market approval of phytosanitary active substances in europe an empirical duration analysis abstract the aim of this paper is to analyze empirically the main determinants of delays to market approval of active substances in europe an interesting feature of this regulation is that it is based on both a decentralized examination by the rapporteur country and a centralized examination by the european food safety authority efsa our econometric analysis is based on standard survival and competing risks models the data cover 393 active substances reviewed between 1993 and 2013 we show that the review process is affected by regulatory factors the characteristics of the active substances and the characteristics of agri chemical firms log logistic and log normal survival models are the preferred parametric specifications and the results suggest that the hazard function is non monotonic over time

north south standards harmonization and international trade recent years have seen a surge in economic integration agreements eias and the development of non tariff measures ntms as a consequence a growing number of eias include provisions on ntms however little attention has been given in the literature to the effects of ntm liberalization in the context of eias in this paper we focus on provisions for technical regulations and analyze whether the north south harmonization of technical barriers affects international trade using a gravity equation it tests whether as a result of the deep integration associated with standards provisions included in the eia the southern partners trade expands with the north but at the expense of their trade with non bloc southern partners empirical results provide strong support for this conjecture moreover harmonization on the basis of regional standards negatively impacts the exports of developing countries to the north

a note on cost share equilibrium and owner consumers the contributions of j farrell econ letters 19 1985 303 306 and a mas colell and j silvestre j econ theory 47 1989 239 256 have studied the implications of two unanimity principles when a firm is owned by the consumers interestingly both approaches lead to what j e roemer and j silvestre the proportional solution for economies with both public and private ownership mimeo university of california davis 1991 call proportional allocations we compare these approaches and analyze how well they serve as equilibrium foundations for proportional allocations in a nutshell the conclusion is that farrell s unanimity principle is simpler than mas colell and silvestre s but assuming that the cost function is convex the latter always works i e equilibrium exists and yields proportional allocations while the former may not equilibrium may not exist in other words proportional allocations may not be supportable as equilibria

on measures of excess burden and their application abstract new measures of the additional excess burden of a tax reform are proposed and are shown to be useful in three key policy applications these new measures induce a unique measure of marginal excess burden meb among its interesting properties meb is uniformly zero for a proportional tax on inelastically supplied labor problems in applying the standard measures of total excess burden are demonstrated it is concluded that the induced measure of the marginal cost of funds mcf should be regarded as the most useful concept in applied tax analysis

is there an energy efficiency gap many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous win win opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money this overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy using capital stock with two types of market failures first uninternalized externalities from energy consumption and second forces such as imperfect information that cause consumers and firms not to exploit privately profitable energy efficiency investments the model clarifies that only if the second type of market failure cannot be addressed directly through mechanisms such as information provision energy efficiency subsidies and standards may be merited this chapter therefore reviews the empirical work on the magnitude of profitable unexploited energy efficiency investments a literature which frequently does not meet modern standards for credibly estimating the net present value of energy cost savings and often leaves other benefits and costs unmeasured these problems notwithstanding recent empirical work in a variety of contexts implies that on average the magnitude of profitable unexploited investment opportunities is much smaller than engineering accounting studies suggest finally there is tremendous opportunity and need for policy relevant research that utilizes randomized controlled trials and quasi experimental techniques to estimate the returns to energy efficiency investments and the welfare effects of energy efficiency programs

is the wto passe the wto has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements ptas should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand off where the wto has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage and is now passing the baton to ptas to finish the job this paper surveys a growing economics literature on international trade agreements and argues on this basis that the wto is not passe rather and subject to some caveats this survey of research to date suggests that the wto warrants strong support while a more cautious view of ptas seems appropriate

