transferring williamson s discriminating alignment to the analysis of environmental governance of social ecological interdependence institutional fit is operationalized by transferring transaction costs economics tce to the analysis of instances of social ecological interdependence we carefully spell out the differences with conventional tce and outline analytical steps based on discriminating alignment that enable a tce analysis of environmental governance of nature related transactions we illustrate the approach through the example of wildlife management in germany here we find hierarchical governance a prohibition of killing of wolves embedded into a polycentric hybrid monitoring arrangement in applying tce to nature related transactions we argue that characteristics of nature related transactions can be subsumed under the core categories of jointness uncertainty asset specificity frequency rivalry excludability and social relational distance benefits of this approach include its generating a narrow list of descriptors of instances of biophysically mediated interdependence related to one evaluation criterion cost effectiveness the tce of nature related transactions thus identifies sets of stylized contextual factors and aspects related to the governance of hazards of ex post opportunistic behavior that cut across scales they can be used as composite descriptors that facilitate analysis of complex multi scalar arrangements of natural resource governance we propose the concept of governance challenge derived from tce as being useful for building research on environmental governance

sufficiency and consumer behaviour from theory to policy abstract it is increasingly obvious that for safeguarding environmental sustainability eco efficiency measures will need to be complemented by sufficiency in particular by strong sustainable consumption the theory of planned behaviour tpb and social practice theory spt offer different views on consumer behaviour and on ways to change it this paper briefly describes the challenges discusses the applicability of both theories and their meaningfulness for policy recommendations we suggest an approach combining results of both bodies of theory complemented by ideas from political economy to substantiate the prism of sustainable consumption we introduce as a heuristic sufficiency policy tool it is useful to identify affordability criteria for change in each dimension as the basis for deriving suggestions for effective policy interventions we conclude that i effective interventions are possible ii they have to address several dimensions of affordability simultaneously and iii the sufficiency policy space prism can be a useful tool in structuring planned interventions

exchange market intervention under multiple solutions abstract this paper analyzes exchange market intervention in a small open economy in the analysis the solutions are refined by two alternative criteria under the minimal state solution a simple feedback rule can perfectly stabilize income fluctuation if and only if exogenous shocks are unanticipated and serially correlated however under a collective rational solution the simple rule can always perfectly stabilize income fluctuation regardless of the forms of exogenous shocks and their degrees of anticipation the latter result is surprising because this simple rule may be more effective than the rules derived in the previous literature

water markets and freshwater ecosystem services policy reform and implementation in the columbia and murray darling basins abstract water markets have featured prominently in the reallocation of water rights to restore freshwater ecosystem health incentive based water rights acquisition and transactions have emerged as a market oriented policy approach to reallocate water resources from existing uses to enhance the provision regulation and sustainability of freshwater ecosystem services this paper develops a conceptual framework to examine factors enabling and constraining successful policy reform and implementation in market based environmental water allocation this analysis distills and extends the findings and lessons of a september 2007 workshop in brisbane australia on environmental water transactions two case studies were selected in water stressed basins the columbia u s a and murray darling australia basins where transactional approaches to environmental water allocation first emerged the case studies draw upon practitioner perspectives and previous policy and economic analysis in two regions where shared political economic and physical conditions lend a strong analytical basis for comparison a common set of policy and regulatory reforms has occurred in both cases albeit in different forms and via distinct paths to develop three enabling conditions 1 establishment of rights to and limits on freshwater extraction and alteration 2 recognition of the environment as a legitimate water use and 3 authority to transfer existing water rights to an environmental purpose however these elements of policy reform are necessary but not sufficient for effective implementation a second set of driving forces barriers and adaptations explains the ability to achieve larger scale ecological outcomes these conditions include the physical social and economic factors driving demand for environmental water allocation administrative procedures organizational development and institutional capacity to effect transfers and adaptive mechanisms to overcome legal cultural economic and environmental barriers the case study analysis suggests that environmental water transactions can play an important role in establishing environmental water allocations although water markets require ongoing institutional capacity and adaptive governance the conceptual framework and empirical lessons generated through this cross case comparison provide the basis for an expanded research agenda to evaluate the design and performance of market oriented reforms as implementation experience accrues and new programs emerge in diverse ecological and political economic settings

china s carbon emissions trading overview challenges and future because china has emerged as the largest greenhouse gas ghg emitter in total annual emissions to accelerate the pace of ghg emission reduction in china is important to the success of global efforts in addressing climate change carbon trading is a market mechanism and key instrument in the mitigation of climate change this paper explores the policy process and development state to date of china s carbon trade market to understand the emergence and development of that market and to understand what barriers are hampering china s carbon trade market development to achieve this goal this paper introduces and analyzes china s status in the international market examines the factors driving carbon market launching by the chinese government and traces the development of mandatory carbon emission trading and voluntary emission trading it is argued that china s carbon trading market is confronted with challenges such as the absence of a functional carbon trading market inaccuracy of the quota allocation an imperfect trading mechanism and lagging legislation at the present stage shortcomings such as having no real time carbon price and dominated spot transactions differentiate china s trade market substantially from a functional system a quick market integration of china s carbon market appears remote it is suggested that specific measures be taken to promote the development of the chinese carbon trading market

understanding the evolution and performance of water markets and allocation policy a transaction costs analysis framework abstract water markets and associated allocation policy reforms have struggled to achieve their intended goals in many water stressed rivers in part due to the institutional friction imposed by transition and transaction costs this paper elaborates a transaction costs analysis framework to examine the evolution and performance of water markets and allocation policy reforms this analysis rests on three pillars i a synthesis of three theoretical traditions of institutional analysis williamson north and ostrom often considered independently ii a framework to examine the types and interactions of transaction costs in market based water allocation over time and iii an illustrative analysis of three large river basins the colorado columbia and murray darling with varying levels of success in market based water policy reforms the resulting framework accounts for water s complexity as an economic good this framework and the case studies lead to the identification of several policy implications including the need for a multiphase sequencing of reform strategic investment in institutional transition costs and institutional choices that preserve future flexibility to adjust water rights and diversion limits to manage social and environmental externalities

how do consumers make choices a survey of evidence in this paper we review the evidence about the purchase behaviour of consumers we concentrate on the characteristics of the choice process choice of the external information source and nature of the information obtained from these sources the impact of important systematic differences among consumers and products on choice behaviour is also discussed

