management of social issues in supply chains a literature review exploring social issues actions and performance outcomes the social dimension of sustainable development and its impact on supply chains have so far received less attention than the environmental dimension the aim of the research is to explore the intersection between social issues corporate social responsibility csr actions and performance outcomes a structured literature review of social issues in supply chains is presented analysing the research published so far in peer reviewed publications linking csr and supply chain management allows the exploration of strategies and performance outcomes with a focus on social issues the corresponding responsible supply chain actions adopted by firms to address these issues are grouped into communication compliance and supplier development strategies social and economic as well as buyer and supplier performance are identified as the key outcomes but the interactions among these constructs would require further research this paper contributes to the understanding of managing social issues in supply chains by linking social issues responsible supply chain actions and performance outcomes the paper consolidates related research by offering an overarching conceptual framework and points to future research directions and simultaneously provides insights into the management of social issues in supply chains

scientific ambiguity and climate policy economic evaluation of climate policy traditionally treats uncertainty by appealing to expected utility theory yet our knowledge of the impacts of climate policy may not be of sufficient quality to be described by unique probabilistic beliefs in such circumstances it has been argued that the axioms of expected utility theory may not be the correct standard of rationality by contrast several axiomatic frameworks have recently been proposed that account for ambiguous knowledge in this paper we apply static and dynamic versions of a smooth ambiguity model to climate mitigation policy we obtain a general result on the comparative statics of optimal abatement and ambiguity aversion and then extend our analysis to a more realistic dynamic setting where we introduce scientific ambiguity into the well known dice model of the climate economy system for policy relevant exogenous mitigation policies we show that the value of emissions abatement increases as ambiguity aversion increases and that this ambiguity premium can in some plausible cases be very large in these cases the effect of ambiguity aversion on welfare is comparable to that of other much studied welfare parameters thus ambiguity aversion may be an important neglected aspect of climate change economics and seems likely to provide another argument for strong abatement policy

congested public goods the case of fire protection abstract this paper uses a fire protection measure based on a community s fire insurance rating to estimate the strength of congestion effects for fire protection services the empirical results show that the congestion properties of fire protection are much like those of a pure public good in addition the paper introduces a new notion of returns to scale for public goods and estimates the relevant parameters for the fire protection case

a naturalistic theory of economic organization we develop a theory of economic organization grounded in the naturalistic paradigm currently emerging at the intersection of biology and the behavioral and social sciences the crux of this approach is the recognition that an understanding of the evolutionary origins of human organizational capabilities can inform theories of contemporary economic organization modern firms sustain large scale cooperation by applying cultural work arounds to tribal instincts that evolved from simultaneous within group and between group competition on a much smaller scale we translate this insight into ten principles of economic organization

climate damages in the fund model a disaggregated analysis abstract we examine the treatment of climate damages in the fund model by inserting software switches to turn individual features on and off we obtain fund s estimates for 15 categories of damages and for components of the agricultural category fund as used by the u s government to estimate the social cost of carbon projects a net benefit of climate change in agriculture offset by a slightly larger estimate of all other damages within agriculture there is a large benefit from co 2 fertilization a moderate cost from the effect of temperature on yields and a much smaller impact of the rate of change in fund s agricultural modeling the temperature yield equation comes close to dividing by zero for high probability values of a monte carlo parameter the range of variation of the optimal temperature exceeds physically plausible limits with 95 confidence intervals extending to 17 c above and below current temperatures moreover fund s agricultural estimates are calibrated to research published in 1996 or earlier use of estimates from such models is arguably inappropriate for setting public policy but as long as such models are being used in the policymaking process an update to reflect newer research and correct modeling errors is needed before fund s damage estimates can be relied on

real time pricing when some consumers resist in saving electricity successful real time electricity pricing depends firstly upon consumers willingness to subscribe to such terms and secondly on their ability to curb consumption levels the present paper addresses both issues by considering consumers differentiated by their electricity saving costs half of whom resist saving electricity we demonstrate that when consumers are free to adopt real time prices producers prefer charging inefficient prices and in so doing discriminate against that portion of the consumer population which faces no saving costs we also find that efficient marginal cost pricing is feasible but is incompatible with mass adoption of real time prices

housing natural hazards and insurance abstract this paper describes residential development and location choice within a community subject to future natural hazards of uncertain severity this is accomplished by constructing an equilibrium model of housing markets in which locations are differentiated by both risk of loss due to natural hazards and distance from a central business district in this context households trade off location and risk amenities allowing for the possibility that areas within the outer boundary of the community will be left undeveloped in equilibrium general equilibrium comparative statics are derived in economies both with and without insurance emphasis is placed on describing the impact of variables such as population and income on the development of hazardous areas

carbon pricing carbon sequestration and social discounting abstract this paper studies the optimal taxation of carbon emissions in a dynastic economy when the welfare function places direct pareto weights on unborn generations the social discount rate is lower than the discount rate of the current generation i show that this welfare criterion has important consequences for the structure of the optimal regulatory system in particular i show that i the optimal carbon tax does not in general equal the social cost of carbon ii a subsidy on oil reserves is sometimes optimal and iii carbon trading programs should limit the award of carbon offset allowances

sharing the cost of global warming due to meteorological factors the distribution of the environmental damage due to climate change bears no relationship to that of global emissions we argue in favor of osetting this discrepancy and propose a global insurance scheme to be ncanced according to countries respon sibility for climate change because ghg decay very slowly we argue that the actual burden of global warming should be shared on the basis of cumulated emissions raher than sharing the expected costs of actual emissions as in a pigovian taxation scheme we characterize new versions of two well known cost sharing schemes by adapting the responsibility theory of bossert and fleurbaey 1996 to a context with externalities j e l classi cation d62 d63 q54