implementation of ururguay round commitments the development challenge at the uruguay round developing countries took on unprecedented obligations not only to reduce trade barriers but to implement significant reforms both of trade procedures e g import licensing procedures customs valuation and of many areas of regulation that establish the basic business environment in the domestic economy e g technical sanitary and phytosanitary standards sps intellectual property law implementing such reforms are investment decisions in that implementation will require purchase of equipment training of people establishment of systems of checks and balances etc this will cost money and the amounts of money involved are substantial based on world bank project experience in the areas covered by the agreements an entire year s development budget is at stake in many of the least developed countries least developed country institutions in these areas are weak and would benefit from strengthening and reform however the authors analysis indicates that the world trade organization wto obligations reflect little awareness of development problems and little appreciation of the capacities of the least developed countries to carry out the functions that sps customs valuation intellectual property etc regulations address the content of these obligations can be characterized as the advanced countries saying to the others do it my way the authors touch at the beginning on another important point because of their limited capacity to participate in the uruguay round negotiations the wto process has generated no sense of ownership of the reforms to which wto membership obligates them from their perspective the implementation exercise has been imposed in an imperial way with little concern for what it will cost how it will be done or if it will support their development efforts this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the hotspots reference routes and research trends of marginal abatement costs a systematic review abstract as one of the most effective means of evaluating environmental policies marginal abatement costs macs have been adopted in a growing body of research this study characterizes the mac related literature from 1993 to 2018 on web of science based on a systematic review bibliometric analysis and mind mapping the results classify the research hotspots into influential factors methods and empirical applications the three most frequently mentioned influential factors are technical change discount rates and energy prices compared with top down models bottom up models including engineering model and expert based method are the most widely used improvements in the former focus on strengthening market behavior effect while those in the latter aim to overcome the weaknesses of negative costs and lack of interaction across measures mac applications focus on environmental policies with two new research areas recently emerging co benefits and sectoral abatement costs furthermore a reference route is proposed by summarizing the applicability of methods and matching relationships among influential factors methods and empirical problems finally potential research directions are summarized based on the identified research hotspots and a similar co word analysis in marginal cost field such as considering the effects of both multiple influential factors and the interaction among factors on maccs

the impact of regulations on agricultural trade evidence from the sps and tbt agreements according to world trade organization rules countries may adopt regulations under the agreements on sanitary and phyto sanitary sps and technical barriers to trade tbt we analyze the structure of these measures in agricultural trade the inventory approach suggests that european countries have among the lowest coverage ratios of all oecd countries using a gravity equation we also estimate their stringency our results suggest that they significantly reduce developing countries exports to oecd countries but do not affect trade between oecd members furthermore european imports are more negatively influenced by sps and tbts than imports of other oecd countries

revisiting the effects of regional trade agreements on trade flows with proper specification of the gravity model this paper uses a gravity model to assess ex post regional trade agreements the model includes 130 countries and is estimated with panel data over the period 1962 1996 the introduction of the correct number of dummy variables allows for identification of vinerian trade creation and trade diversion effects while the estimation method takes into account the unobservable characteristics of each pairs of trade partner countries the endogeneity of some of the explanatory variables as well as a potential selection bias in contrast to previous estimates results show that regional agreements have generated a significant increase in trade between members often at the expense of the rest of the world

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

disguised protectionism and linkages to the gatt wto member states of the gatt wto have linked some issue areas outside trade to the institution and did so with varying depths at the same time they have chosen not to link other issue areas what accounts for this variation the author argues that states establish a legalized linkage between the gatt wto and an issue area outside it when they are uncertain about the possibilities of disguised protectionism such uncertainty exists under two conditions when diversity in regulations in an issue area across states generates a large adverse impact on trade negative externalities but that diversity can be justified at the international level for 1 having an independent objective apart from hampering trade and 2 when there are few alternative policies to achieve that objective legitimacy states establish a highly legalized linkage in these situations to reduce the uncertainty and minimize disguised protectionism by contrast when regulatory diversity exhibits low legitimacy states establish only a weakly legalized linkage in the absence of meaningful externalities they do not establish any linkages the author evaluates this argument in two ways he provides an overview of eleven issue areas about which there have been some debates or conflicts about linkages to the gatt wto in addition he carries out in depth case studies of three issue areas labor standards environmental standards and health safety standards the findings of this article contribute to a better understanding of international institutions and cooperation as well as of the evolution of the multilateral trade institution

