policy adoption rules and global warming although there is widespread agreement about the dangers of global warming and the resulting need to cut down emissions there does not seem to be general agreement about the exact form the policy should take or the timing of its adoption failure to adopt and implement policies against global warming reflects the complexity of the problem the uncertainties of climate change and the cost of policy adoption issues associated with the interactions between uncertainties and irreversibilities in determining the timing of policy adoption are analyzed by using the methodology of optimal stopping rules optimal policy functions are derived for cooperative and noncooperative solutions with differential game representation issues associated with the empirical application of the optimal policy rules are also considered

reevaluation and renegotiation of climate change coalitions a sequential closed loop game approach abstract major international environmental problems can be characterized as stock externality phenomena long term international environmental coalitions are subject to unexpected shocks certain shocks might have strong impacts on regional environmental policies and their commitments to the coalition the open loop solutions in optimal control problems and differential games cannot capture regions reactions to those shocks in this paper we develop a feasible modeling approach that uses the closed loop strategies to study the issues of reevaluation and renegotiation of climate change coalitions for the purpose we design an algorithm that decomposes a closed loop strategy into a sequence of open loop equilibria and implement the algorithm in the rice model am econ rev 86 1996 741 an integrated assessment model of climate change and economies we analyze policy and methodological implications of the closed loop strategies through simulations of the rice model

collective bargaining in the public sector the effect of legal structure on dispute costs and wages this paper examines the impact of collective bargaining legislation on dispute costs and wages using a panel of canadian public sector contracts the authors results suggest that policymakers designing collective bargaining legislation face a trade off between reducing dispute costs and increasing wages dispute costs are lower under compulsory arbitration than under the right to strike or when no collective bargaining legislation exists hence a switch to compulsory arbitration could potentially make both the union and the employer better off by reducing dispute costs however the authors find that wages are higher under compulsory arbitration than under other legal structures copyright 1991 by american economic association

unions and strikes with asymmetric information strikes seem to be a pareto inefficient outcome of bargaining between a union and a firm however this paper shows that strikes can be the outcome of rational behavior by both agents if the firm has more information than the union concerning the state of nature the union can use strikes as a way of gaining information the paper uses an asymmetric information model where the firm has information about the state i e profitability that the union does not know the schedule of wage offers by the union then depends on the probability that a given state will occur

cyclical fluctuations in strike activity using a set of data on contracts and strikes for the period 1970 81 the author distinguishes among the roles of aggregate business conditions labor market conditions and product market conditions in the determination of strike incidence and duration strike incidence is found to be highest in industries that are depressed relative to the rest of the economy but in regions with low unemployment this finding is consistent with the theory that the cost of a strike to a firm increases with the demand for its product and the cost of a strike to the union increases with unemployment another finding however is that strikes are longest in industries that are booming relative to the rest of the economy

global warming economics in the long run a conceptual framework economic models of climate change typically analyze its short run effects for example up to the year 2100 or for a doubling of atmospheric co2 this is a potentially serious shortcoming since under a business as usual scenario atmospheric co2 concentrations could more than quadruple we introduce a framework that endogenously accounts for long run climate change and examine the implications of alternative mitigation strategies one in which the rates of annual emissions are reduced and one that places absolute limits on the total amount of carbon released we discuss alternative valuation frameworks drawing on the debate surrounding the stern review

a general equilibrium analysis of climate change impacts on tourism this paper studies the economic implications of climate change induced variations in tourism demand using a world cge model the model is first re calibrated at some future years obtaining hypothetical benchmark equilibria which are subsequently perturbed by shocks simulating the effects of climate change we portray the impact of climate change on tourism by means of two sets of shocks occurring simultaneously the first set of shocks translate predicted variations in tourist flows into changes of consumption preferences for domestically produced goods the second set reallocate income across world regions simulating the effect of higher or lower tourists expenditure our analysis highlights that variations in tourist flows will affect regional economies in a way that is directly related to the sign and magnitude of flow variations at a global scale climate change will ultimately lead to a welfare loss unevenly spread across regions 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the efficiency paradox bureaucratic and organizational barriers to profitable energy saving investments abstract the paradox of why profitable energy saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate the underlying phenomenon might be called the efficiency paradox because it represents a case in which business firms which are often presumed or taken axiomatically to be economically efficient make decisions that do not maximize profits new data from one of the us environmental protection agency s voluntary pollution prevention programs enables this paradox to be explored statistically the data show that both the level and variation in returns to lighting upgrade investments cannot be explained by standard economic models substantial gains in energy efficiency can be achieved without sacrificing profitability both economic and organizational factors account for some of the variation in observed returns to these investments but the results suggest a need for improved and more comprehensive theories of the investment behavior of firms and other organizations