open innovation in the power energy sector bringing together government policies companies interests and academic essence the power and energy p e sector needs to respond to several challenges fostering investments in research and development according to the open innovation oi paradigm key stakeholders like utilities vendors laboratories universities etc should take advantage of external knowledge to improve their innovation performance several studies have demonstrated that firms adopting the oi paradigm are more likely to innovate despite the interest of p e firms in enhancing their innovation capabilities surprisingly few articles usually case studies described the implementation of the oi paradigm in p e firms this article fills the gap by identifying the key drivers that encourage a firm in the p e sector to embrace the oi paradigm the authors adopt a hybrid research approach collecting evidence from the literature and through a multiple case study analysis involving seven british firms and universities operating in the p e industry as the drivers of oi have mutual influence this article describes them with a fuzzy cognitive map finally the authors identify appropriated policies to enhance the oi adoption and consequently the sustainability of innovation in the p e sector a salient research agenda closes the paper

price scarcity rent and a modified r per cent rule for non renewable resources since hotelling s seminal paper on the optimal depletion of exhaustible resources much has been published yet confusion remains about whether scarcity rent and price increase or decrease as a resource is depleted when costs tend to rise with depletion we show that hotelling s fundamental results of rising scarcity rent and price paths are sustained and that the path of scarcity rent converges on the r per cent rule provided the objective function is concave predictions of non monotonic or declining scarcity rent paths are due to implicit assumptions that lead to a non concave objective function we identify the sources of these non concavities jel classification q30 d90 c60 prix rente de rarete et une regle modifiee du r pourcent pour les ressources non renouvelables malgre la volumineuse litterature specialisee qui a fleuri depuis qu hotelling a ecrit son memoire fondateur sur l epuisement optimal des ressources renouvelables une grande confusion regne toujours quand il faut etablir si la rente de rarete et le prix augmentent ou chutent a proportion que la ressource s epuise quand les couts tendent a croitre avec l epuisement ce memoire montre que les resultats fondamentaux obtenus par hotelling quant aux sentiers de croissance de la rente de rarete et du prix tiennent toujours et que le sentier de croissance de la rente de rarete converge vers la regle du r pourcent pourvu que la fonction objective soit concave les predictions de sentiers de croissance non monotone ou de declin de la rente de rarete presentees dans la litterature specialisee sont attribuables a des postulats implicites qui engendrent une fonction objective non concave les auteurs identifient les sources de ces non concavites

all or nothing climate policy when assets can become stranded abstract this paper develops a new perspective on stranded assets in climate policy using a partial equilibrium model of the energy sector political economy related aspects are considered in the government s objective function lobbying power of firms or fiscal considerations by the government lead to time inconsistency the government will deviate from a previously announced carbon tax which creates stranded assets under rational expectations we show that a time consistent policy outcome exists with either a zero carbon tax or a prohibitive carbon tax that leads to zero fossil investments an all or nothing policy although stranded assets are crucial to such a bipolar outcome they disappear again under time consistent policy which of the two outcomes all or nothing prevails depends on the lobbying power of owners of fixed factors land and fossil resources but not on fiscal revenue considerations or on the lobbying power of renewable or fossil energy firms

optimal transition to backstop substitutes for nonrenewable resources abstract we analyze the optimal transition from a primary nonrenewable resource to a backstop substitute for a class of problems characterized by the property that the backstop cost decreases continuously as learning from r d efforts accumulates to increase the knowledge base the transition policy consists of the r d process and of the time profiles of the primary and backstop resource supply rates we find that the optimal r d process follows a most rapid approach path mrap the knowledge process associated with r d should approach some endogenously derived target process as rapidly as possible and proceed along it thereafter thus if the initial knowledge level is sufficiently low and the cost structure justifies r d activities the r d efforts should be initiated without delay at the highest affordable rate and slow down later on this pattern contrasts previous findings that typically recommend a single humped r d process with a possible initial delay

corporate responsibility in scandinavian supply chains this article examines corporate responsibility in the supply chains of four of the largest scandinavian multinational corporations ikea nokia novo nordisk and statoilhydro and offers two key findings first these scandinavian companies have all implemented responsible supply chain practices where suppliers in developing nations and the communities of these suppliers are engaged as key stakeholders and treated as partners second these supply chain practices all share the common bond of having honesty and the establishment of trust based relationships at their foundation as a result these scandinavian companies have developed a cooperative advantage in their ability to form successful long term partnerships in their respective supply chains

modelling land use deforestation and policy a hybrid optimisation heterogeneous agent model with application to the bolivian amazon abstract we introduce a hybrid simulation model simpachamama designed to explore the complex socio environmental trade offs of alternative policy bundles and policy sequencing options for stemming deforestation and reducing poverty in tropical countries designed and calibrated to the initial conditions of a small forest village in rural bolivia the model consists of a an optimising agricultural household module of heterogeneous agents that make individually optimal land use decisions based on factor endowments and market conditions b an encompassing general equilibrium shell module that endogenously determines wages and links the agricultural labour market and rural urban migration rates and c a novel user controlled policy maker module that allows the user to make real time choices over a variety of public and environmental policies that in turn impact land use welfare and migration over a 20 year simulation period the results highlight trade offs between reductions in deforestation and improvements in household welfare that can only be overcome either when international redd payments are offered or when decentralized deforestation taxes are implemented the sequencing of policies plays a critical role in the determination of these results

equilibrium of a residential city attributes of housing and land use zoning this paper investigates the impact of land use zoning such as building height and building density restrictions on housing rent land rent the design parameters of a building and population density in a residential city a theoretical land use model with several new features is used building capital the demand for and the supply of housing are explicitly defined housing is treated as a multi dimensional good the elements of which are floor area finishing cost of a dwelling unit garden space and building height building costs are the sum of structural frame costs which are a function of building height and building area and finishing costs which are independent of design parameters zoning restrictions are explicitly considered the utility and profit maximisations are simultaneous through the housing attributes which are implicitly priced there are six major conclusions first the relative gradients of the endogeneous variables all with regard to distance depend not only on demand speci

environmental policy and macroeconomic dynamics in a new keynesian model this paper studies the dynamic behavior of an economy under different environmental policy regimes in a new keynesian model with nominal and real uncertainty we find the following results i an emissions cap policy is likely to dampen macroeconomic fluctuations ii staggered price adjustment alters significantly the performance of the environmental policy regime put in place iii the optimal environmental policy response to shocks is strongly influenced by the degree to which prices adjust and by the monetary policy reaction