an assessment of environmentally related non tariff measures international trade can affect the environment in different ways this may justify the introduction of border measures by the importing countries in addition to various dispositions in the gatt gats trips agreements as well as in the agreement on agriculture this issue is regulated by the agreements on technical barriers to trade tbt and on the application of sanitary and phyto sanitary standards sps despite these rules abuse of environmental arguments for protectionist reasons remains an open issue in order to disentangle protectionism from dispositions justified on the grounds of true environmental concerns we systematically review notifications of sps and tbts by importing countries at the tariff line level trade is considered as being potentially affected when an environmental sps tbt is notified on grounds of environmental concerns affected trade is defined as imports by countries notifying such barriers protectionist use of environmental barriers is likely when only a limited number of countries impose an environmental obstacle on the imports of a given product considering data for 2001 we find that 88 per cent of the value of world trade is in products potentially affected by such measures while 39 per cent of the value of world imports is potentially subject to a protectionist use of such measures agriculture the automobile industry the pharmaceutical industry and many other sectors are concerned

the social cost of carbon and its policy implications the shadow price or social cost of carbon is an important indicator of the global incremental damage done by emitting greenhouse gases today cost benefit analysis would set the optimal amount of greenhouse gas emission reduction at the point where this social cost just equals the incremental cost of controlling emissions the higher the value for the social cost of carbon the more control is warranted this comparison assumes that cost benefit analysis is the correct way of determining climate change policy and many believe this is not the case because of the very long term irreversible and potentially catastrophic nature of global warming but in the short run at least a comparison of cost and benefits is required and in any event all decisions imply costs and benefits but what is the right figure for the social cost of carbon this paper reviews the uk government s assessment of the cost and concludes that it has been set far too high because of a misreading of the integrated assessment models used to balance costs and benefits moreover adoption of the uk government s shadow price would have formidable implications for energy policy in the uk and for policies on afforestation copyright 2003 oxford university press

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

climate change adaptation a study of fuel choice and consumption in the us energy sector abstract using cross sectional data this paper estimates a national energy model of fuel choice by both households and firms consumers in warmer locations rely relatively more heavily on electricity rather than natural gas oil and other fuels they also use more energy climate change will likely increase electricity consumption on cooling but reduce the use of other fuels for heating on net american energy expenditures will likely increase resulting in welfare damages that increase as temperatures rise for example if the us warms by 5 c by 2100 we predict annual welfare losses of 57 billion

determinants of households space heating type a discrete choice analysis for german households abstract considering the increasing attention on efficient use of energy it becomes vitally important to understand the energy related behavior of households this article presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the space heating technology applied by a household three sets of variables are examined as potential influences building socio economic and regional characteristics to highlight both the differences and similarities the results are obtained from a sample of house owners and from a sample including all households the influence of socio economic factors is similar across these groups income is found to exert only a minor impact on the system choice dwelling features are significant in determining the heating type particularly in the sample including all households regional effects are important clear differences prevail between east and west germany

can public private partnerships leverage private investment in agricultural value chains in africa a preliminary review summary public private partnerships ppps may be one way of increasing the level of private sector investment into poorly performing agricultural value chains this paper considers a range of ppp mechanisms that respond to different market failures affecting such chains and draws on principal agent theory to illustrate the challenges it reviews emerging experience with a number of these mechanisms along with experience from other sectors that may shed light on generic problems of implementing ppps in africa while finding some positive impacts on investment it notes that state failures can also undermine ppp effectiveness as the evidence base is still limited it calls on organizations promoting innovative ppps to disclose available information for critical examination

non tariff measures specific trade concerns and tariff reduction this paper studies the determinants of the recent proliferation of specific trade concerns raised at the wto on non tariff trade measures ntms with a focus on sanitary and phytosanitary sps and technical barriers to trade tbts even though ntms are imposed de jure to protect consumers from unhealthy products they increase trade costs de facto so when tariff protection lowers ntms become effective barriers to trade and the exporting countries can complain at the dedicated committee at the wto stcs therefore we study whether stcs are raised by exporting countries as a consequence of tariff reductions in importing countries that is when non tariff measures become barriers to trade using a recent database on stcs over the period 1996 2010 we find empirical evidence that sps and tbt concerns are raised by exporting country as a consequence of importer s tariff cut