a global survey and review of the determinants of transaction costs of forestry carbon projects reducing carbon emissions in the forestry sector by means of market based schemes is considered a cost effective measure for tackling climate change impacts however the transaction costs tcs involved are typically unknown or unquantified and therefore often neglected in this study three types of tcs search design and negotiation costs were measured in person days and monetary terms based on a global survey of forestry carbon projects implemented across latin america asia and africa cost estimates vary between zero and 1 201 tco2 for person days and from zero to us 1 738 tco2 for monetary costs key drivers of tcs are identified based on the characteristics of the project in general the transaction the transactors involved and institutional design the latter type of characteristic is shown to have a particularly large impact on tcs

an evolutionary approach to norms iorms provide a powerful mechanism for regulating conflict in groups even when there are more than two people and no central authority this paper investigates the emergence and stability of behavioral norms in the context of a game played by people of limited rationality the dynamics of this new norms game are analyzed with a computer simulation based upon the evolutionary principle that strategies shown to be relatively effective will be used more in the future than less effective strategies the results show the conditions under which norms can evolve and prove stable one interesting possibility is the employment of metanorms the willingness to punish someone who did not enforce a norm many historical examples of domestic and international norms are used to illustrate the wide variety of mechanisms that can support norms including metanorms dominance internalization deterrence social proof membership in groups law and reputation

will markets direct investments under the kyoto protocol lessons from the activities implemented jointly pilots under the kyoto protocol countries can meet treaty obligations by investing in projects that reduce or sequester greenhouse gases elsewhere prior to ratification treaty participants agreed to launch country based pilot projects referred to collectively as activities implemented jointly aij to test novel aspects of the project related provisions relying on a ten year history of projects we investigate the determinants of aij investment our findings suggest that review agency preferences related to national political objectives and possibly deeper cultural ties influenced project selection and limited the number of aij projects bilateral ties also appear to have affected investment decisions directly possibly because of related transaction costs the results suggest an investment process different from the assumptions that underlie well known estimates of cost savings related to the protocol s flexibility mechanisms we conclude that if approaches developed under the aij programs to approve projects are retained the scale of investment under kyoto s flexibility provisions and their cost savings will be less than what is generally anticipated and the pattern of investment less driven by abatement costs

transactions costs of expanding nutrient trading to agricultural working lands a virginia case study abstract agricultural nonpoint sources nps figure prominently in the design of many water quality trading programs in concept water quality trading programs can create incentives for agricultural operators to supply low cost pollutant reductions while still keeping land in agricultural production in practice water quality trading programs in the united states have produced few trades involving agricultural nps transactions costs are a critical but poorly understood feature of water quality trading programs the objective of this study is to examine the transactions costs associated with expanding the use of nps credits in a water quality trading program in virginia united states to include credits generated from agricultural working lands best management practices bmps findings indicate that transactions costs for agricultural nps trades in virginia are currently relatively low due to the activity being credited simple land conversion based on best available evidence transactions costs of creating credits using management and structural bmps will be 2 to 16 times more costly on a per project basis than for land conversion credits compliance monitoring protocols are a significant driver of costs for working lands credits our results suggest an important cost risk tradeoff between verification costs and compliance certainty for program designers to consider

determinants of pro environmental consumption the role of reference groups and routine behavior abstract this paper investigates the determinants of pro environmental consumption focusing on the role of reference groups and routine behavior we study the factors that explain whether or not people have installed residential solar energy equipment or have subscribed to green electricity programs and the factors that influence the intensity of buying organic food in addition to demographic characteristics and environmental attitudes we consider the following categories of determinants economic and cognitive factors income estimated price premium level of information on environmentally friendly goods consumption patterns of reference persons own consumption patterns in the past using a unique data set from a survey conducted in the region of hanover germany we find the following 1 economic and cognitive factors are significant covariates of all three kinds of pro environmental consumption their influence is greatest in the case of green electricity 2 consumption patterns of reference persons are significant covariates of all three kinds of pro environmental consumption their influence is greatest in the case of organic food 3 the intensity of buying organic food is greater the longer people have been consumers of these goods

the short run and long run effects of behavioral interventions experimental evidence from energy conservation we document three remarkable features of the opower program in which social comparison based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide first initial reports cause high frequency action and backsliding but these cycles attenuate over time second if reports are discontinued after two years effects are relatively persistent decaying at 10 20 percent per year third consumers are slow to habituate they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years we show that the previous conservative assumptions about post intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design jel d12 d83 l94 q41

monetary and fiscal policies under two alternative types of rules abstract this paper considers the relative advantage of two types of monetary and fiscal feedback rules when the private agents have full current information the appropriate combination of monetary and fiscal feedback on past disturbances dominates the contemporaneous feedback in stabilizing the real output and the price level this dominancy however disappears when the exchange rate stability is included in the objective function or when the currently observable variables are limited in general there exist some tradeoffs among feedback parameters some of the policy coefficients can be set arbitrarily enabling the optimal policy rules to be specified in many equivalent ways

does work life balance affect pro environmental behaviour evidence for the uk using longitudinal microdata abstract the environmental challenges we face today have made the need to behave pro environmentally increasingly salient many believe that the modern day busyness of life and lack of spare time have kept people from acting according to their values and behaving more pro environmentally this study uses microdata from the uk household longitudinal study ukhls to investigate the relation between pro environmental behaviour environmental self perception and work life balance pro environmental behaviour covers 21 behaviours relating to home energy personal transport recycling and shopping work life balance is defined with relation to the availability of discretionary time using both objective and subjective measures the results from the regression models of overall pro environmental behaviour suggest that work life imbalance does not appear to affect neither directly nor indirectly through environmental values and attitudes pro environmental behaviour the main factors determining the extent of pro environmental behaviour relate to individual s attitudes towards the environment age educational attainment household income and the presence of young children the sensitivity analysis looking at differing time demanding behaviours reveals that actual availability of discretionary time does not seem to affect pro environmental behaviour while the subjective experience of work life imbalance can have a negative direct effect particularly for more time demanding pro environmental behaviours

transaction costs and institutional performance in market based environmental water allocation policy reforms in the columbia basin spurred water rights reallocation for ecological recovery transaction costs have caused implementation to lag this paper examines transaction costs and institutional performance in environmental water allocation it evaluates spatial and temporal performance trends in watershed cases along three dimensions of adaptive efficiency water recovery transaction costs and program budgets performance trends demonstrate intrastate variability and volatility over time due to the importance of local institutional capacity which is uneven within states higher levels of water recovery may coincide with moderate to high transaction costs and program budgets particularly during initial implementation efforts this finding reflects investments in multilevel policy reform to strengthen enabling conditions and adapt to unintended consequences jel q25 q58