the political economy of global carbon emissions reductions abstract the discussion about what reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are required and how the emissions rights might be distributed globally has fostered the belief that there is a fundamental conflict between the rich nations of the north and the poor but populous nations of the south the argument is that grandfathering the rights will only reinforce existing global inequalities while per capita distribution of the rights would lead to such huge transfers of wealth to the south as to be unacceptable to the north however a very simple general equilibrium model highlighting key elements of the global economy shows that this perception is incorrect under a plausible interpretation of the goal of the united nations framework convention on climate change to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system instead of using an economic damage function to determine the optimal level of emissions reductions the model s utility functions are calibrated to reflect scientific understanding of what would be required to stabilize the atmosphere at safe concentrations of greenhouse gases among policy options that would accomplish this the united states has a preference for grandfathering the allocation of emissions rights over a per capita allocation but this preference is not strong and could be offset by other geopolitical considerations

robust tests of forward exchange market efficiency with empirical evidence from the 1920s summary this paper provides a robust statistical approach to testing the unbiasedness hypothesis in forward exchange market efficiency studies the methods we use allow us to work explicitly with levels rather than differenced data they are statistically robust to data distributions with heavy tails and they can be applied to data sets where the frequency of observation and the futures maturity do not coincide in addition our methods allow for stochastic trend non stationarity and general forms of serial dependence the methods are applied to daily data of spot exchange rates and forward exchange rates during the 1920s which marked the first episode of a broadly general floating exchange rate system the tail behaviour of the data is analysed using an adaptive data based method for estimating the tail slope of the density the results confirm the need for the use of robust regression methods we find cointegration between the forward rate and spot rate for the four currencies we consider the belgian and french francs the italian lira and the us dollar all measured against the british pound we find support for a stationary risk premium in the case of the belgian franc the italian lira and the us dollar and we find support for the simple market efficiency hypothesis where the forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot rate and there is a zero mean risk premium in the case of the us dollar

optimal climate policy is a utopia from quantitative to qualitative cost benefit analysis abstract the dominance of quantitative cost benefit analysis cba and optimality concepts in the economic analysis of climate policy is criticised among others it is argued to be based in a misplaced interpretation of policy for a complex climate economy system as being analogous to individual inter temporal welfare optimisation the transfer of quantitative cba and optimality concepts reflects an overly ambitious approach that does more harm than good an alternative approach is to focus the attention on extreme events structural change and complexity it is argued that a qualitative rather than a quantitative cba that takes account of these aspects can support the adoption of a minimax regret approach or precautionary principle in climate policy this means implement stringent ghg reduction policies as soon as possible

the impact of collective bargaining legislation on disputes in the u s public sector no legislation may be the worst legislation this article estimates the impact of collective bargaining legislation on disputes during labor negotiations in the u s public sector we use a large national sample of u s state and local government contracts to compare the incidence and intensity of disputes by similar workers under different forms of collective bargaining legislation the breadth of our data allows us to examine the impact of five different forms of legislation our principal finding is that dispute costs are highest in jurisdictions that provide no explicit framework for bargaining or dispute resolution strikes are as frequent and as long when they are illegal and employers are not required to bargain with employees as when they are legal but employers are required to bargain arbitration is most frequently used when formal institutions for arbitration have been provided

the impact of global warming on agriculture a ricardian analysis reply we measure the economic impact of climate on land prices using cross sectional data on climate farmland prices and other economic and geophysical data for almost 3 000 counties in the united states we find that higher temperatures in all seasons except autumn reduce average farm values while more precipitation outside of autumn increases farm values applying the model to a global warming scenario shows a significantly lower estimated impact of global warming on u s agriculture than the traditional production function approach and in one case suggests that even without co sub 2 fertilization global warming may have economic benefits for agriculture 16 refs 5 figs 5 tabs

