transfers to sustain dynamic core theoretic cooperation in international stock pollutant control international environmental agreements aiming at correcting negative externalities generated by transboundary pollution are difficult to achieve for many reasons important obstacles arise from asymmetry in costs and benefits and instability may occur due to the fact that coalitions of countries may attempt to do better for themselves outside of any proposed agreement in a static context it has already been shown that it is possible to achieve stability in the sense of the core of a co operative game by means of appropriately defined transfers between the countries involved however the transboundary pollution problems that are most important are caused by accumulated pollutants so that a dynamic analysis is required this paper provides a transfer scheme that yields a core property in a dynamic context the possibility of computing such transfers numerically is discussed

catchment metabolism integrating natural capital in the asset management portfolio of the water sector abstract the policy of the water sector demands integrated and resilient asset management the majority of current research focuses on urban or community asset systems to provide a fully integrated approach one needs to delineate the focus of asset management at a catchment scale to include the natural capital the research described in this paper introduces such an approach with the environmental regional input output e rio analysis at its core the novelty of the work is the conceptualisation of a catchment as a complex asset system comprising of multiple subsystems this expands the application of industrial ecology and functional modelling techniques in integrated catchment management and water accounting the catchment metabolism modelling schema created in this paper serves asset water resources and catchment management purposes the schema forms the grounds for structured collaboration among experts for integrated water resources planning and decision making in this paper the process of creating the modelling schema along with the techniques used are presented a live industrial example from the uk water sector poole harbour catchment is used to demonstrate its application

measuring natural capital towards accounts for the uk and a basis for improved decision making the paper describes the ongoing project begun by the uk office for national statistics and the department for the environment food and rural affairs in 2011 to compile comprehensive natural capital accounts for the uk it describes the basis on which the accounts have been constructed discusses key issues which have arisen and presents the results to date it also sets out how restoration accounts for individual projects can not only facilitate conventional cost benefit analysis but also add to relevant material for decision makers more widely the paper describes how natural capital accounts can underpin well based decision making for example in implementation of the uk government s new 25 year plan for the environment in addition by providing information on one of the missing capitals such accounts can augment analysis of the behaviour of the economy generally

climate treaties and approaching catastrophes abstract if the threshold that triggers climate catastrophe is known with certainty and the benefits of avoiding catastrophe are high relative to the costs treaties can easily coordinate countries behavior so as to avoid the threshold where the net benefits of avoiding catastrophe are lower treaties typically fail to help countries cooperate to avoid catastrophe sustaining only modest cuts in emissions these results are unaffected by uncertainty about the impact of catastrophe by contrast uncertainty about the catastrophic threshold normally causes coordination to collapse whether the probability density function has thin or fat tails makes little difference

dynamics of pollution control when damage is sensitive to the rate of pollution accumulation economic models which take into account the long term effects of pollution in the environment specify pollution damage as a function of the accumulated stock several economists have proposed another formulation where damage is a function of the time derivative of the pollution stock this paper considers the intertemporal efficiency implications of this formulation the first specification is qualitative and the objective functional includes both the rate of change and the level of the pollution stock the second specification is a stylized climate change model with a linear damage function where damage depends only on the rate of increase in global temperature the analysis reveals that the efficiency properties of optimal pollution control are very sensitive to this change in the damage function intertemporal efficiency may require higher emissions compared with the level which is optimal from the myopic point of view an increase in the rate of discount typically reduces the optimal emission level

spatial valuation of forests environmental assets an application to andalusian silvopastoral farms we develop a model that estimates spatially allocated environmental asset values for the simultaneous provision of seven ecosystem services we examine the effect of heterogeneous spatial and economic factors on asset figures and identify potential forestry abandonment problems when continuing with forestry activity becomes unprofitable for the landowner our results show a relevant spatial variability according to forest species distribution and structure we examine potential trade offs among silvopastoral provisioning services water and carbon sequestration services results forecast the abandonment of forestry activity and quantify the significant impact of discount rates and prices on asset values

international pollution control cooperative versus noncooperative strategies abstract international pollution control involving two neighboring countries is modeled as a simple two player dynamic game each country produces a good that is consumed by domestic households production of each consumption good results in emissions of pollutants households in each country derive utility from the consumption of the domestically produced good but incur costs through the total stock of pollution stock externality in this setting we characterize cooperative as well as noncooperative pollution control strategies of the governments of the two countries that maximize the discounted stream of net benefits of a representative consumer it turns out that when the governments are restricted to use linear strategies noncooperative behavior results in overall losses for both countries if on the contrary governments use nonlinear markov perfect strategies and the discount rate is small enough a pareto efficient steady state pollution stock can be supported as a differentiable subgame perfect equilibrium thus the emergence of first best solutions cooperative outcomes does not require any institutional arrangements threats retaliation etc but can be brought about through the use of nonlinear markov perfect equilibrium strategies