transaction costs in pollution markets an empirical study this paper studies a market in pol lution permits launched in los angeles in 1994 this tradable permit market has been projected to lead to substantial cost savings due to the flex ibility it provides firms in terms of compliance with environmental regulation this paper shows that transaction costs can play an important role in the initial years of the program the transac tion cost variables have been defined to include search costs and information costs these costs are significant in explaining non participation of some firms in the market the study also draws policy implications for the development of future emissions trading programs jel q28 q25

a test of conspicuous consumption visibility and income elasticities abstract this paper shows that consistent with a signaling by consuming model a la veblen income elasticities can be predicted from the visibility of consumer expenditures we outline a stylized conspicuous consumption model where income elasticity is endogenously predicted to be higher if a good is visible and lower if it is not we then develop a survey based measure of expenditure visibility ranking different expenditures by how noticeable they are to others finally we show that our visibility measure predicts up to one third of the observed variation in elasticities across consumption categories in u s data

why do transaction costs of agricultural policies vary policy related transaction costs tcs is an important issue when evaluating different policy options however tcs are often not taken into account in policy evaluations but may be as important for efficiency as the direct production costs different policies may result in different tcs and the main aim of this article is to explore possible reasons for these differences we compare the level of tcs for 12 different agricultural policy measures in norway and we analyze the causes of the differences along three different dimensions asset specificity frequency and point of policy application at the national level we find that all three dimensions are of importance when explaining the differences while variation in tcs incurred by farmers are mainly due to differences in point of policy application and asset specificity data show that direct price support has the lowest tcs while more direct payments for environmental amenities has the highest

exploring the effect of cap and trade mechanism on firm s production planning and emission reduction strategy abstract cap and trade mechanism has a significant effect on firm s production and operation decisions and carbon emissions this study develops a mathematical model to examine the effect of cap and trade mechanism on firm s production planning and emission reduction strategy based on the model the firm s critical production planning decisions such as the optimal production quantity optimal allowance selling price and the maximum profit under the cap and trade mechanism are derived firstly then based on the cost benefit analysis the conditions under which the firm makes the optimal emission reduction strategy between buying carbon allowance from the carbon trading market and conducting low carbon processing are identified the result suggests that when the low carbon processing cost is greater than the potential opportunity benefit the firm is inclined to purchase carbon allowance from the carbon trading market and vice versa finally a numerical analysis is conducted to investigate the effects of relevant factors such as carbon quotas carbon emission rate low carbon processing cost and transaction cost on firm s production and operation decisions the results indicate that under the cap and trade mechanism the transaction cost has a positive effect on allowance selling price the firm s optimal production quantity and maximum profit is positively related to carbon quotas while negatively related to carbon emission rate and low carbon processing cost this research contributes to enrich related literature and knowledge with regard to carbon emissions reduction at the firm level and highlight the critical importance of cap and trade mechanism in reducing carbon emissions

transaction costs and environmental policy design abstract this article synthesizes the growing empirical literature on transaction costs to identify pragmatic design recommendations for environmental and natural resource policies the new institutional economics literature recognizes that appropriate policy choice and design will be a function of the specific characteristics of the problem the physical and institutional determinants of both transaction costs and abatement costs should be considered in the policy design process due to potential interactions between them analysts also need to incorporate the extent to which the technologies institutional environment governance structures or policy designs can be changed some factors can only be adjusted to or designed around while others can be designed differently this framework highlights the importance of property rights since transaction costs will be incurred to obtain or retain property rights and since the rights assignment may affect both the magnitudes and distribution of costs another implication is that education and extension programs or use of behavioral economics concepts to affect choices can be cost effective in some circumstances policy design should take advantage of economies of scale and foster technical change appropriate sequencing of policy instruments may decrease transaction costs particularly if there is potential for technical change

choosing a monetary instrument the case of supply side shocks abstract this paper examines the monetary instrument choice problem in models with an explicit supply sector and endogenous prices and price expectations we use the popular linear quadratic certainty equivalence framework to obtain analytic solutions the results indicate that interest rate policies generally are better able to insulate the real sector from unanticipated supply shocks we also show that at this level of abstraction the optimal choice of an instrument is independent of the specification of expectations e g rational vs adaptive price expectations the paper then reports empirical evidence from two experiments on the large nonlinear mit penn ssrc econometric model the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that interest rate policies are preferable if the supply sector is the major source of uncertainty

the dynamics of willingness to consume abstract it is increasingly acknowledged that the growing consumption in the north constitutes an important part of global environmental problems to improve the possibilities of dealing with this aspect of the problems this paper explores some of the driving forces behind the growth in consumption the first section introduces the environmental debate on consumption including the relationship between final consumption and the consumption of resources the recent political acceptance of dealing with consumption and the fundamental conditions for consumption growth in the north in the following sections a cross disciplinary approach is applied in a broad search for the driving forces behind the willingness to consume throughout the exposition two questions are explored 1 why are productivity increases largely transformed into income increases instead of more leisure 2 why is such a large part of these income increases used for the consumption of goods and services with a relatively high materials intensity instead of less material intensive alternatives the explanations are divided into three groups first the economic explanations including socio economic aspects related to the institutional set up of the economy second socio psychological explanations focusing on consumption from the perspective of the human being embedded in specific social relations third historical and socio technological explanations focusing on different aspects of everyday life the paper concludes with some reflections on the political implications of the analysis

can sustainable consumption be learned a model of cultural evolution abstract this paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population via processes of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favor environmentally harmful products we present a model depicting how the biased transmission of different behaviors via individual and social learning influences agents consumption behavior the underlying learning biases can be traced back to evolved cognitive dispositions challenging the vision of a permanent transition toward sustainability we argue that green consumption patterns are not self reinforcing and cannot be locked in permanently

the externalities associated with the common property exploitation of groundwater abstract in this paper the rate of groundwater extraction under the common property arrangement is the outcome of a dynamic game played with feedback strategies the analysis clarifies the externalities associated with the common property extraction of groundwater and identifies an risk externality that arises when firms are risk averse identifying the various externalities bears on the development of appropriate forms of groundwater management in particular the risk externality would be unknown to the watermaster of a central control agency suggesting the need for creative decentralized forms of groundwater management