the economic power of energy and the need to integrate it with energy policy abstract drastic oil price changes the associated economic perturbations the coupling of energy conversion to entropy production in the form of emissions and the problems of climate change call for a reappraisal of energy in economic theory we review econometric growth analyses that do not weigh the production factors capital labor and energy by their cost shares their reproduction of economic growth in germany japan and the usa during the second half of 20th century is good according to these analyses energy s output elasticity which measures its economic power is much larger than energy s share in total factor cost while for labor s output elasticity and cost share the opposite is true this is consistent with profit and welfare optimization if hitherto ignored technological constraints are taken into account computing the motion of the german industrial sector in its cost mountain employing empirical data on factor quantities and prices supports these results the pivotal role of energy in economic growth provides leverage to energy policies that care about social well being and climate stability

is there really a green paradox abstract in the absence of a co2 tax the anticipation of a cheaper renewable backstop increases current emissions of co2 since the date at which renewables are phased in is brought forward and more generally future emissions of co2 will decrease the effect on global warming is unclear green welfare falls if the backstop is relatively expensive and full exhaustion of fossil fuels is optimal but may increase if the backstop is sufficiently cheap relative to the cost of extracting the last drop of fossil fuels plus marginal global warming damages as then it is attractive to leave more fossil fuels unexploited and thus limit co2 emissions we establish these results by analyzing depletion of non renewable fossil fuels followed by a switch to a clean renewable backstop paying attention to timing of the switch and the amount of fossil fuels remaining unexploited we also discuss the potential for limit pricing when the non renewable resource is owned by a monopolist finally we show that if backstops are already used and more backstops become economically viable as the price of fossil fuels rises a lower cost of the backstop will either postpone fossil fuel exhaustion or leave more fossil fuel in situ thus boosting green welfare however if a market economy does not internalize global warming externalities and renewables have not kicked in yet full exhaustion of fossil fuel will occur in finite time and a backstop subsidy always curbs green welfare

a profit driven approach to building a people responsible supply chain abstract today an increasing number of companies have publicized policies to improve corporate social responsibility performance related to human resources in their supply chain management practices such as safer and healthier working conditions higher payment better benefits and fewer working hours however there are still concerns about the sincerity and effectiveness of such efforts this could be attributed to the fact that the economic benefit of those improvements is not clearly structured as an integral part in the companies decision making process in this paper we develop a stylized analytic framework that links a firm s supply chain social performance in people with its economic performance in profit specifically we examine how consumers responses to the outbreak of social misconduct in supply chains affect competing firms market segmentation and profit and subsequently provide economic incentive for proactive social responsibility investment closed form optimal solutions for proactive social responsibility strategy are found for our model setup numerical tests and sensitivity analyses have been conducted to study the effects of various factors on the firms supply chain social responsibility strategies factors such as consumers ethical disposition the social environment and consumers perception of a product s functional versus social value are a few among them the results of our analysis demonstrate that proactive investment in supply chain social responsibility can enhance a firm s competitive advantage and economic performance thereby suggesting a profit driven approach to achieving supply chain social responsibility and sustainability

using survey questions to measure preferences lessons from an experimental validation in kenya can a short survey instrument reliably measure a range of fundamental economic preferences across diverse settings we focus on survey questions that systematically predict behavior in incentivized experimental tasks among german university students becker et al 2016 and were implemented among representative samples across the globe falk et al 2018 this paper presents results of an experimental validation conducted among low income individuals in nairobi kenya we find that quantitative survey measures hypothetical versions of experimental tasks of time preference attitude to risk and altruism are good predictors of choices in incentivized experiments suggesting these measures are broadly experimentally valid at the same time we find that qualitative questions self assessments do not correlate with the experimental measures of preferences in the kenyan sample thus caution is needed before treating self assessments as proxies of preferences in new contexts

communities competition spillovers and open space we explore the impact of the spatial distribution of developers on the private provision of open space our analysis yields three main findings first we demonstrate that the mixed public good nature of open space relative to private lot consumption can lead a single land rent maximizing developer to over supply open space relative to the utility maximizing level second by explicitly incorporating the spatial distribution of open space spillovers we show how competition can lead not only to inefficient levels of open space but also to inefficiencies in its spatial distribution finally we evaluate the impact of market based open space instruments

resource scarcity and antisocial behavior abstract this paper examines whether exposure to persistent resource scarcity on the commons affects pastoralists readiness to engage in antisocial behavior towards their fellow commons users the region under study is divided into two areas according to exogenous variations in biomass production stemming from geological peculiarities we conducted a joy of destruction game with pastoralists from both areas and provide evidence for a positive relationship between antisocial behavior and long term exposure to scarcity antisocial behavior among villagers occurs twice as often in an area where resources are scarcer and competitive pressure is higher our results remain robust to the inclusion of various controls including beliefs socio demographics absolute and relative income and within group inequality if one interprets decreasing another participant s payoff below one s own as a tendency towards conflict behavior our results suggest a higher risk of conflict among resource users in areas of greater scarcity

oil monopoly and the climate this paper takes as given that i the burning of fossil fuel increases the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere which ii in turn leads to global heating and global climate change of a variety that iii on net is harmful to our welfare to answer questions about the policy implications of this a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the two way interaction between the economy with its fossil fuel use and the climate is necessary in this paper however we focus on a particular aspect of this interaction the role played by the industrial organization in the oil producing sector of the world without a clear understanding of the world market for oil the consequences of taxes and other policy instruments cannot be evaluated analyses of the world oil market that are based on perfect competition and a finite amount of oil typically predict i that the oil price satisfies the hotelling rule i e increases so that the rate of return on storing oil is equal to the return on the capital market ii that oil consumption follows a decreasing path and iii that extraction is sequential in the sense that sources with lower extraction costs are depleted before high cost sources are used all these predictions are problematic to reconcile with data our main point here is that the polar opposite case where oil is supplied by a large agent with zero extraction costs who internalizes the effects of his decisions on all aggregates seems useful for understanding historic and future developments in the oil market