a strategic analysis of global warming theory and some numbers we model the global warming process as a dynamic commons game in which the players are countries their actions at each date produce emissions of greenhouse gases and the state variable is the current stock of greenhouse gases the theoretical analysis is complemented by a calibration exercise the first set of results establishes theoretically and then with illustrative numbers the over emissions due to a tragedy of the commons the power of simple sanctions to lower emissions and increase welfare is then examined as is the effect of cost asymmetry finally a complete theoretical charactrization is provided for the best equilibrium and it is shown that it has a very simple structure it involves a constant emission rate through time

bargaining laws as a cause and consequence of the growth of teacher unionism this study analyzes state level data for 1959 78 to determine whether the rapid growth of teacher unionism during those years was primarily a result or a cause of the public sector bargaining laws adopted during the same period the author finds contrary to the view of some scholars that the enactment of laws requiring public sector employers to bargain with majority representatives of their employees was the single most important cause of the growth in the proportion of teachers covered by union contracts although the growth in teacher unionism in turn encouraged the adoption of some new or stronger bargaining laws this effect was relatively weak more important predictors of new bargaining laws included the extent of political patronage in a state and the bargaining laws adopted by neighboring states

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

computing business as usual with a representative agent and a pollution externality abstract computing the no policy equilibrium business as usual in a representative agent ra model is complicated by the presence of a pollution externality since simple optimization internalizes the pollution cost many researchers use ad hoc methods but there is no way to know how reliable these are a solution is presented in which the ra model is divided into n identical components each identified with its own sub agent sub agents play a dynamic game leading to a nash equilibrium for sufficiently large n this approach keeps most of the pollution cost external and in the limit it is equivalent to a myopic firms model in which the entire cost is external this approach has the advantage of theoretical consistency and empirical applications indicate that it is easily implemented

investment in energy efficiency do the characteristics of firms matter the literature on energy efficiency provides numerous examples of apparently profitable technologies that are not universally adopted yet according to the standard neoclassical theory of investment profit maximizing firms should undertake all investments with a positive net present value the standard theory also holds that the discount rate for computing the present value of a project should be the return available on other projects in the same risk class and therefore should not depend on characteristics of the firm this model as applied to energy saving investments is tested by examining whether firms characteristics influence their decision to join the environmental protection agency s voluntary green lights program a discrete choice regression is estimated over a large sample of participating and nonparticipating firms missing values in the data matrix are replaced with multiple imputations from a distribution estimated using the expectation maximization algorithm the results show that 1 sub

collective effects in italian and mexican footwear industrial clusters the focus of this article is on the analysis of the collective economic effects deriving from the intense set of backward forward labor horizontal and institutional linkages existing within clusters of enterprises among the economic effects two main categories are distinguished external economies which are the spontaneous by product of economic activities undertaken within the clusters and cooperation effects which are the results of explicit and deliberate cooperative behaviors of the economic actors

negotiator behavior and the occurence of disputes it is generally recognized that possible gains from cooperation are not always realized because negotiating parties sometimes fail to reach agreement such negotiation failures are ex post inefficient and have long defied economist s attempts to explain them in this paper we discuss breakdowns in collective bargaining when disputes are resolved by compulsory arbitration we argue that the study of arbitration offers insights into the nature of negotiation failures which may be of general interest this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

collective efficiency growth path for small scale industry this study is concerned with the growth of small local industry in developing countries and explores one particular route for understanding and fostering such growth it focuses on the clustering of firms and the competitive advantage which they derive from local external economies and joint action captured in the concept of collective efficiency following a conceptual discussion the article explores the economic and institutional conditions which enhance or hinder collective efficiency this includes a case study which suggests that responding to opportunity and crisis requires shifting from mere reliance on external economies to joint action and from ascribed to earned trust

economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions abstract recent empirical research has examined the relationship between certain indicators of environmental degradation and income concluding that in some cases an inverted u shaped relationship which has been called an environmental kuznets curve ekc exists between these variables unfortunately this inverted u shaped relationship does not hold for greenhouse gas emissions one explanation of the absence of ekc like behavior in greenhouse gas emissions is that greenhouse gases are special pollutants that create global not local disutility but the international nature of global warming is not the only reason that prevents de linking greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth the intergenerational nature of the negative impact of greenhouse gas emissions may have also been an important factor preventing the implementation of greenhouse gas abatement measures in the past in this paper we explore the effect that the presence of intergenerational spillovers has on the emissions income relationship we use a numerically calibrated overlapping generations model of climate economy interactions we conclude that 1 the intertemporal responsibility of the regulatory agency 2 the institutional capacity to make intergenerational transfers and 3 the presence of intergenerationally lagged impact of emissions constitute important determinants of the relationship between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions

cooperation on climate change mitigation abstract we analyze conditions under which it is possible to achieve efficient mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions with a self enforcing international agreement in which all countries find it in their self interest to abide by the agreement we model the choice of emissions by countries as a dynamic game we use a two part punishment scheme for deviations from an agreement that is renegotiation proof and show when this scheme supports the efficient outcome as a subgame perfect equilibrium using numerical examples we show that an efficient subgame perfect equilibrium exists for a range of reasonable parameter values the existence of such equilibrium may be non monotonic in the discount rate and the ratio of slope of marginal abatement cost and marginal damages

climate clubs overcoming free riding in international climate policy notwithstanding great progress in scientific and economic under standing of climate change it has proven difficult to forge inter national agreements because of free riding as seen in the defunct kyoto protocol this study examines the club as a model for international climate policy based on economic theory and empirical modeling it finds that without sanctions against non participants there are no stable coalitions other than those with minimal abatement by contrast a regime with small trade penalties on non participants a climate club can induce a large stable coalition with high levels of abatement jel q54 q58 k32 k33

descriptive prescriptive and second best approaches to the control of global greenhouse gas emissions a prescriptive second best approach is developed for determining the control of greenhouse gas emissions in an inter temporal multi region model of the world concerns about inter and intra generational equity are reflected in the rate of time preference and regional weights of a social welfare function choices are narrowed down by the ethical principle of anonymity a third dimension of equity inequality aversion is subject to greater variation the aggressiveness of recommended abatement can be made to bracket results for a common descriptive model by the choice of inequality aversion in this manner the perception of a sharp dichotomy between descriptive and prescriptive approaches is moderated

faraway so close coupled climate and economic dynamics in an agent based integrated assessment model abstract in this work we develop an agent based model that offers an alternative to standard computable general equilibrium integrated assessment models iams the dystopian schumpeter meeting keynes dsk model is composed of heterogeneous firms belonging to capital good consumption good and energy sectors production and energy generation lead to greenhouse gas emissions which affect temperature dynamics climate damages are modelled at the individual level as stochastic shocks hitting workers labour productivity energy efficiency capital stock and inventories of firms in that aggregate damages emerge from the aggregation of losses suffered by heterogeneous interacting and boundedly rational agents the model is run focusing on a business as usual carbon intensive scenario consistent with a representative concentration pathway 8 5 we find that the dsk model is able to account for a wide ensemble of micro and macro empirical regularities concerning both economic and climate dynamics simulation experiments show a substantial lack of isomorphism between the effects of micro and macro level shocks as it is typical in complex system models in particular different types of shocks have heterogeneous impact on output growth unemployment rate and the likelihood of economic crises pointing to the importance of the different economic channel affected by the shock overall we report much larger climate damages than those projected by standard iams under comparable scenarios suggesting possible shifts in the growth dynamics from a self sustained pattern to stagnation and high volatility and the need of urgent policy interventions

optimal dynamic carbon taxes in a climate economy model with distortionary fiscal policy how should carbon be taxed as a part of fiscal policy the literature on optimal carbon pricing often abstracts from other taxes however when governments raise revenues with distortionary taxes carbon levies have fiscal impacts while they raise revenues directly they may shrink the bases of other taxes e g by decreasing employment this article theoretically characterizes and then quantifies optimal carbon taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium climate economy model with distortionary fiscal policy first this article establishes a novel theoretical relationship between the optimal taxation of carbon and of capital income this link arises because carbon emissions destroy natural capital they accumulate in the atmosphere and decrease future output consequently this article shows how the standard logic against capital income taxes extends to distortions on environmental capital investments second this article characterizes optimal climate policy in sub optimal fiscal settings where income taxes are constrained to remain at their observed levels third this article presents a detailed calibration that builds on the seminal dice approach but adds features essential for a setting with distortionary taxes such as a differentiation between climate change production impacts e g on agriculture and direct utility impacts e g on biodiversity existence value the central quantitative finding is that optimal carbon tax schedules are 8 24 lower when there are distortionary taxes compared to the setting with lump sum taxes considered in the literature