optimal wage indexation foreign exchange intervention and monetary policy this paper deals with the design of optimal monetary policy and with the interaction between the optimal degrees of wage indexation and foreign exchange intervention the model is governed by the characteristics of the stochastic shocks which affect the economy and by the information set that individuals possess because of cost of negotiations nominal wages are assumed to be precontracted and wage adjustments follow a simple indexation rule that links wage changes to observed changes in price the use of the price level as the only indicator for wage adjustments may not permit an efficient use of available information and may result in welfare loss the analysis specifies the optimal set of feedback rules that should govern policy aiming at the minimization of the welfare loss these feedback rules determine the optimal response of monetary policy to changes in exchange rates interest rates and foreign prices the adoption of the optimal set of feedback rules results in the complete elimination of the welfare cost arising from the simple indexation rule and from the existence of nominal contracts since optimal policies succeed in the elimination of the distortions issues concerning the nature of contracts and the implications of specific assumptions about disequilibrium positions become inconsequential the analysis then proceeds to examine the interdependence between the optimal feedback rules and the optimal degree of wage indexation it is shown that a rise in the degree of exchange rate flexibility raises the optimal degree of wage indexation one of the key conclusions is the proposition that the number of independent feedback rules that govern a policy must equal the number of independent sources of information that influence the determination of the undistorted equilibrium thus it is shown that with a sufficient number of feedback rules for monetary policy there may be no need to introduce wage indexation it is also shown that an economy that is not this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

when to pollute when to abate intertemporal permit use in the los angeles nox market we study intertemporal trading of nitrogen oxides permits in southern california s reclaim program we model reclaim s distinct intertemporal features two overlapping permit cycles and two overlapping compliance cycles in the model competitive equilibrium is cost effective and firms have an incentive to delay abatement from 1994 to 2006 reclaim facilities traded intertemporally by using permits of the opposite cycle we test two theoretical propositions delayed abatement and trading across cycles with a difference in differences estimator and show weak though inconclusive support of the theory the theoretical and empirical results are relevant to cap and trade programs with potential for overlapping permit cycles jel q58

distributing pollution rights in cap and trade programs are outcomes independent of allocation standard economic theory predicts that if property rights to pollute are clearly established equilibrium outcomes in an efficient emissions permit market will be independent of how the emissions permits are initially distributed this so called independence property has important implications for policy design and implementation past studies document a strong positive correlation between the initial permit allocation and firm level emissions raising concerns that the independence property is failing to hold in real world settings we exploit the random assignment of firms to different permit allocation cycles in southern california s reclaim program in order to test the independence of permit allocation and emissions our results lend empirical support to the independence hypothesis

for better or for worse empirical evidence of moral licensing in a behavioral energy conservation campaign isolated environmental campaigns focusing on defined target behaviors are rolled out to millions of households every year yet it is still unclear whether these programs trigger cross domain adoption of additional environment friendly behaviors positive spillover or reduced engagement elsewhere a thorough evaluation of the real net performance of these programs is lacking this paper investigates whether positive or perverse side effects dominate by exemplifying the impact of a water conservation campaign on electricity consumption the study draws on daily water 10 780 data points and weekly electricity 1386 data points consumption data of 154 apartments in a controlled field experiment at a multifamily residence the results show that residents who received weekly feedback on their water consumption lowered their water use 6 0 on average but at the same time increased their electricity consumption by 5 6 compared with control subjects income effects can be excluded while follow up research is needed on the precise mechanism of the psychological process at work the findings are consistent with the concept of moral licensing which can more than offset the benefits of focused energy efficiency campaigns at least in the short term we advocate the adoption of a more comprehensive view in environmental program design evaluation in order to quantify and mitigate these unintended effects

willing consumers or locked in policies for a sustainable consumption postmodern explanations of consumer behaviour stress social and psychological factors to the neglect of explanations based on structural issues such as the working life conditions which favour a work and spend lifestyle the conditions of urban living or the effects of pervasive marketing this paper argues that consumers may not be so keen and willing but are rather locked in by circumstances some of these circumstances are deliberately created by other interests and a policy to limit consumption must look for adequate means over a large and varied field in the end shorter working hours may be an important key to a more sustainable future 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the paradox of water pricing dichotomies dilemmas and decisions we deliver a public policy perspective on the dichotomies dilemmas and decisions of water pricing first the dichotomies between price and value and costs are defined to explain the paradox of water pricing the price of water almost never equals its value and rarely covers its cost second the dilemmas of water pricing are highlighted across efficiency and equity objectives for water pricing and the instruments available to decision makers third the challenges of decision making are evaluated and illustrated in relation to water pricing fourth an adaptive process is provided that includes participatory assessment of risks and options to guide water pricing decision making

seller incentive properties of epa s emission trading auction abstract the new clean air act amendments instruct the environmental protection agency epa to conduct annual sealed bid offer auctions of emission allowances the auction pricing rules are discriminative and sellers with the lowest asking prices receive the highest bids this paper assesses the seller incentives of this auction and demonstrates that the auction rules cause sellers to choose asking prices that under reveal their cost of emission control furthermore increasing the number of sellers intensifies this misrepresentation if the number of buyers remains fixed the epa s rules can therefore generate significantly biased price signals and reduce the efficiency of the allowance trading market

factors that influence transaction costs in development offsets who bears what and why abstract environmental policy instruments generate transaction costs to public and private parties there is a growing literature reporting on the size of transaction costs produced by environmental policy instruments this paper extends that literature through an analysis of the factors that influence transaction costs in environmental policy and how this influence occurs the theory based factors that influence transaction costs are categorised as 1 transaction characteristics 2 transactor characteristics 3 nature of the institutional environment and 4 nature of the institutional arrangements we examined how these factors influenced transaction costs through the analysis of two australian based development offset schemes with different policy designs we found evidence of all four theory based categories of influence in the policy case studies the degree of influence and how each factor influenced transaction costs varies across the two policies and between parties policy design as a component of the institutional environment had a particularly large bearing on transaction costs of offset buyers and the policy administrator an important contribution to transaction cost theory assumes the institutional environment as given

optimal monetary policy and wage indexation under alternative disturbances and information structures the interdependence between the optimal degree of wage indexation and optimal monetary policy is analyzed for a small open economy under a variety of assumptions regarding 1 relative information available to private agents and the stabilization authority and 2 the perceived nature of the disturbances impinging on the economy the distinctions between 1 unanticipated and anticipated disturbances and 2 permanent and transitory disturbances are emphasized the extent to which stabilization is achieved is shown to depend upon the nature of the disturbances and the available information the policy redundancy issue is emphasized implying that optimal rules can frequently be specified in many equivalent ways copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