factors influencing co2 emissions in china s power industry co integration analysis more than 40 of china s total co2 emissions originate from the power industry the realization of energy saving and emission reduction within china s power industry is therefore crucial in order to achieve co2 emissions reduction in this country this paper applies the autoregressive distributed lag ardl co integration model to study the major factors which have influenced co2 emissions within china s power industry from 1980 to 2010 results have shown that co2 emissions from china s power industry have been increasing rapidly from 1980 to 2010 the average annual growth rate was 8 5 and the average growth rate since 2002 has amounted to 10 5 secondly the equipment utilization hour as an indicator of the power demand has the greatest influence on co2 emissions within china s power industry in addition the impact of the industrial added value of the power sector on co2 emissions is also positive from a short term perspective thirdly the granger causality results imply that one of the important motivators behind china s technological progress within the power industry originates from the pressures created by a desire for co2 emissions reduction finally this paper provides policy recommendations for energy saving and emission reduction for china s power industry

mine yours or ours the efficiency of household investment decisions an experimental approach we conduct an experiment to measure the relative importance of key factors that influence the efficiency of household investment decisions we find that both for men and women their spouse s access to information does not affect efficiency however they are willing to sacrifice much efficiency for greater personal control over household income intriguingly even when spouses control over household income is exogenously assigned inefficiency persists as a wife s assigned share increases husbands undercut their own income to reduce hers this self destructive and spiteful behavior is best explained by non economic factors such as identity seldom emphasized in mainstream household economic models

production optimization considering environmental performance and preference in the cap and trade system abstract many countries like china are in a dilemma between economic growth and environmental deterioration e g smog weather simultaneously a growing people concern the product s environmental performance along with their improving environment awareness this paper focuses on the impacts of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the production decision of emission dependent firms in the cap and trade system the cap and trade system uses the total cap to attain environmental goals and allows trade to achieve the effective scheduling through market regulation under this mechanism through analyzing the influence of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the market supply and demand we build a production optimization model and develop the optimal decisions several interesting management insights on environmental preference and policy are concluded

why finance ministers favor carbon taxes even if they do not take climate change into account fiscal considerations may shift governmental priorities away from environmental concerns finance ministers face strong demand for public expenditures such as infrastructure investments but they are constrained by international tax competition we develop a multi region model of tax competition and resource extraction to assess the fiscal incentive of imposing a tax on carbon rather than on capital we explicitly model international capital and resource markets as well as intertemporal capital accumulation and resource extraction while fossil resources give rise to scarcity rents capital does not with carbon taxes the rents can be captured and invested in infrastructure which leads to higher welfare than under capital taxation this result holds even without modeling environmental damages it is robust under a variation of the behavioral assumptions of resource importers to coordinate their actions and a resource exporter s ability to counteract carbon policies further no green paradox occurs instead the carbon tax constitutes a viable green policy since it postpones extraction and reduces cumulative emissions

property rights and liability for deforestation under redd implications for permanence in policy design reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd is critical in efforts to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change despite uncertainty about the exact form of a future international redd system redd carbon property rights would need to be created and allocated with liability assigned for the potential loss of climate benefits in the event of carbon reversal from deforestation this commentary explores the links between forest property rights and liability to different redd policy options and their implications for permanence should national governments retain liability for permanence then project level activities that have individually assigned redd carbon rights may have a higher risk of carbon reversal than policies where rights are assigned to the state knowledge of pre existing forest rights is necessary for some policies implemented with government assigned redd rights in order to compensate for potential income losses from policy implementation

scarcity growth and r d abstract the limits to economic growth due to resource scarcity can be alleviated only by the development of backstop substitutes this paper combines resource based economic growth with r d to reduce the cost of backstop technologies characterizing the entire dynamics of optimal growth and r d processes we find that an economy s growth prospects depend on its type as determined by its production technology and learning ability and by its knowledge capital endowment a wide variety of growth patterns emerges ranging from cases in which an economy that without r d eventually stagnates converges to a steady state is diverted by r d onto a path of sustained growth to cases in which r d is not warranted resource scarcity is shown to encourage r d due to the increased reliance on the backstop technology

the mills muth model of urban spatial structure surviving the test of time this paper examines the viability of some basic predictions of the mills muth model of city structure for modern cities using us data for the year 2000 the estimation strategy used to test the predictions is very similar to that of jan brueckner and david fansler who use 1970 data to find support for the model s basic comparative statics predictions namely that city area is increasing in population and income but decreasing in agricultural land value and commuting costs this paper uses different measures for land values and commuting costs where possible and a measure of polycentricity to estimate a slightly modified empirical model despite the changing structure of cities there is evidence that the mills muth comparative statics predictions hold for modern us cities that densely populated cities are more likely to have sub centres and that market forces drive urban spatial structure

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

do non strategic sanctions obey the law of demand the demand for punishment in the voluntary contribution mechanism abstract the prospect of receiving a monetary sanction for free riding has been shown to increase contributions to public goods we ask whether the impulse to punish is unresponsive to the cost to the punisher or whether like other preferences it interacts with prices to generate a conventional demand curve in a series of experiments we randomly vary the cost of reducing the earnings of other group members following voluntary contribution decisions in our design new groups are formed after each interaction and no subject faces any other more than once so there is no strategic reason to punish we nonetheless find significant levels of punishment and we learn that both price and the extent to which the recipient s contribution is below the group mean are significant determinants of the quantity of punishment demanded moreover punishment is mainly directed at free riders even when it costs nothing to the punisher

assessing global resource use and greenhouse emissions to 2050 with ambitious resource efficiency and climate mitigation policies achieving sustainable development requires the decoupling of natural resource use and environmental pressures from economic growth and improvements in living standards g7 leaders and others have called for improved resource efficiency along with inclusive economic growth and deep cuts in global greenhouse emissions however the outlooks for and interactions between global natural resource use resource efficiency economic growth and greenhouse emissions are not well understood we use a novel multi regional modeling framework to develop projections to 2050 under existing trends and three policy scenarios we find that resource efficiency could provide pro growth pro environment policies with global benefits of usd 2 4 trillion in 2050 and ease the politics of shifting towards sustainability under existing trends resource extraction is projected to increase 119 from 2015 to 2050 from 84 to 184 billion tonnes per annum while greenhouse gas emissions increase 41 both driven by the value of global economic activity more than doubling resource efficiency and greenhouse abatement slow the growth of global resource extraction so that in 2050 it is up to 28 lower than in existing trends resource efficiency reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 15 20 in 2050 with global emissions falling to 63 below 2015 levels when combined with a 2 c emissions pathway in contrast to greenhouse abatement resource efficiency boosts near term economic growth these economic gains more than offset the near term costs of shifting to a 2 c emissions pathway resulting in emissions in 2050 well below current levels slower growth in resource extractions and faster economic growth