greenhouse gas abatement cost curves of the residential heating market a microeconomic approach in this paper we develop a microeconomic approach to deduce greenhouse gas abatement cost curves of the residential heating sector our research is based on a system dynamics microsimulation of private households investment decisions for heating systems to the year 2030 by accounting for household specific characteristics we investigate the welfare costs of different abatement policies in terms of the compensating variation and the excess burden we investigate two policies i a carbon tax and ii subsidies on heating system investments we deduce abatement cost curves for both policies by simulating welfare costs and greenhouse gas emissions to the year 2030 we find that i welfare based abatement costs are generally higher than pure technical equipment costs ii given utility maximizing households a carbon tax is the most welfare efficient policy and iii if households are not utility maximizing a subsidy on investments may have lower marginal greenhouse gas abatement costs than a carbon tax

product quality and sustainability the effect of international environmental agreements on bilateral trade this paper addresses the impact of sustainability in production on international trade in particular it examines the effect of the international tropical timber agreement itta on tropical timber trade the empirical analysis is based on a gravity equation in a difference in difference setting which is estimated by a panel heckman s selection model this accounts for the potentially systematic selection of trading partners into timber trade activity we then conduct a comprehensive comparative static analysis solving the structural gravity model with and without the itta this allows us to determine the trade impact of an itta induced increase in sustainability for participating as well as for third countries we find that countries participating in the itta exhibit a significant and substantial increase in trade intensity ranging from 4 to 6 furthermore we observe that this effect is more pronounced for smaller member countries non itta countries are confronted with reduced tropical timber flows

harmonisation and globalisation of intellectual property culture this paper explores the relationship between the two sides of intellectual property culture in an international context namely the harmonisation of its protection and the globalisation of its creation to this end we explore the role of intellectual property rights ipr protection in the recent surge in the internationalisation of patents that originates from the newly emerging economies the aim is to capture the outreach of the northern intellectual property culture to the south and the south north globalisation of the resulting intellectual property that emerges in the south global bilateral patent data are used to investigate the location specificity of ipr enforcement for the emergence of this phenomenon we find that the harmonisation of ipr protection encourages foreign patenting activities of southern innovators our findings suggest that a global convergence of ipr protection can stimulate the production and the internationalisation of intellectual property in the south as the north and the south grow closer in terms of levels of development a harmonised institutional structure becomes more adequate as they increasingly share similar markets

the role of private standards for manufactured food exports from developing countries summary the relevance of non tariff barriers for global trade flows has increased in recent decades however the effect of food standards as a particular important non tariff measure on agricultural trade flows remains unclear we contribute to the debate with a unique dataset that contains the number of food processing firms of 87 countries from 2008 to 2013 that are certified with the international featured standard ifs we estimate a gravity model using the one year lag of ifs as well as ifs certification in neighboring countries as an instrument to address potential endogeneity we find that ifs increases c p bilateral exports on average of seven agricultural product categories in both specifications however the effect remains robust only for high and middle income countries and disappears for low income countries hence while ifs increases exports on average low income countries do not benefit in terms of higher export volumes moreover once we separate the dataset by sector the trade enhancing effect remains for bakery dairy and beverage sectors only overall we argue that food standards are not a suitable development tool to integrate low income countries into high value chains per se

environmental taxes with heterogeneous consumers an application to energy consumption in france abstract this paper constructs a model with four groups of households who have preferences over labor supply consumption of polluting energy related and non polluting non energy goods and emissions it quantifies the model for the french economy and computes its optimal tax equilibria under nine second best tax regimes we find that the redistributive role of environmental taxes requires the polluting goods to be taxed at a rate much below their marginal social damage these goods may even require an outright subsidy if the society values equality a lot secondly if environmental taxes that have an exclusively externality correcting role they benefit all types although the gains are rather modest the gains and losses become more substantial when environmental taxes have a redistributive role as well third setting the environmental tax at its pigouvian level rather than its optimal externality correcting cum redistributive level benefits the high income group at the expense of the low income groups fourth nonlinear taxation of polluting goods and nonlinear commodity taxation in general is a powerful redistributive mechanism fifth introducing environmental taxes in the current french tax system with its suboptimal income taxes results in substantial welfare gains for the highest income group and a sizable loss for the least well off persons