the effect of allowance allocations on cap and trade system performance abstractan implication of the coase theorem is that under certain conditions the market equilibrium in a cap and trade system will be cost effective and independent of the initial allocation of tradable rights that is the overall cost of achieving a given aggregate emission reduction will be minimized and the final allocation of permits will be independent of the initial allocation we call this the independence property this property is important because it means that the government can establish the overall pollution reduction goal for a cap and trade system by setting the cap and leaving it up to the legislature to construct a constituency in support of the program by allocating the allowances to various interests without affecting either the environmental performance of the system or its aggregate social costs we examine the conditions under which the independence property is likely to hold both in theory and in practice

using tradable water permits in irrigated agriculture the present paper examines both theoretically and empirically the environmental and economic benefits of introducing a policy to optimally manage groundwater used in irrigated agriculture and the efficiency potential of allowing trading of water permits we confirm the results appearing separately in the literature on optimal resource management and tradable permits that both tradable water permits and non tradable quotas provide the basic mechanism for sustainable water use and yield substantial economic benefits and that allowing trading of water permits improves efficiency in order to derive the above results we develop a discrete time model to realistically describe farmer s myopic behavior while using a continuous time model to describe optimal management we also incorporate into the analysis the economic effect of sea water intrusion in the aquifer and we estimate the cost of water overexploitation under myopic behavior the empirical part of the paper is based on simulations using data from an agricultural region in northern greece the main contribution of the paper is the introduction of heterogeneity in crops production and market characteristics we show that the more diverse are the crops in technology and market prices and the stricter is the water constraint the higher are the benefits from using a tradable water permit system

look at me saving the planet the imitation of visible green behavior and its impact on the climate value action gap abstract examining the regional distribution of 15 different greenhouse gas mitigation practices mps across australia we study the tendency for consumers to imitate visible pro environmental behavior in their local region while there is a great deal of variation in the specific type of mps adopted by consumers located in the same region anova results suggest that they tend to adopt a similar number of mps as their neighbours using discrete choice modelling our results suggest that this is due to the peer adoption of certain visible mps such as using public transport or car pooling encouraging agents to adopt other types of visible mps however the character of this spillover is limited in that visible pro environmental behavior does not appear to influence the adoption of non visible mps we also find that social imitation patterns help individuals overcome the observed gap between their stated concern about climate change and their propensity to act on this concern known as the climate value action gap policy implications for designing effective green nudges are discussed

not irrational but habitual the importance of behavioural lock in in energy consumption abstract a substantial body of literature has shown that our behaviour is often guided by habits the existence of habits not fully conscious forms of behaviour is important as it contradicts rational choice theory their presence thus calls for the setting of new instruments as they make it unlikely that consumers be capable of exercising control over their energy consumption in reaction to given incentives this is further increased in the evolutionary perspective where the current carbon based socio technical system constrains and shapes consumers choices through structural forces habits being potentially counterintentional they may explain the efficiency paradox in energy as well as the continued increase of energy consumption despite the rising environmental awareness among the population policies aiming at reducing energy consumption should thus specifically address the performance context of habits for instance targeting new residents has proven to be more effective given that their preceding habits have been disturbed the results of our empirical analysis confirm this idea by showing how a change of context makes people more receptive to a proposed measure our analysis of the role played by habits also suggests that individuals do not consider the need to change existing habits as an obstacle even though this is contradicted implicitly in the answers they provided to open questions this unconsciousness is one of the most delicate features of habits and it should thus be accounted for when designing measures given the other characteristics of habits the joint use of feedbacks and commitment strategies appears promising

beyond the economics of more the place of consumption in ecological economics abstract the relation between consumption and welfare generally assumed by orthodox economists must be re examined by ecological economists present attitudes towards consumption among the latter are often ambiguous resulting in a modified form of consumerism yet questioning the often dubious benefits of consumption is as important for the environmental debate as emphasising its neglected costs beyond basic needs satisfaction it is at most one s consumption level relative to others which counts for welfare so that benefits from consumption cannot be increased in the aggregate thus there is much scope for reducing consumption and thus environmental costs while increasing or maintaining welfare identifying those goods the consumption of which adds little or nothing to welfare and assessing the effect of reducing their consumption on resource use natural and human should be a major concern of an ecological economics aimed at promoting sustainable welfare

tradable permits and unrealized gains from trade with the advent of tradable permit programs for bad outputs e g so2 emissions concerns arose over whether the theoretical gains from trade would be realized we will employ a methodology that calculates the potential gains accruing to coal fired electric power plants from implementing a tradable permit program the magnitude of the potential gains in a plant s kilowatt hour output from a tradable permit program relative to its observed production provides insights into the existence of intertemporal allocative inefficiencies and spatial allocative inefficiencies after the implementation of a tradable permit program

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

public benefits private benefits and policy mechanism choice for land use change for environmental benefits the choice of policy mechanisms for encouraging environmentally beneficial land use change should depend on the relative levels of private or internal net benefits and public or external net benefits a map of recommended policy mechanisms is developed depending on the relative levels of these variables positive incentives negative incentives and extension need to be targeted carefully to appropriate projects where private net benefits are closer to zero and or public net benefits are more extremely positive or negative technology development is suggested where private net costs outweigh public net benefits no action is recommended for many potential projects

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

economic prescriptions for environmental problems how the patient followed the doctor s orders o ne of the dangers with ivory tower theorizing is that it is easy to lose sight of the actual set of problems which need to be solved and the range of potential solutions as one who frequently engages in this exercise i can attest to this fact in my view this loss of sight has become increasingly evident in the theoretical structure underlying environmental economics which often emphasizes elegance at the expense of realism in this paper i will argue that both normative and positive theorizing could greatly benefit from a careful examination of the results of recent innovative approaches to environmental management the particular set of policies examined here involves two tools which have received widespread support from the economics community marketable permits and emission charges pigou 1932 dales 1968 kneese and schultze 1975 both tools represent ways to induce businesses to search for lower cost methods of achieving environmental standards they stand in stark contrast to the predominant command and control approach in which a regulator specifies the technology a firm must use to comply with regulations under highly restrictive conditions it can be shown that both of the economic approaches share the desirable feature that any gains in environmental quality will be obtained at the lowest possible cost baumol and oates 1975 until the 1960s these tools only existed on blackboards and in academic journals as products of the fertile imaginations of academics however some countries have recently begun to explore using these tools as part of a broader strategy for managing environmental problems