simulated exchange values and ecosystem accounting theory and application to free access recreation abstract this paper discusses the simulated exchange value method a practical method to estimate values for goods and services currently outside of the market in a manner consistent with the market based figures considered in national accounts the method proposes to simulate in a partial equilibrium context the price that would occur if a good or service outside of the market such as free access recreation in forests were internalized the method takes into account the demand estimated using non market valuation techniques the supply and the market structure the discussion covers the case of a linear demand and the case in which the demand is estimated using discrete choice methods this paper applies the method to free access recreation in the forests of andalusia in the south of spain and compares the results to those obtained using hicksian variations

cooperation and subgame perfect equilibria in global pollution problems with critical threshold the paper examines the issue of international pollution control under a dynamic framework involving heterogeneous countries and a critical threshold we propose an appealing specification for this type of problem and its novelty is illustrated by the fact that countries use linear strategies in equilibrium although their utility and damage functions are highly convex the stock of pollution under cooperation is always lower surprisingly emissions are always higher in distant periods under the cooperative scenario and we show through examples that this is a significant finding rather than some marginal effect it is also shown that the efficient allocation of pollution abatement is driven only by the respective technologies of the countries finally a dynamic transfer scheme allowing to implement the cooperative solution is proposed

recording environmental assets in the national accounts accounting information is a core element of economic decision making at both national and corporate levels it is widely accepted that much economic activity is dependent upon natural capital and natural resources generically termed environmental assets in an accounting context environmental assets are under threat of depletion and degradation from economic activity consequently the incorporation of information on environmental assets into standard accounting frameworks is an essential element in mainstreaming environmental information and broadening the evidence base for economic decisions and the assessment of sustainability this paper describes the treatment of environmental assets within the national economic accounts and summarizes recent developments that extend the accounting approaches as described in the united nations system of environmental economic accounting seea the potential for implementation of accounting standards for environmental assets is shown through a description of work in australia on environmental economic accounting

a sketch of the economics of the greenhouse effect over the last decade scientists have studied extensively the greenhouse effect which holds that the accumulation of carbon dioxide co2 and other greenhouse gases ghgs is expected to produce global warming and other significant climatic changes over the next century see stephen schneider 1989 the present study presents an economic approach for analyzing policies to slow climate change

sustaining wealth simulating a sovereign wealth fund for the uk s oil and gas resources past and future abstract exhaustible resources and the revenues they generate present a number of broad problems for macroeconomic management for example tax revenues can be large and highly volatile and the stream of revenues is finite an increasing number of countries now view resource funds and or fiscal rules for resource revenues as the answer to these challenges in this paper we explore the consequences for the uk if past revenues arising from the depletion of subsoil assets had been channelled into a sovereign wealth fund we show that had a decision been made to establish such a fund in 1975 this could have been substantial in size by 2018 about gbp 354 billion and moreover would have had a number of benefits such as a reduction in volatility of resource revenues flowing to the treasury crucially the fund s value would have substantially boosted the size of the government balance sheet yielding corresponding fiscal benefits we argue this missed opportunity is underlined further by considering the current debate about shale gas development in the uk notwithstanding considerable uncertainties favourable and optimistic projections for key parameters are required for any shale based fund to match what we simulate based on past experience for conventional subsoil assets

measuring ecological capital state of the art trends and challenges abstract it is essential to assess the value of nature as it provides various benefits for human economic development and well being it has been 20 years since two prominent publications came out in valuing nature new concepts and methods have emerged since then this study aimed to 1 investigate the relationship between the new proposed concept ecological capital and the existing two concepts natural capital and ecosystem services and 2 examine the research trends of ecological capital accounting publications from 1997 to 2017 bibliometric analysis was used to reveal the research trends the results showed that the total number of publications has rapidly increased since 1997 and this growth trend will be maintained in the future the most productive journal country institute and author were ecological economics usa chinese academy of sciences and dr verburg respectively ecosystem services and land were the most frequent types of ecological capital non economic evaluation approaches became less of a favorite over time and economic valuation methods were mostly applied in last five years the integration of different methods has attracted increasing academic attention the progress advantages and limitations of different methods were summarized in this study including seea ecological footprint exergy emergy lca and economic valuation approaches as well as newly developed modelling approaches the last part of this study presented three challenges in this academic field the need to 1 establish a standard framework 2 consider the transfer transport of ecological capital and 3 improve capabilities for decision making