a dynamic analysis of human welfare in a warming planet anthropogenic greenhouse gas ghg emissions have caused atmospheric concentrations with no precedents in the last half a million years inducing serious uncertainties about future climates and their effects on human welfare recent climate science supports the view that the climate stabilization will require very low ghg emissions in the future we ask is a path of low emissions compatible with sustainable levels of human welfare with steady growth in human quality of life addressing these questions requires both defining welfare criteria and empirically estimating the possible paths of the economy we specify and calibrate a dynamic model with four intertemporal links education physical capital knowledge and the environment in line with nordhaus 2008a and with the stern review 2007 we assume that ghg emissions allow increased production while a higher stock of atmospheric carbon decreases production our index of human welfare which we call quality of life quol emphasizes education knowledge and the environment affected by greenhouse gas emissions in addition to consumption and leisure thus we avoid a consumptionist fallacy that welfare depends only on commodity consumption and perhaps leisure we reject discounted utilitarianism as a normative criterion and consider two alternatives the first is an intergenerational maximin criterion which maximizes the quality of life of the first generation subject to maintaining at least that level for all successive generations the second is human development optimization that seeks the maximization of the quol of the first generation subject to achieving a given constant rate of growth in all subsequent generations hence our analysis focuses on a human notion of sustainability as opposed to the conventional green sustainability limited to keeping the quality of the environment constant because our dynamic optimization programs defy explicit analytical solutions our approach has been computational as a benchmark we consider a simple model with physical and human capital for which we prove a turnpike theorem we then devise a computational algorithm inspired by the turnpike property to construct feasible although not necessarily optimal paths in the more complex and realistic model our analysis indicates that with ghg emission paths entailing very low emissions in the future positive rates of growth in quol are possible while the first generation experiences a quol higher than the historical reference level we also observe a tradeoff between the quality of life of the first generation and the rate of growth in the quality of life yet generation 1 s sacrifice for the sake of a higher growth rate appears to be small the paths that we compute involve investments in knowledge at noticeably higher levels than in the past

on the cost effectiveness of national economy wide greenhouse gas emissions abatement measures abstract this paper explores cost effective greenhouse gas abatement options for the european union member state of cyprus for those sectors of the national economy that are not subject to the european emissions trading system the analysis leads to the construction of a baseline and several alternative marginal emission abatement cost curves it addresses all economic sectors and considers all different types of mitigation measures improving energy efficiency switching to low or zero carbon fuels and inducing behavioural change towards public transport modes we apply nationally appropriate data that are mainly derived from local market information and judgement of national experts finally we present results of several sensitivity analyses which address main shortcomings of marginal abatement cost curves that have been identified in the literature and discuss the policy implications of each one of them apart from its relevance for eu member states this assessment is useful for all countries seeking guidance in their decarbonisation strategies

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

can agricultural traders be trusted evidence from coffee in ethiopia summary traditional food marketing systems in developing countries are often not trusted in consequence policy makers frequently try to regulate them and modern marketing arrangements are increasingly emerging to address some of their presumed deficiencies however it is unclear how trustworthy these markets actually are the purpose of this study is to look at these issues in the case of coffee marketing in ethiopia coffee markets in ethiopia present an interesting case study due to the high price and quality differentiation linked to a number of both easily and not so easily observable characteristics moreover modern marketing practices such as modern retail branding and packaging are becoming increasingly common in ethiopia s urban coffee markets when we define and examine trustworthiness in the addis ababa coffee market as a function of weights and quality we find that traditional traders are relatively trustworthy on observable quality characteristics and weights however there is a consistent pattern of over representation of not so easily verifiable quality characteristics we further find that modern marketing outlets or formats including modern domestic retail and branded packaged products deliver higher quality at a higher price but are not more trustworthy than traditional marketing arrangements in terms of these dimensions of trade transactions