technological diffusion and preference learning in the world of homo sustinens the challenges for politics abstract this article relates agents learning of a preference for a technology competition of technologies and their relative diffusion among potential adopters competitive interactions between two technologies are captured by an extended lotka volterra model to also incorporate preference learning on the part of potential adopters of these technologies we combine it with a model of cultural learning based on role model conformist and hedonistic learning our theoretical analysis is illustrated by a concrete example the competition between electric mobility and conventional forms of individual mobility the model enables an evaluation of specific policy instruments as to the promotion of sustainable technology

the market for sulfur dioxide emissions the 1990 clean air act amendments initiated the first large scale use of the tradable permit approach to pollution control the theoretical case for this approach rests on the assumption of an efficient market for emission rights the authors empirical analysis shows that the emission rights market created by the 1990 amendments had become reasonably efficient by mid 1994 they also show that the auctions specified in the amendments to jump start trading had become a small part of the overall market finally the authors demonstrate that the strategic bidding behavior discussed in the literature has had no effect on market prices copyright 1998 by american economic association

transaction costs and tradeable permits abstract tradeable permit systems are at the center of current interest and activity in market based reforms of environmental policy because these systems can offer significant advantages over conventional approaches to pollution control unfortunately claims made for their relative cost effectiveness have often been exaggerated transaction costs which may be significant in these markets reduce trading levels and increase abatement costs in some cases equilibrium permit allocations and hence aggregate control costs are sensitive to initial permit distributions providing an efficiency justification for politicians typical focus on initial allocations

the value of environmental status signaling how much are consumers willing to pay to signal their environmental consciousness we identify the signaling value of an environmental public good by focusing on hybrid cars and exploiting the physical uniqueness of the toyota prius relative to hybrids that look identical to their non hybrid counterparts we deploy a quasi experimental hedonic model to estimate this willingness to pay we find that controlling for observable and unobservable factors the prius commands an environmental signaling value of 587 or 4 5 of its value our research provides lessons for economists and policymakers and contributes to the literature on identifying signaling values

analysis of prices in tradable emission markets an empirical study of the regional clean air incentives market in los angeles the regional clean air incentives market is an emissions trading programme which is expected to help in reducing oxides of nitrogen and sulphur from stationary sources in the los angeles area this paper uses econometric techniques to determine the factors that can explain the development of the price of emission permits by controlling for various characteristics of the trades the regression results allow one to isolate the impact of each factor and conduct a detailed analysis of the implications of this factor on price the results show that the price of permits is affected by institutional factors such as the trading rules and regulations governing the permit programme the permits are priced higher in the coastal zone higher for trades recorded in 1997 as compared to 1994 or 1995 and are affected by the trader category brokers are involved in well over half of the trades and have acquired a substantial inventory of permits facilities buying from brokers pay higher prices than if they buy from ano

economic performance through time prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 9 1993 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

improving environmental decisions a transaction costs story abstract a multidisciplinary team of researchers made efforts to influence the design and implementation of environmental policy in australia a focus of these efforts was the development of the investment framework for environmental resources inffer in addition the team undertook a range of communication activities training user support and participation in committees and enquiries transaction costs were relevant to these efforts in a variety of ways environmental managers perceived inffer to involve relatively high transaction costs a balance was struck between the system having simplicity and low transaction costs and delivering environmental benefits transaction costs were factored into the planning and prioritisation processes developed for example public and private transaction costs are accounted for in the calculation of benefit cost ratios and in the choice of policy mechanisms there are diverse roles that transaction costs play in the processes of developing implementing and influencing environmental policy programmes a key observation is that appropriate strategic investment in transaction costs can improve decisions and increase net benefits from an environmental programme a well designed decision process can involve incurring transaction costs at one stage in order to save transaction costs at a later stage

2006 presidential address water markets in the west prices trading and contractual forms rising urban and environmental demand for water has created growing pressure to reallocatewaterfromtraditionalagriculturaluses theevolutionofwatermarketshas beenmorecomplicatedthanthoseforotherresources inthispaper wefirstexplainthese differences by examining water rights and regulatory issues second we place our research in the context of the economics literature on water marketing third we present new comprehensive data on prices and the extent nature and timing of water transfers across 12 western states from 1987 to 2005 we find that prices are higher for agriculture to urban trades versus within agriculture trades in part reflecting the differences in marginal values between the two uses prices for urban use are also growing relative to agricultural use markets are responding in that the number of agriculture to urban transactions is rising whereas the number of agriculture to agriculture transfers is not further there is a shift from using shortterm leases to using multiyear leases of water and permanent sales of water rights this pattern underscores the need to consider the amounts of water obligated over time rather than examining only annual flows in assessing the quantities of water traded as is the common practice in the literature considering water obligated over time termed committed water we find significantly more is transferred and the direction of trading is different than if the focus is on annual flows finally the data reveal considerable variation in water trading across the states jel q2 n5 l5 k3

the political economy of pollution markets historical lessons for modern energy and climate planners this article explores some of the central economic and political problems with the use of tradable permits to solve environmental problems drawing from transaction cost economics political economy and market theory it does so by looking at the history of three programs for curbing pollution in the united states the clean air act the leaded gasoline phase out and water permits in wisconsin the article begins by briefly summarizing the history of each of these programs before looking at a host of challenges related to political compromises in program design transaction costs spatial distortions such as geographic sensitivity and wrong way trading of credits temporal distortions such as the episodic nature of pollution and volatility of market prices and market abuses these concerns are raised with an eye for how historical experience may inform the current debate about how to design effective market mechanisms to respond to climate change and other forms of energy related environmental degradation

fishing quota markets abstract in 1986 new zealand responded to the open access problem by establishing the world s largest individual transferable quota itq system using a 15 year panel dataset from new zealand that covers 33 species and more than 150 markets for fishing quotas we assess trends in market activity price dispersion and the fundamentals determining quota prices we find that market activity is sufficiently high in the economically important markets and that price dispersion has decreased we also find evidence of economically rational behavior through the relationship between quota lease and sale prices and fishing output and input prices ecological variability and market interest rates controlling for these factors our results show a greater increase in quota prices for fish stocks that faced significant reductions consistent with increased profitability due to rationalization overall this suggests that these markets are operating reasonably well implying that itqs can be effective instruments for efficient fisheries management