when managers cover their posteriors making the decisions the market wants to see the stock market has opinions as to what choices firms should make we show that concern for current share prices may lead managers to make these choices rather than those suggested by their own superior information even when arbitrarily many privately informed firms have to make a similar decision the market s prejudices may still prevail we compare the distortions that arise from share price maximization with those due to herd behavior among profit maximizing firms and show that the former results in strictly less efficient use of information

international and intergenerational environmental externalities we examine a world in which policymakers actions in a given country at a given time have long lived effects on a common resource the global environment we consider the first best in which long lived planners behave cooperatively then examine the allocation of resources when there is non cooperation across countries across time or both finally we analyze the dynamic behavior of the economy along balanced growth paths it is found that while long lived international institutions are necessary to internalize all externalities cooperation at a point in time may be harmful to future generations

review on integrated strategies for energy policy planning and evaluation of ghg mitigation alternatives abstract this review paper is devoted to elaborating the status of different energy policy planning studies and the evaluation of various ghg mitigation studies it includes some of the major developments in global energy scenario status of green house gas ghg emissions issues in the implementation of kyoto protocol and ghg mitigation clean development mechanism cdm and energy scenario especially pertaining to the residential industrial and commercial energy sector in the initial sections the later part of this paper highlights the salient contributions in various literatures pertaining to energy demand forecasting in residential commercial and industrial sector ghg estimation methodologies and ghg mitigation studies in various sectors the success and difficulties in implementing various policy planning practices were also discussed in the paper most of the prominent literature in the area of energy demand and consumption analysis towards effective implementation of ghg mitigation is described in the end a comprehensive comments and recommendations based on the study were furnished

spatial and temporal efficiency in climate policy applications of fund fund is an integrated assessment model of the interactions between climate and economy nine world regions emit greenhouse gases and suffer damages from climate change a number of greenhouse gas emission reduction policies are compared including optimal and cost effective strategies strategies with early and late abatement and strategies with and without international co operation the analyses confirm that co operation matters resulting in substantially lower costs or higher welfare the real commitments of policy targets based on an absolute level e g 1990 emissions are hard to estimate because of the uncertainties in the baseline postponing action conflicts with minimising costs and maximising welfare but so does sharp emission reduction at the short term as proposed in the kyoto protocol

choosing a monetary value of greenhouse gases in assessment tools a comprehensive review there is a societal need for using monetary estimates of social impacts of co2 and other greenhouse gases in different assessment tools such as cost benefit analysis and life cycle assessment a number of estimates are available in the literature since these differ by several orders of magnitude there is ambiguity and confusion about which to use this review aims to give some guidance on this issue the variation in carbon value estimates depends on several uncertain aspects which will remain uncertain including climate sensitivity assumptions about future emissions and decision makers ethical standpoints hence there is no single correct monetary value for co2 it will depend on the ethical standpoint of the user due to this estimates of social costs of co2 emissions cannot be used for calculating an optimal emission level although they can inform such assessments it is suggested that marginal abatement cost values are used for emissions capped by binding targets in short term assessments and that social cost of carbon values should be used for all other emissions benchmark principles for choosing a monetary carbon value are suggested along with associated estimates depending on the choices made with regard to ethical standpoints and assumptions about future emissions and climate sensitivity estimates can be significantly higher than the ones typically used in assessment tools today the estimates need continuous updating and there is need for better understanding and communication around the limitations and uncertainties involved