quantification of sanitary phytosanitary and technical barriers to trade for trade policy analysis this paper presents promising methodologies for modeling and quantifying non tariff barriers ntb to trade in the agricultural and food sectors we limit the analysis to sanitary phytosanitary and technical regulations that can have an impact on trade and to methods that provide some quantitative estimates of the impact of such barriers on market equilibrium trade flows economic efficiency and welfare given the heterogeneous nature of these regulations a unifying methodology does not exist quantification of the effects of such measures has focused on a particular product and has relied on methods that belong to different fields of the economic literature we provide a concise description and evaluation of the various methods available for a more comprehensive assessment of the impact of ntbs on trade and welfare we conclude by identifying promising areas for future applied research

the impact of sanitary and phytosanitary measures on market entry and trade flows in an attempt to disentangle the impact of sanitary and phytosanitary sps measures on trade patterns we estimate a heckman selection model on the hs4 disaggregated level of trade we find that aggregated sps measures constitute barriers to agricultural and food trade consistently to all exporters but conditional on market entry trade flows are positively affected by sps measures additionally we find that sps measures related to conformity assessment hamper market entry and trade flows while sps measures related to product characteristics pose an entry barrier but increase bilateral trade flows conditional on meeting the standard

the development of private fresh produce safety standards implications for developing mediterranean exporting countries integration into global markets offers the potential for more rapid growth and poverty reduction for poorer countries however market barriers within advanced economies to agricultural imports have made it harder for developing countries to take full advantage of this opportunity this article examines the impact of increasing demands for food safety and quality by european food retailers and how the fundamental structure and culture of supplier organisations required by european retail chains are a major entry barrier for developing mediterranean fresh produce exporting countries and for developing countries in general the long term solution for such countries to sustain an international demand for their products lies in structural strategic and procedural initiatives that build up the trust and confidence of importers retailers in the quality and safety assurance mechanisms for their produce

assessing the benefits of trade facilitation a global perspective this paper estimates the relationship between trade facilitation and trade flows using a panel of disaggregated manufactured goods for the 2000 2001 period for 75 countries four categories of trade facilitation are defined measured and assessed for their impact on bilateral trade flows using a gravity model the four measures of trade facilitation are port infrastructure air and maritime customs environment regulatory environments and e business infrastructure the results suggest that raising global capacity halfway to the world average in the four areas would increase trade by 377 billion most regions of the world increase exports more than imports in large part this result stems from increased exports to oecd markets that is obtained through a country s own effort to improve ports customs regulations and services infrastructures in addition the results suggest that reform and capacity building in trade facilitation in areas related to gatt articles v viii and x that are under discussion at the world trade organisation could expand trade and exports significantly many of the reform measures necessary to achieve this goal need not necessarily require large scale investment projects but rather action in legal and administrative reform to facilitate trade

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

policy strategies and paths to promote sustainable energy systems the dynamic invert simulation tool the european union has established a number of targets regarding energy efficiency renewable energy sources res and co2 reductions as the green paper on energy efficiency the directive for promotion of the use of bio fuels or other renewable fuels for transport or directive of the european parliament of the council on the promotion of cogeneration based on a useful heat demand in the internal energy market a lot of the according res and rue measures are not attractive for investors from an economic point of view therefore governments all over the world have to spend public money to promote these technologies measures to bring them into market these expenditures have to be adjusted to budget concerns and should be spent most efficiently therefore the spent money has to be dedicated to technologies and efficiency measures with the best yield in co2 reduction without wasting money the core question how can public money for promoting sustainable energy systems be spent most efficiently to reduce ghg emissions has been well investigated by the european project invert in course of this project a simulation tool has been designed to answer this core question this paper describes the modelling with the invert simulation tool and shows the key features necessary for simulating the energy system a definition of promotion scheme efficiency is given which allows estimating the most cost effective technologies and or efficiency measures to reduce co2 emissions investigations performed with the invert simulation tool deliver an optimum portfolio mix of technologies and efficiency measures for each selected region within invert seven european regions were simulated and for the austrian case study the detailed portfolio mix is shown and political conclusions are derived