financing public goods public goods can be financed by direct taxation or a subsidy to private spending this paper examines the relative efficiency and distributional consequences of the two methods efficiency is shown to depend on the price elasticity of private spending and the trade off between public and private spending when this trade off is dollar for dollar however a subsidy is always more efficient than direct taxation the gains from a subsidy are larger for a mixed good than for a pure public good looking a t distributional effects the author shows when richer taxpayers may prefer a tax credit to deductibility even though they face lower prices with deductibility and also shows when richer taxpayers prefer direct taxation to either type of subsidy copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

monetary accounting of ecosystem services a test case for limburg province the netherlands ecosystem accounting aims to provide a better understanding of ecosystem contributions to the economy in a spatially explicit way ecosystem accounting monitors ecosystem services and measures their monetary value using exchange values consistent with the system of national accounts sna we pilot monetary ecosystem accounting in a case study in limburg province the netherlands seven ecosystem services are modelled and valued crop production fodder production drinking water production air quality regulation carbon sequestration nature tourism and hunting we develop monetary ecosystem accounts that specify values generated by ecosystem services per hectare per municipality and per land cover type we analyse the relative importance of public and private ecosystem services we found that the sna aligned monetary value of modelled ecosystem services for limburg was around 112 million in 2010 with an average value of 508 per hectare ecosystem services with the highest values were crop production nature tourism and fodder production due to the exclusion of consumer surplus in sna valuation calculated values are considerably lower than those typically found in welfare based valuation approaches we demonstrate the feasibility of valuing ecosystem services in a national accounting framework

water accounting in australia abstract this paper introduces water accounting as produced by the australian bureau of statistics abs it provides information about the abs water accounts and highlights the many other organisations involved in the provision and use of water related data in australia the abs water accounts have built upon previous reports on australian water resources and the system of environment and economic accounting un united nations 2003 draft handbook integrated environmental and economic accounting studies in methods series f no 61 rev 1 united nations european commission international monetary fund organisation for economic cooperation and development world bank new york information from the abs water accounts is presented along with examples of their use in economic analyses designed to inform public debate and government decision makers a key feature of the australian environment is that water is relatively scarce when compared with other inhabited continents rainfall displays a high level of spatial and temporal variability and droughts are common in 2004 an intergovernmental agreement on a national water initiative nwi was reached by australia s national and eight state and territory governments the nwi aims to address environmental economic and social concerns about the current and future state of australia s water resources the nwi specifically calls for the preparation of annual water accounts which clearly indicates the expected usefulness of national and regional water accounts

a regional dynamic general equilibrium model of alternative climate change strategies outcomes and noncooperative equilibria this study finds that cooperative policies show much higher levels of emissions reductions than do noncooperative strategies that there are substantial differences in the levels of controls in both the cooperative and the noncooperative policies among different countries and that high income countries may be the major losers from cooperation jel h41 q4 q2 q20

choices and the value of natural capital sustainability requires maintaining opportunities for future generations so they can meet their needs opportunities are passed to future generations through a set of capital assets nature provides an important class of these assets but markets seldom reveal the marginal value of natural capital rather the marginal social worth or asset price must be imputed based on intertemporal exchange in the context of assessing whether intertemporal allocation rules lead to sustainable development appropriate asset prices must be based on the actual allocations and trade offs society makes therefore measuring economic programmes that enable the measurement of asset prices is an important empirical task we review the theory of measuring natural capital asset prices and discuss the key elements of measuring economic programmes that enable the measurement of natural capital asset prices we place the measurement of economic programmes and natural capital asset prices in the context of wealth based sustainability metrics

international aspects of pollution control pollution is a by product of production is only gradually dissolved by the environment and crosses national borders the market outcome ignores the adverse effects of pollution and thus yields higher levels of output and pollution than would prevail under a supranational social planner which does care about pollution in practice governments often do not cooperate and this leads to outcomes of pollution and production in between the market outcomes and the outcomes under supra national social planning absence of precommitment leads to lower emission charges less cleaning up activities and more pollution appropriate levels of emission charges under the various outcomes are a result of this analysis attention is also paid to investment in clean technology the debate between optimists who believe that higher production is compatible with sound environmental policy and pessimists can be analysed in this way