the spillover effects of affirmative action on competitiveness and unethical behavior we conduct an artefactual field experiment to examine various spillover effects of affirmative action policies in the context of castes in india we test a if individuals who enter tournaments in the presence of affirmative action policies remain competitive after the policy has been removed and b whether having been exposed to the policy generates unethical behavior and spite against subjects from the category who has benefited from the policy we find that these policies substantially increase the confidence and the competitiveness of the backward caste members however we find no spillover effect on confidence and competitiveness once affirmative action is withdrawn any gain in competitiveness due to the policy is then entirely wiped out furthermore the strong existing bias of the dominant category against the backward category is not significantly aggravated by affirmative action except when individuals learn that they have lost the previous competition

the many faces of human sociality uncovering the distribution and stability of social preferences there is vast heterogeneity in the human willingness to weigh others interests in decision making this heterogeneity concerns the motivational intricacies as well as the strength of other regarding behaviors and raises the question how one can parsimoniously model and characterize heterogeneity across several dimensions of social preferences while still being able to predict behavior over time and across situations we tackle this task with an experiment and a structural model of preferences that allows us to simultaneously estimate outcome based and reciprocity based social preferences we find that non selfish preferences are the rule rather than the exception neither at the level of the representative agent nor when we allow for several preference types do purely selfish types emerge instead three temporally stable and qualitatively different other regarding types emerge endogenously i e without pre specifying assumptions about the characteristics of types when ahead all three types value others payoffs significantly more than when behind the first type which we denote as strongly altruistic type is characterized by a relatively large weight on others payoffs even when behind and moderate levels of reciprocity the second type denoted as moderately altruistic type also puts positive weight on others payoff yet at a considerable lower level and displays no positive reciprocity while the third type is behindness averse i e puts a large negative weight on others payoffs when behind and behaves selfishly otherwise we also find that there is an unambiguous and temporally stable assignment of individuals to types moreover the three type model substantially improves the out of sample predictions of individuals behavior across additional games while the information contained in subject specific parameter estimates leads to no or only minor additional predictive power this suggests that a parsimonious model with three types captures the bulk of the predictive power contained in the preference estimates

emissions in the platinum age the implications of rapid development for climate change mitigation rapid global economic growth centred in asia but now spread across the world is driving rapid greenhouse gas emissions growth making earlier projections unrealistic this paper develops new illustrative business as usual projections for carbon dioxide co2 from fossil fuels and other sources and for non co2 greenhouse gases making adjustments to 2007 world energy outlook projections to reflect more fully recent trends we project annual emissions by 2030 to be almost double current volumes 11 per cent higher than in the most pessimistic scenario developed by the intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc and at a level reached only in 2050 in the business as usual scenario used by the stern review this has major implications for the global approach to climate change mitigation the required effort is much larger than implicit in the ipcc data informing the current international climate negotiations large cuts in developed country emissions will be required and significant deviations from baselines will be required in developing countries by 2020 it is hard to see how the required cuts could be achieved without all major developing as well as developed countries adopting economy wide policies

landscape preferences and patterns of residential development abstract i analyze a model of residential location choice where people derive utility from their proximity to open space when people have such landscape preferences then 1 equilibrium residential development is mixed with undeveloped land 2 equilibrium land price gradients depend sensitively on how land markets are organized are not generally monotonic and may or may not reflect the value of open space and 3 dynamic equilibria generally have the property that more remote areas are developed before more central areas finally when compared to optimal development equilibrium development houses too many residents too close together and remote areas are developed too soon these results imply that equilibrium development may not be sprawling enough and that policies to encourage infill development are not welfare improving

labour policy instruments and the cyclical behaviour of vacancies and unemployment the standard mortensen pissarides mp model cannot match the observed elasticity of vacancies and unemployment in the data this paper shows that by introducing labour policy instruments the original mp model can replicate the observed fluctuations in unemployment and job vacancies in response to shocks these instruments reduce the benefit of forming a match thereby increasing the impact that shocks have on firms incentives to post vacancies and workers to accept job offers additionally the analysis shows that the design of labour policy instruments e g whether taxation is progressive or regressive has non trivial consequences on the model s performance

reciprocity as a foundation of financial economics this paper argues that the subsistence of the fundamental theorem of contemporary financial mathematics is the ethical concept reciprocity the argument is based on identifying an equivalence between the contemporary and ostensibly value neutral fundamental theory of asset pricing with theories of mathematical probability that emerged in the seventeenth century in the context of the ethical assessment of commercial contracts in a framework of aristotelian ethics this observation the main claim of the paper is justified on the basis of results from the ultimatum game and is analysed within a framework of pragmatic philosophy the analysis leads to the explanatory hypothesis that markets are centres of communicative action with reciprocity as a rule of discourse the purpose of the paper is to reorientate financial economics to emphasise the objectives of cooperation and social cohesion and to this end we offer specific policy advice

cultural identities and resolution of social dilemmas we report an experiment on payoff equivalent sequential provision and appropriation games with high and low caste indian villagers a central question is whether caste identities affect resolution of social dilemmas making caste salient elicits striking changes in behavior compared to baseline treatment with no information about others castes homogenous groups with high caste villagers are more successful in resolving social dilemmas than homogenous groups with low caste villagers the success of mixed caste groups is somewhere between which is inconsistent with a group identity model absent salient information on caste behavior is inconsistent with unconditional social preferences but as predicted by reciprocity jel c93 h41 z13