public transaction costs of agri environmental schemes and their determinants analysing stakeholders involvement and perceptions despite an overall budget increase for rural development in the new programming period 2007 2013 most older member states in the now expanded european union are facing a substantial reduction in their budget for rural development and thus for agri environmental schemes aess it can be assumed that in most countries none or at best only part of this loss can be offset by national funds therefore the design of more efficient national governance structures for aess which decrease public transaction costs tcs would be an appropriate solution to this problem the objective of this paper is to define the factors that influence these public tcs so that appropriate action can then be taken to reduce them a statistical analysis with a proxy for public tcs is combined with an analysis of stakeholder perceptions excluding farmers concerning public tc influencing factors the research showed that it is mainly scheme related factors that are perceived to be important although the governance structure institutional environment and level of trust also play a role finally the analysis of perceptions concerning tcs also showed that aes related actors have a limited knowledge of tcs

the market for preferences learning processes are widely held to be the mechanism by which boundedly rational agents adapt to environmental changes we argue that this same outcome might also be achieved by a different mechanism namely specialisation and the division of knowledge which we here extend to the consumer side of the economy we distinguish between high level preferences and low level preferences as nested systems of rules used to solve particular choice problems we argue that agents while sovereign in high level preferences may often find it expedient to acquire in a pseudo market the low level preferences in order to make good choices when purchasing complex commodities about which they have little or no experience a market for preferences arises when environmental complexity overwhelms learning possibilities and leads agents to make use of other people s specialised knowledge and decision rules

how vulnerable is the emissions market to transaction costs an abms approach abstract the impact of transaction costs on the early emissions trading market is examined by applying an agent based model and simulation abms approach for a realistic model set up bounded rationality stochastic characteristics and learning by doing are considered in our search processes marginal abatement cost parameters are obtained from yoo et al 2010 which is an experimental study on the emissions trading in the korean power sector sensitivity analyses are performed on market performance indices with regard to transaction cost parameters which represent scales and the learning elasticities of transaction costs a total of 960 simulations were run in this sensitivity analysis sensitivity analysis results consistently show that higher transaction costs worsen market performance the most remarkable finding in these results is that welfare performance of all the transactions decreases by up to 50 as the scale parameters of transaction costs increase implying that welfare gain from introducing emissions trading disappears significantly however with learning curve effect welfare performance could be regained by up to 26 in sum although transaction costs significantly encroach upon trade gains at the early stage based on our simulation results the welfare loss by way of transaction costs is lessened as the knowledge of market participants progresses

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis the term common property resource is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one it is also used for property owned by a community of resource users such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis in this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user to claimant to proprietor and to owner we apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the maine lobster industry

what do emissions markets deliver and to whom evidence from southern california s nox trading program a perceived advantage of cap and trade programs over more prescriptive environmental regulation is that enhanced compliance flexibility and cost effectiveness can make more stringent emissions reductions politically feasible however increased compliance flexibility can also result in an inequitable distribution of pollution we investigate these issues in the context of southern california s reclaim program we match facilities in reclaim with similar california facilities also located in non attainment areas our results indicate that emissions fell approximately 24 percent on average at reclaim facilities relative to our counterfactual furthermore we find that observed changes in emissions do not vary significantly with neighborhood demographic characteristics

bringing water markets down to earth the political economy of water rights in chile 1976 1995 abstract for 15 years chile has been the leading international example of pro market policies for water resources and its 1981 water code has recently been touted as a model for other countries to follow water markets are controversial in both theory and practice their potential benefits include greater efficiency and flexibility of water use and less state intervention and expenditure while their drawbacks include social and environmental externalities vulnerability to high transactions costs and other common examples of market failure no country has taken the experiment as far as chile since its water code privatized water rights reduced state administration and attempted to stimulate a free market in water rights the results have been mixed and uneven the lesson of the chilean case is that setting up water markets is harder and more complicated than it may seem even in the fairly simple arena of irrigation transfers

sequestration offsets versus direct emission reductions consideration of environmental co effects abstract atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation and consequential temperature increase can be remedied by emission reductions or agricultural carbon sequestration both options have direct and external environmental effects this paper examines the magnitudes of existing estimates of corresponding external co effects and how they could affect optimal combination of emission reductions and agricultural carbon sequestration we discuss whether government intervention in the form of taxation subsidization is justified for internalizing the externalities considering their relative magnitudes implementation costs and potential benefits that could be derived from such intervention we conclude that the existing estimates of external benefits from sequestration and emission reduction do not provide enough support for allocating resources to alter the market mix of carbon sequestration and direct emission reduction strategies

transaction costs collective action and adaptation in managing complex social ecological systems abstract with the escalating uncertainties and surprises faced in responding to environmental and natural resource challenges has come growing recognition of the need to manage such issues as social ecological systems and value the capacities that enable adaptation to these changes adaptations in environmental management often involve complex including wicked problems of collective action institutions introduced to reduce the transaction costs of solving these problems do not come for free a cost effectiveness framework designed to provide a comprehensive and logical structure for economic evaluation of path dependent institutional choices in this context and a procedure for boundedly rational empirical application of the framework are proposed and illustrated in this article including for the choice between water buy back and infrastructure upgrade programmes for accumulating the environmental water needed to sustain the ecosystems of australia s murray darling basin also outlined is a research strategy designed to help identify the heuristics needed for application of this procedure

monetary policy and the information content of prices rational expectations and cleared markets lead to the proposition that feedback monetary policy is irrelevant to real activity as in the analyses of sargent and wallace however if agents are differentially informed and have access to a common price then prospective monetary policy actions future feedback to imperfectly known current circumstances can alter real activity by changing the information content of prices

transaction costs risk aversion and the choice of contractual arrangements publisher summary this chapter discusses transaction costs risk aversion and the choice of contractual arrangements every transaction involves a contract and the transactions conducted in the marketplace entail outright or partial transfers of property rights among individual contracting parties the contractual arrangements through which these transfers are negotiated are several and varied the chapter presents a theory that states that economic efficiency is the same under various land tenure arrangements subject to the constraint of private property rights although transaction costs exist in the real world the theory enables the understanding of much of the farming behavior however the presence of a variety of contractual arrangements under the same constraint of competition poses the question of the choice of these arrangements if a firm can increase efficiency in production by employing productive resources of more than one resource owner a contract to combine the resources will be obtained the formation of the contract involves partial transfers of property rights in one form or another such as leasing hiring or mortgaging