balancing contemporary fairness and historical justice a quasi equitable proposal for ghg mitigations abstract in this paper we analyze the impasse caused by polarizing positions of the united states and china in international negotiations on carbon mitigation by incorporating the bern carbon cycle module into the rice model developed by nordhaus and yang 1996 we set up a framework for tracking regional contributions to carbon concentration and to global climate change our proposal labeled the color preservation principle uses regional contribution share to global carbon concentration as the criterion for international cooperation through simulations in rice model with bern module rice b we examine the rationales of the arguments made by the united states and china we conclude that both countries standpoints are severely flawed to facilitate the global cooperation on carbon mitigations major concessions are needed from the two top carbon emitters

the economic effects of climate change greenhouse gas emissions are fundamental both to the world s energy system and to its food production the production of co2 the predominant gas implicated in climate change is intrinsic to fossil fuel combustion specifically thermal energy is generated by breaking the chemical bonds in the carbohydrates oil coal and natural gas and oxidizing the components to co2 and h2o one cannot have cheap energy without carbon dioxide emissions similarly methane ch4 emissions an important greenhouse gas in its own right are necessary to prevent the build up of hydrogen in anaerobic digestion and decomposition one cannot have beef mutton dairy or rice without methane emissions climate change is the mother of all externalities larger more complex and more uncertain than any other environmental problem the sources of greenhouse gas emissions are more diffuse than any other environmental problem every company every farm every household emits some greenhouse gases the effects are similarly pervasive weather affects agriculture energy use health and many aspects of nature which in turn affects everything and everyone the causes and consequences of climate change are very diverse and those in low income countries who contribute least to climate change are most vulnerable to its effects climate change is also a long term problem some greenhouse gases have an atmospheric life time measured in tens of thousands of years the quantities of emissions involved are enormous in 2000 carbon dioxide emissions alone and excluding land use change were 24 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide tco2

the virtues of hesitation optimal timing in a non stationary world in many economic political and social situations circumstances change at random points in time reacting is costly and reactions appropriate to present circumstances may become inappropriate upon future changes requiring further costly reaction waiting is informative if arrival of the next change has non constant hazard rate we identify two classes of situations in the first delayed reaction is optimal only when the hazard rate of further changes is decreasing in the second it is optimal only when the hazard rate of further changes is increasing these results in semi markovian decision theory provide motivations for building delay into decision systems jel c61 d72 d82 d83 k10 m11

an empirical test of an asymmetric information model of strikes recent developments in the theory of strategic bargaining demonstrate how informational asymmetries can lead to prolonged and costly bargaining these models can be applied to contract negotiations yielding an economic theory of strikes to date however few empirical tests of these models have been carried out in this paper a set of predictions concerning the incidence and unconditional duration of strikes is derived from a simple bargaining model in which the union is uncertain about the firm s future profitability these predictions are then tested on a micro data set of major u s contract negotiations that took place from 1973 to 1977

can strategic bargaining models explain collective bargaining data much effort has recently been devoted to the development of strategic models of bargaining with private information at the same time empirical analyses of data on collective bargaining in the labor market have generated an interesting list of facts to be explained in this paper we assess the prospective interactions between these theoretical and empirical developments the style here is expository detailed arguments have been ruthlessly suppressed a more complete treatment can be found in our 1989 article the theoretical models deal with conflicts between rational bargainers in situations where at least one of the bargainers has private information as in the case where an employer knows more about the value of labor s product than the workers do we start by explaining why private information is important in building models of strikes in a naive model of collective bargaining the union starts with a tough demand and

unraveling effects of coal output cut policy on air pollution abatement in china using a cge model abstract recently frequent hazy weather in china caused by pm2 5 is mainly attributed to irrational energy consumption structure so the policies cutting coal output and promoting electric power substitution were initiated facing some resistance in the policy implementation what the proper target of cutting coal output is or whether there is a need to cut electricity prices for electric power substitution are still unknown or debatable to exploring this knowledge gap this paper set the eight action plan policy scenarios in which the coal output cut is set from 3 to 10 respectively further in order to observe whether the policy of cutting electric price will reduce the negative effects of action plan policy scenarios the eight enhanced action plan policy scenarios were also set in which the coal output cut is set from 3 to 10 respectively with the hypothetical electric price cut 3 by using the developed computable general equilibrium cge model the policy scenarios are simulated and the economic and environmental effects are tested the results showed that first in most policy scenarios the environmental and economic effects were changing synchronously in inverted u shapes but the policy to cut coal output would lead to positive environmental effects and negative economic effects second cutting electricity price could contribute to promoting electricity substitution though it couldn t be conducive to improving the electricity structure third the reduction of electricity price could also help to reduce the resistance in policy implementation consequently for optimal environmental effects and economic resistance it is recommended to set the policy target of cutting coal output as 6 while the moderate reduction of electricity price is needed and set as 3