would economic democracy decrease the amount of public bads the general argument of those who believe that economic democracy decreases the amount of public bads is that with economic democracy the people would make decisions rather than a small class of capitalists an attempt is made to evaluate and analyze this argument several possibilities emerge and the situation is found to be more subtle than implied by this popular argument copyright 1993 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

evaluating the trade restrictiveness of phytosanitary measures on u s fresh fruit and vegetable imports empirically assessing sanitary and phytosanitary regulations has proven difficult because most data sources indicate whether a regulation exists but provide no information on the type or importance of the respective measure in this article we construct a novel database of u s phytosanitary measures and match these to 47 fresh fruit and vegetable product imports from 89 exporting countries over the period 1996 2008 a product line gravity equation that accounts for zero trade flows is developed to investigate the trade impact of different pest mitigation measures while the results suggest that phytosanitary treatments generally reduce trade the actual restrictiveness of these measures diminishes dramatically as exporters accumulate experience and it vanishes when exporters reach a certain threshold the results have important policy implications considering the number of empirical studies that find a negative impact of non tariff measures on trade copyright 2013 oxford university press

import restrictions in the presence of a health risk an illustration using fmd we present a simple model linking infection risk from imports to a tariff the risk causes the exporter of the infected product to face a higher tariff than would otherwise be the case a numerical example is developed for u s beef imports from nations with foot and mouth disease fmd the additional tariffs are sensitive to the specification of risk and the expected magnitude of loss due to an fmd outbreak for a low risk of importing fmd the tariffs levied against the exporter of fmd infected beef are not prohibitive but become so as the risk or expected output loss rises

to spray or not to spray pesticides banana exports and food safety how governments regulate food safety and environmental protection including pesticide residue levels has important implications for trade the world trade organization wto ministerial held in doha qatar in november 2001 included statements on standards and their impact on market access for developing countries these issues will continue to be important in trade policy dialogues it is assumed and evidence from recent analysis confirms that food safety standards can affect the ability of agricultural producers to meet regulatory standards set by importing countries the authors explore a fundamental question in food safety and environmental standards do regulations on pesticide have an effect on trade they examine regulatory data from 11 oecd importing countries and trade data from 19 exporting countries the results suggest that a 10 percent increase in regulatory stringency tighter restrictions on the pesticide chlorpyrifos leads to a decrease in banana imports by 14 8 percent this represents a significant impact on trade and affect prospects of developing countries who continue to rely on exports of agricultural commodities such as bananas the findings also suggest that the lack of consensus on international standards and divergent national regulations on pesticides is costly for example the authors estimate that if the world were to adopt a standard at a level of regulatory stringency suggested by codex the body charged with setting global standards in this area in contrast with one set at the level in place in the european union there would be a u s 5 3 billion loss in world exports

models of technology diffusion abstract the literature on new technology diffusion is vast and it spills over many conventional disciplinary boundaries this paper surveys the literature by focusing on alternative explanations of the dominant stylized fact that the usage of new technologies over time typically follows an s curve the most commonly found model which is used to account for this model is the so called epidemic model which builds on the premise that what limits the speed of usage is the lack of information available about the new technology how to use it and what it does the leading alternate model is often called the probit model which follows from the premise that different firms with different goals and abilities are likely to want to adopt the new technology at different times in this model diffusion occurs as firms of different types gradually adopt it there are actually many ways to generate an s curve and the third class of models which we examine are models of density dependence popularized by population ecologists in these models the twin forces of legitimation and competition help to establish new technologies and then ultimately limit their take up finally we look at models in which the initial choice between different variants of the new technology affect the subsequent diffusion speed of the chosen technology such models often rely on information cascades which drive herd like adoption behaviour when a particular variant is finally selected