between a rock and a soft place ecological and feminist economics in policy debates abstract the field of ecological economics includes both economic analysis on the one hand and discussions of normative values and visions for society on the other using feminist insights into cultural beliefs about the relative hardness and softness of these two sides this essay discusses how ecological economists can use this unique between space in order to better inform policy the current crisis of global climate change it is argued requires that economists move beyond modeling and measurement while ecological thinkers need to re examine beliefs about markets and profit

environment justice and the capability approach in recent years several studies have attempted to combine the capabilities approach with sustainable development however critics have pointed out that although the capability approach takes the environment into account it has its shortcomings for not being a complete ethical theory our article attempts to go beyond these criticisms and show that the capabilities approach provides a good analytical framework for an environmental justice approach

the effect of environmental policies on risk reductions in energy generation abstract we demonstrate that environmental policies can decrease the risks in energy generation for private investors when several renewable technologies are simultaneously triggered this is because diverse renewable technologies can hedge the intermittent generation of other forms of renewable power our study is distinct from previous literature which has not examined environmental policies through a risk reduction analysis or has only considered a few technologies such as wind and solar when analyzing risk reduction benefits this paper is important as environmental policies can be justified not only due to environmental benefits but also economically from a risk reduction perspective by using basic diversification gains

fossil fuels stock externalities and backstop technology the hotelling exhaustible resource model is extended to include stock pollution and nonpolluting backstop technology it is shown that an optimal energy consumption strategy typically includes a regime in which the two energy sources are consumed simultaneously along this regime fossil fuel consumption decreases and backstop consumption increases together fossil fuel and backstop consumption may form eleven optimal regime combinations a decrease in the backstop price decreases the initial level of optimal emission tax

motivation crowding in environmental protection evidence from an artefactual field experiment abstract this paper examines how motivation crowding and social image affect environmental conservation decisions an artefactual field experiment conducted in bolivia is used to reproduce the trade off between individual and social benefits in natural resource use and test the effect of non monetary and non regulatory incentives on pro social behavior for environmental conservation the results show the presence of a social norm prescribing positive contribution towards environmental protection and that external incentives have heterogeneous effects on pro social behavior depending on how they influence reputation and self image the experimental results differ from those of analogous experiments conducted in the laboratory and are instead consistent with those from field experiments on common pool resource management this fact suggests caution in generalizing conclusions reached in the laboratory to different settings and populations

when do increasing carbon taxes accelerate global warming a note on the green paradox abstract the green paradox by hans werner sinn suggests that increasing resource taxes accelerate global warming because resource owners increase near term extraction in fear of higher future taxation in this note we show that this effect does only occur for the specific set of carbon taxes that increase at a rate higher than the effective discount rate of the resource owners we calculate a critical initial value for the carbon tax that leads to a decreased cumulative consumption over the entire infinite time horizon applying our formal findings to carbon taxes for several mitigation targets we conclude that there is a low risk of a green paradox in case the regulator implements and commits to a permanently mal adjusted tax this remaining risk can be avoided by emissions trading scheme as suggested by sinn as long as the emission caps are set appropriately and the intertemporal permit market works correctly

regime destabilisation as the flipside of energy transitions lessons from the history of the british coal industry 1913 1997 this paper investigates a neglected aspect of the transitions literature the destabilisation of existing regimes and industries it presents an analytical perspective that integrates four existing views on destabilisation and conceptualizes the process as a multi dimensional and enacted phenomenon involving technical economic political and cultural processes this perspective is illustrated with two historical cases of the british coal industry 1913 1967 1967 1997 these cases are also used to articulate five lessons regarding the overall destabilisation process and five lessons regarding the economic and socio political environments of industries the conclusion section translates the historical lessons into insights with relevance for the contemporary challenge of climate change and transitions to low carbon energy systems

the spite motive in third price auctions a spiteful agent losing an auction experiences negative emotions towards the winner in line with previous experimental findings i show that the symmetric equilibrium bid of a spiteful agent in third price auctions is higher than the risk neural nash equilibrium bid furthermore it can be shown that spiteful agents bid the same way agents would who anticipate to regret their decision in equilibrium

sustainable management of fossil fuels a dynamic stochastic optimization approach with jump diffusion abstract this paper deals with a relevant aspect of energy modeling i e fossil fuels management the issue is faced by using purely operational research techniques which are suitable in this context in particular a dynamic stochastic optimization model is developed to optimally determine use and stock of resources to be employed in consumption and investments in a wide economic sense human and physical capital r d etc it is assumed that a sustainability criterion drives the optimality rules i e decisions are also grounded on the well being of future generations the policymaker maximizes an aggregated intergenerational expected utility under the dilemma of present consumption conservation of natural resources for the future in reference to standard environmental economic theory jump diffusion dynamics for the stock of natural resources and infinite time horizon are assumed extensive numerical experiments complete the analysis and contribute to determine fossil fuels management policies showing that long term investments make the difference for the well being of present and future generations

rushing the impatient allowance reserves and the time profile of low carbon investments postponing the issue date of allowances in a cap and trade scheme by e g a reserve mechanism impacts the time profile of low carbon investments if the postponement constrains intertemporal arbitrage short term investments increase but long term investments are deterred this effect aggravates the shortage of long term investments at least partially attributed to firms impatience the cancellation of allowances agreed for phase iv of the eu ets is suitable to counteract the negative effects of cap neutral postponement on long term investments by making the reserve redundant all effects crucially depend on how firms form expectations about future allowance prices

specifications of social welfare in economic studies of climate policy overview of criteria and related policy insights an important assumption in economic studies of climate policy is the social welfare function this paper shows that applying distinct decision or social welfare criteria can result in different optimal policies of climate control notably if climate change impacts are uncertain first decision criteria in current climate economic studies are reviewed next the most important alternatives are discussed including their mathematical formalization and incorporation in economy climate models most of these alternative criteria suggest more stringent climate policies to be optimal than the standard discounted utilitarianism approach however several important welfare criteria have not or hardly seen any application in the economic analysis of climate policy we conclude that there is clear need for systematic research on this theme for which the current review provides a solid basis

