depreciation of the stock of the pollutant is studied and a numerical example is presented it turns out that the simplified and analytically solved framework provides a good approximation of the initial phase of the transient behaviour but not of the long run

rivalry deterrence in international markets contingencies governing the mutual forbearance hypothesis the mutual forbearance hypothesis states that when the same competitors meet in multiple markets rivalry is deterred our study highlights how pressures for local responsiveness impact the veracity of this hypothesis for multinational corporations mncs in host countries we develop theory to explain how subsidiary ownership home host cultural distance host country regulatory restrictions on mnc activities and the presence of local competitors affect the rivalry dampening impact of multi market contact we tested our hypotheses with a sample of 13 global automobile companies operating in 27 countries and report strong support for our hypotheses