a hotelling model with a ceiling on the stock of pollution abstract environmental agreements such as the kyoto protocol aim to stabilize the amount of carbon in the atmosphere which is mainly caused by the burning of nonrenewable resources such as coal we characterize the solution to the textbook hotelling model when there is a ceiling on the stock of emissions we consider both increasing and decreasing demand for energy we show that when the ceiling is binding both the low cost nonrenewable resource and the high cost renewable resource may be used jointly a key implication is that if energy demand were to decline in the long run we may supplement energy supply through clean renewables to meet the environmental standard but then revert back to using only dirty fossil fuels in the future when the ceiling has become non binding that is the much heralded societal transition to clean energy resources may be short lived

does distribution matter efficiency equity and flexibility in greenhouse gas abatement this paper analyses banking and borrowing ofcarbon emission rights within the framework ofa simple integrated assessment model breaking the world economy in just two regionsit will be shown 1 increasing intertemporal flexibility in greenhouse gasabatement through banking and borrowing ofcarbon emission permits has a positive effecton welfare for regions with a poor endowment incarbon emission rights but negatively affectsrich endowed regions 2 intergenerationalfairness advocates intertemporal flexibility ingreenhouse gas abatement irrespectively of theinitial allocation of carbon rights 3 optimal carbon accumulation is not independentof the initial allocation of carbon rights different initial sharing rules clearlyinfluence the development of atmospheric carbonconcentration

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

game theoretic models for climate change negotiations abstract negotiations to reduce greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere are modeled as extensive games of perfect information various solution concepts such as nash equilibrium reaction function equilibrium correlated equilibrium and bargaining solutions are applied analyzed and computed special reduction techniques are used when the size of the game tree becomes excessive a new solution concept the tree correlated equilibrium is also introduced main features of an excel add in designed to compute various solutions are briefly described and a sample policy analysis for a special negotiating scenario is discussed

integrating economic analysis and the science of climate instability abstract scientific understanding of climate change and climate instability has undergone a revolution in the past decade with the discovery of numerous past climate transitions so rapid and so unlike the expectation of smooth climate changes that they would have previously been unbelievable to the scientific community models commonly used by economists to assess the wisdom of adapting to human induced climate change rather than averting it lack the ability to incorporate this new scientific knowledge here we identify and explain the nature of recent scientific advances and describe the key ways in which failure to reflect new knowledge in economic analysis skews the results of that analysis this includes the understanding that economic optimization models reliant on convexity are inherently unable to determine an optimal policy solution it is incumbent on economists to understand and to incorporate the new science in their models and on climatologists and other scientists to understand the basis of economic models so that they can assist in this essential effort

information processing and organizational structure abstract standard economic theories of the firm and other organizations stress profit maximization as the foundation for derivation of predictable behavior yet statistical and case study evidence continues to accumulate that real firms do not act as required by the neoclassical framework instead of being represented by ever more elaborate maximization models the firm can be modeled simply as a network of information processing agents the actions of the firm are then a function only of the network structure and the information processing capabilities of the agents this approach can be used to explain a number of features of organizational behavior including the process of technological diffusion it also suggests that derivation of the optimal organizational structure may be computationally complex with a number of implications for economic theory and policy development

networks trust and innovation in tanzania s manufacturing sector abstract the social dimensions of innovation are examined for a group of manufacturers in mwanza tanzania social networks of businesspeople in mwanza are found to support innovation in manufacturing firms trust in these relations is especially important as it improves the quality of information exchanges and encourages the development of strong intracommunity ties and weak intercommunity relations a typology of manufacturers demonstrates how different social strategies relate to innovation the findings suggest that openness to social relations enhances innovation but that weak formal institutions discourage manufacturers from extending their social relations beyond core networks