the impact of energy labels and accessibility on office rents abstract energy consumption in the commercial property sector offers an important opportunity for conserving resources in this study we evaluate the financial implications of two elements of sustainability energy efficiency and accessibility in the market for commercial real estate an empirical analysis of some 1100 leasing transactions in the netherlands over the 2005 2010 period shows that buildings designated as inefficient with an eu energy performance certificate d or worse command rental levels that are some 6 5 percent lower as compared to energy efficient but otherwise similar buildings labeled a b or c furthermore this study shows that office buildings in multi functional areas with access to public transport and facilities achieve rental premiums over mono functional office districts for policymakers the results documented in this paper provide an indication on the effectiveness of the eu energy performance certificate as a market signal in the commercial property sector the findings documented here are also relevant for investors in european office markets as the importance of energy efficiency and locational diversification is bound to increase following stricter environmental regulation and changing tenant preferences

the economics of urban yard space an implicit market model for housing attributes abstract a theoretical housing model is developed embodying the approach of the recent hedonic price literature instead of focusing on a scalar housing service consumption measure the model portrays housing as a commodity with two attributes floor space and yard space developers react to a consumer bid rent function which relates dwelling rent to floor space yard space and location in choosing the profit maximizing characteristics of their housing complexes the spatial behavior of the developer s choice variables is investigated an interesting question is whether yards are larger farther from the urban center and a comparative static analysis of the housing market equilibrium is presented

carbon emissions from the commercial building sector the role of climate quality and incentives commercial buildings play a major role in determining u s greenhouse gas emissions yet surprisingly little is known about the environmental performance of different buildings at a point in time or how the same buildings perform over time by exploiting a unique panel of commercial buildings from a major electric utility we study the association between a building s electricity consumption and the physical attributes of buildings lease incentive terms indicators of human capital and climatic conditions we find that buildings that are newer and of higher quality consume more electricity contrasting evidence for the residential sector however using our panel data set we document that newer buildings are most resilient when exposed to hotter weather those buildings that have a building manager on site and whose tenants face a positive marginal cost for electricity also demonstrate a better environmental performance

description prescription and the choice of discount rates abstract the choice of discount rates is a key issue in the analysis of long term societal issues in particular environmental issues such as climate change approaches to choosing discount rates are generally placed into two categories the descriptive approach and the prescriptive approach the descriptive approach is often justified on grounds that it uses a description of how society discounts instead of having analysts impose their own discounting views on society this paper analyzes the common forms of the descriptive and prescriptive approaches and finds that in contrast with customary thinking both forms are equally descriptive and prescriptive the prescriptions concern who has standing i e who is included in society how the views of these individuals are measured and how the measurements are aggregated such prescriptions are necessary to choose from among the many possible descriptions of how society discounts the descriptions are the measurements made given a choice of measurement technique thus the labels descriptive approach and prescriptive approach are deeply misleading as analysts cannot avoid imposing their own views on society

are compact cities environmentally friendly there is a wide consensus among international institutions and national governments in favor of compact i e densely populated cities as a way to improve the ecological performance of the transport system indeed when both the intercity and intra urban distributions of activities are given a higher population density makes cities more environmentally friendly because the average commuting length is reduced however when we account for the possible relocation of activities within and between cities in response to a higher population density the latter may cease to hold indeed an increasing density policy affects prices wages and land rents which in turn incentivizes firms and households to change place this reshapes the urban system in a way that may generate a higher level of pollution thus although an increase in compactness is environmentally desirable when locations are given compactness may not be environmentally friendly when one accounts for the general equilibrium effects generated by such a policy

spite and development in a wide variety of settings spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation trade and thus economic development this paper shows that spiteful preferences the desire to reduce another s material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one s relative payoff are surprisingly widespread in experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions in india uttar pradesh in a one shot trust game the authors find that a large majority of subjects punish cooperative behavior although such punishment clearly increases inequality and decreases the payoffs of both subjects in experiments to study coordination and to measure social preferences the findings reveal empirical patterns suggesting that the willingness to reduce another s material payoff either for the sake of achieving more equality or for the sake of being ahead is stronger among individuals belonging to high castes than among those belonging to low castes because extreme social hierarchies are typically accompanied by a culture that stresses status seeking it is plausible that the observed social preference patterns are at least partly shaped by this culture thus an exciting question for future research is the extent to which different institutions and cultures produce preferences that are conducive or detrimental to economic development

employment protection reform in search economies the design of employment protection legislation epl is of particular importance in the european debate on the contours of labor market reform in this article we appeal to an equilibrium unemployment model to investigate the virtues of epl reform which reduces the red tape and legal costs associated with layo s and introduces a u s style experiencerating system which we model as a combination of a layo tax and a payroll subsidy the reform considered shows that it is possible to improve the e ciency of employment protection policies without a ecting the extent of worker protection on the labor market these results are consistent with the conventional wisdom that experience rating is desirable not only as an integral component of unemployment compensation nance as most studies acknowledge but also as part and parcel of a virtuous epl system

the impact of climate change on the balanced growth equivalent an application of fund the stern review added balanced growth equivalents bge to the economic climate change research agenda we first propose rigorous definitions of the bge for multiple regions and under uncertainty we show that the change in the bge is independent of the assumed scenario of per capita income for comparable welfare economic assumptions as the stern review we calculate lower changes in bge between a business as usual scenario and one without climate impacts with the model fund than the stern review found with the model page we find that mitigation policies give even lower changes in bge and argue that those policy choices should be the focus of the research effort rather than total damage estimates according to our results the current carbon tax should be below 55 tc sensitivity analyses show that the stern review chose parameters that imply high impact estimates however for regionally disaggregated welfare functions we find changes in bge that are significantly higher than the results from the stern review both for total damage as for policy analysis with regional disaggregation and high risk aversion we observe fat tails and with that very high welfare losses