do transaction costs influence firm trading behaviour in the european emissions trading system this study is one of the first to empirically investigate firm trading behaviour and the importance of permit trading transaction costs such as information costs and search costs in the first phase of the european union s emissions trading system eu ets the signs and significance of our constructed transaction costs proxy variables indicate for a presence of these costs in the initial years of the eu ets in particular this paper shows that ets firms with the smaller number of installations and with less trading experience were less likely to participate in the european emissions trading market and traded the lower quantities of permits furthermore these firms chose to trade permits indirectly via third parties this study also supports the concerns that transaction costs could be excessive for smaller participants and firms operating in the new eu member states

on the economics of sustainability abstract the purpose of this paper is to work toward reconciliation of the neoclassical consumer choice axiom that more is better and the ecological concern that more is not sustainable the key is to divide the desired more into its rival and nonrival components for it is the consumption of rival goods such as plastic that strains the ecosystem in contrast the consumption of nonrival goods such as bird watching leaves little to no footprint while sustainability can be enhanced through changing preferences a menu of taxes subsidies and or vouchers can also motivate greater nonrival consumption and therefore sustainability without reducing consumer welfare

conspicuous conservation the prius halo and willingness to pay for environmental bona fides abstract this paper develops a theory of conspicuous conservation a phenomenon related to conspicuous consumption in which individuals seek status through displays of austerity amid growing concern about environmental protection we identify a statistically and economically significant conspicuous conservation effect in vehicle purchase decisions and estimate a mean willingness to pay for the green signal provided by the distinctively designed toyota prius in the range of 430 4200 depending upon the owner s location results are related to the growing literature on green markets and suggest that policy should target less conspicuous conservation investments that will be under provided relative to those that confer a status benefit

transaction costs power and multi level forest governance in indonesia since 2005 there has been considerable international interest in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd a program intended to finance protection of tropical forests through the sale of carbon offsets or from donor funding requiring the collaboration of local and international civil society stakeholders firms and donor and host governments redd is inherently a multi level governance project but to date participation in redd and coordination across governmental levels have been weak combining literature on multi level and polycentric governance of socioecological systems with transaction cost economics we argue that transaction costs structure cross level information sharing and collaboration relationships among organizations engaged in redd policy development at the national and provincial levels in indonesia using an exponential random graph modelling approach with data collected from interviews with over 80 organizations between 2010 and 2012 we find that powerful organizations tend to dominate cross level connections though this effect is somewhat mediated by organizational similarity which reduces transaction costs we suggest that explicit efforts to help local organizations overcome the transaction costs of building cross level relationships will be a central component of building an effective and equitable multi level governance system for redd in indonesia

an experimental investigation of the seller incentives in the epas emission trading auction the clean air act requires the epa to conduct annual auctions of emission allowances under the discriminative auction rules sellers with the lowest asking prices receive the highest bids this paper studies an inverted version of this auction in which buyers face the same incentives as sellers in the epa auction consistent with theoretical predictions buyers bid above their valuation auction outcomes are inefficient and increasing the number of buyers increases bids buyers facing human opponents compete more aggressively than the risk neutral prediction but bids do not differ systematically from this prediction when buyers face computerized nash robots copyright 1995 by american economic association

influences of transaction costs in environmental policy abstract there is a growing literature reporting the extent of transaction costs for environmental policies however understanding why transaction costs occur and why they are small or large is also important for efficient policy selection and evaluation following an analysis of the organisational economics literature and reports of the extent of transaction costs for a number of environmental policies three key influences to transaction costs in environmental policies are identified these are the following 1 the characteristics of the transaction for the environmental good 2 the nature of the transactors and 3 the current institutional environment and arrangements these affect transaction costs to the government and all other parties influenced by a policy transaction costs occur due to actions of information collection and policy design policy enactment and establishment implementation and contracting administration and monitoring and enforcement an interrogation of transaction cost influences reveals that 1 the influence varies between parties and is affected by the actions and interactions of and between all parties to a policy 2 how transaction costs are experienced varies across time and 3 who experiences transaction costs depends on the policy itself future policy selection and refinement will benefit from empirical analysis of the causes of transaction costs

the effects of neighbour influence and cultural consumption on separate waste collection theoretical framework and empirical investigation abstract separate waste collection swc is a policy priority for eu countries this work investigates the effect of neighbour influence and cultural consumption on municipal swc with a twofold focus first it outlines a simple theoretical framework where the motivations underlying pro environmental behaviours are influence by neighbour effects and cultural consumption second it tests the theoretical results implementing a quantile regression on italian municipal data for 2012 the results confirm that neighbours influence each other while different cultural goods produce different effects these findings indicate that the cultural policy may play a relevant role in tackling environmental issues

designing more efficient markets lessons from los angeles smog control market based approaches for environmental protection are beginning to take root around the world this article attempts to improve our understanding of the performance of environmental markets by constructing and evaluating an information base on trades in los angeles which includes the first detailed data on trading prices the analysis suggests that trading activity has been shaped by the detailed regulations governing the market in addition transaction costs have played a crucial role we argue that the move toward adopting market based approaches for environmental protection needs to be accompanied by a vigorous effort to assess the properties of these systems as they are actually implemented

socio technical inertia understanding the barriers to electric vehicles it is widely accepted that electrification of the transport sector is one of several technological trajectories that could redress some of the environmental issues associated with the growth in travel demand including climate change and oil demand at a global scale and air quality and noise pollution at the urban scale electric vehicles have been considered a promising technology at repeated intervals over the last century but this promise has not been realised this paper is a contribution to understanding the key tools and strategies that might enable the successful introduction of new technologies and innovations by exploring the key barriers to electric vehicles encountered in two countries uk and germany where the automobile industry has been historically significant the study evaluates stakeholders opinions on relevant regulation infrastructure investment r d incentives and consumer incentives the key findings of the research are that the introduction and penetration of evs is confronted by several barriers that inhibit a larger market penetration under current conditions which in turn casts doubt on the assumptions of strategic niche management and transitions theory

a tale of two water markets in australia lessons for understanding participation in formal water markets water markets are promoted as a demand management strategy for addressing water scarcity although there is an increasing literature on the institutional preconditions required for successful formal water markets there has been less focus on understanding what drives participation after establishment of the basic enabling conditions participation can be measured in terms of either trading activity conducting either a permanent or temporary water trade and or trade volumes across time and market products australia s water markets in the southern and northern basins of the murray darling basin provide a notable example of a tale of two water markets offering insights about the economic policy levers that can drive participation across different hydrological irrigation and socioeconomic contexts key lessons include distribution of initial property rights in resource allocation the need to prepare for and seize opportunities to strengthen property rights and robust monitoring and compliance requirements all of which will reduce transaction costs and increase participation