farmers adoption of integrated crop protection and organic farming do moral and social concerns matter we investigate empirically the role of moral and social concerns in farmers decision to adopt integrated crop protection ip and organic farming of a survey questionnaire has been sent to 1286 fruit growers and vegetable producers located in the french areas of alpes de haute provence hautes alpes and vaucluse analysis of individual responses n 243 shows that although economic concerns play a strong role a significant number of respondents give high importance to moral and social ones we also examine how these considerations matter according to different crop protection strategies that is conventional farming ip and of using a multinomial logistic regression we find that 1 social concerns e g showing to others one s environmental commitment drive both ip and of adoption 2 moral concerns e g do not feel guilty about one s choices increase the probability of organic farming adoption only and 3 farmers who give high importance to economic concerns e g cutting production costs are less likely to adopt of

tourism s climate mitigation dilemma flying between rich and poor countries stronger demand for medium to long haul air transport is the main driver of the tourism industry s increasing greenhouse gas ghg emissions causing the current development of global tourism to be environmentally unsustainable efficiency improvements and biofuel usage are unlikely to maintain pace with the projected growth in transport volume therefore curbing the growing demand for air transport has been suggested as another option for the sustainable development of tourism however the political and industry discourse concerning the restriction of air transport tends to label such a restriction as unethical as such limits would impair the development that tourism brings to poor countries this paper investigates the possible impacts of air travel restrictions on the least developed countries ldcs and non ldcs by examining global tourism the impacts on ldcs are found to be neutral on average with both losses and gains in tourist arrivals the extent of any losses does not appear to be beyond the scope of possible economic compensation

an empirical analysis of the green paradox in china from the perspective of fiscal decentralization abstract while it is generally recognized that the introduction of environmental policy can effectively control carbon emissions the green paradox hypothesis puts forth a new warning about the validity of this policy s implementation this study uses panel data on 29 chinese provinces from 1995 to 2012 to investigate the impact of fiscal decentralization on the functional mechanisms of environmental policy while controlling for the spatial correlations of carbon emission the empirical results indicate that environmental policy alone can achieve the objective of reducing carbon emissions however the chinese style fiscal decentralization makes the environmental policy significantly promote carbon emissions leading to a green paradox moreover we find that the impact of fiscal decentralization on environmental policy varies greatly among different geographical regions and the direct controlled municipalities in addition our study confirms the spatial correlations in china s carbon emissions by using a spatial integration term finally we recommend that emission reduction efforts should be incorporated into the local government s performance evaluation system to improve the institutional environment further differentiated environmental policies and measures should be considered for different provinces to maximize the emission reduction potential

labour leverage in global value chains the role of interdependencies and multi level dynamics the global segmentation of production and distribution has resulted in highly complex global value chains gvcs where vertical and horizontal dynamics are equally important in determining working conditions and providing points of leverage for labour borrowing notions of multi level governance we propose an analytical framework for describing and explaining success and failure of labour agency when attempting to improve working conditions along gvcs our starting point is that the high complexity of gvcs and the absence of a global overarching authority have been balanced by the emergence of governance mechanisms of different forms and at different levels an assessment of these mechanisms which emphasize process over institutions reveals how different types of interactions and interdependencies along gvcs impact on labour s use of power we argue that in order to fully situate labour agency within governance debates any future research agenda needs to be driven by micro level bottom up approaches

csr disclosure and sustainable supplier management a small to medium sized enterprises perspective the respective literatures on corporate social responsibility csr disclosure and sustainable supplier management have grown in recent years but little scholarly attention has been paid to the li

towards a national ets in china cap setting and model mechanisms abstract china is moving from regional emissions trading schemes etss to a nation wide ets although a larger ets will be more efficient the literature warns that it could make net permit selling regions worse off we use a cge model to simulate the linking of two provincial etss namely those of hubei and guangdong our simulations suggest a trade off between efficiency and equity as the richer regions typified by guangdong will benefit from linking but the poorer regions typified by hubei may lose this is because poorer provinces in china tend to be more emissions intensive and therefore likely to face a carbon price rise upon linking the costs of which may be only partially offset by trading if indeed trading is permitted we show this and explain why it is the case by improving on the stylized model suggested by adams and parmenter 2013 following atkinson 1970 we find that worsened equity from linking may dominate improved efficiency thus reducing aggregated welfare we advise more generous caps to be given to more emissions intensive and less developed regions if so as suggest our simulation results a pareto improvement could be attainable

the role of carbon capture and sequestration policies for climate change mitigation this paper takes the policy failure in establishing a global carbon price for efficient emissions reduction as a starting point and analyzes to what extent technology policies can be a reasonable second best approach from a supply side perspective carbon capture and storage ccs policies differ substantially from renewable energy policies they increase fossil resource demand and simultaneously lower emissions we analyze ccs and renewable energy policies in a numerical dynamic general equilibrium model for settings of imperfect or missing carbon prices we find that in contrast to renewable energy policies ccs policies are not always capable of reducing emissions in the long run if feasible ccs policies can carry lower social costs compared to renewable energy policies in particular when second best policies are only employed temporally in case fossil resources are abundant and renewable energy costs low renewable energy policies perform better our results indicate that a pure ccs policy or a pure renewable energy policy carry their own specific risks of missing the environmental target a smart combination of both however can be a robust and low cost temporary second best policy

a spatial model of housing attributes theory and evidence the last decade has witnessed rapid growth of an empirical literature designed to estimate and interpret hedonic housing price functions although early studies see kain and quigley 1970 and grether and mieszkowski 1974 lacked an explicit theoretical foundation recent papers see linneman 1981 and witte et al 1979 reflect the impact of rosen s 1974 implicitmarket analysis of hedonic price determination in spite of this empirical focus on the pricing of housing attributes theoretical work in housing economics has relied almost exclusively on housing service models in which housing is unrealistically portrayed as a unidimensional commodity in a recent attempt to reconcile the empirical and theoretical traditions brueckner 1980 developed a rosen type model of housing attributes which borrows heavily from the housing service approach in the model consumers value two housing attributes floor space and yard space developers react to a consumer bid rent function which relates dwelling rent to the levels of the attributes in choosing profitmaximizing characteristics of housing complexes among the theoretical questions addressed by the model those concerning the spatial behavior of floor and yard space per dwelling are of particular interest will dwelling size floor space increase with distance to the central business district cbd as in the standard model will yards be larger farther from the cbd the next section of the paper sketches the theory and its predictions providing an