technical regulations and specialization in international trade abstract it is widely acknowledged that while technical regulations can improve welfare and facilitate markets they can also impede trade the trade impeding effects of technical regulations are especially worrisome for developing countries they frequently lack the human and capital resources necessary to satisfy technical measures and thus are more likely to be excluded from markets by technical measures this paper uses highly disaggregated us data on agricultural mining and manufacturing imports to examine the impact of technical regulations on trade patterns using instrumental variables estimation to correct for the potential endogeneity of technical regulations the analysis suggests that technical regulations substantially impinge on poor countries exports their weaker capacities to satisfy technical regulations lead them to specialize away from industries with heavier regulatory burdens

taxpayer consumers and public pricing abstract public ownership may be viewed as a device to allocate control rights over a firm s prices in a democratic manner we analyze pricing when the public firm is controlled by majority voting and losses are covered by income taxation if median and mean income coincide marginal cost pricing is selected otherwise a ramsey style pricing rule obtains

saving two in a billion quantifying the trade effect of european food safety standards on african exports abstract a growing concern over health risks associated with food products has prompted close examination of sanitary and phytosanitary standards in industrialized countries this paper quantifies the impact of a new harmonized aflatoxin standard set by the eu on food exports from africa we employ a gravity model to estimate the impact of changes in differing levels of protection based on the eu standard in contrast to those suggested by international standards the analysis is based on trade and regulatory survey data for 15 european countries and nine african countries between 1989 and 1998 our results suggest that the implementation of the new aflatoxin standard in the eu will have a negative impact on african exports of cereals dried fruits and nuts to europe the new eu standard which would reduce health risk by approximately 1 4 deaths per billion a year will decrease these african exports by 64 or us 670 million in contrast to regulation set through an international standard

regionalism in standards good or bad for trade regional agreements on standards have been largely ignored by economists and unconditionally blessed by multilateral trade rules the authors find theoretically and empirically that such agreements increase trade between participating countries but not necessarily with the rest of the world adopting a common standard in a region that is harmonization boosts exports of excluded industrial countries to the region but it reduces exports of excluded developing countries possibly because developing country firms are hurt more by an increase in the stringency of standards and benefit less from economies of scale in integrated markets mutual recognition agreements are more uniformly trade promoting unless they contain restrictive rules of origin in which case intra regional trade increases at the expense of trade with other especially developing countries the authors propose a modification of international trade rules to strike a better balance between the interests of integrating and excluded countries

how wrong can you be implications of incorrect utility function specification for welfare measurement in choice experiments despite the vital role of the utility function in welfare measurement the implications of working with incorrect utility specifications have been largely neglected in the choice experiments literature this paper addresses the importance of specification with a special emphasis on the effects of mistaken assumptions about the marginal utility of income monte carlo experiments were conducted using different functional forms of utility to generate simulated choices multi nomial logit and mixed logit models were then estimated on these choices under correct and incorrect assumptions about the true underlying utility function estimated willingness to pay measures from these choice modeling results are then compared with the equivalent measures directly calculated from the true utility specifications results show that for the parameter values and functional forms considered a continuous quadratic or a discrete linear attribute specification is a good option regardless of the true effects the attribute has on utility we also find that mistaken assumptions about preferences over costs magnify attribute mis specification effects

informal barriers and agricultural trade does monetary integration matter eu enlargement and the recent sovereign debt crisis of euro zone countries have revived the debate around the european monetary union emu in this article we ask how informal barriers to agricultural and food trade have changed since the introduction of the common european currency and whether this evolution can be attributed to monetary integration we focus on the foreign trade of the 11 emu founder countries over a nine year period covering the creation of the emu and find a diminishing marginal trade impact of both information and institutional barriers we find a lower level of trade barriers but cannot attribute this outcome to the introduction to the euro

interest groups trade liberalization and environmental standards in considering a country that imposes a minimum standard on an imported polluting good which generates negative consumption externalities we construct a common agency model in which a domestic environmental group and a foreign industrial lobby can influence the formation of the minimum standard by providing political contributions to the government this paper investigates the effects of trade liberalization on the political equilibrium environmental standard the pattern of trade environmental disutility and social welfare we find that trade liberalization tightens the minimum standard decreases imports of the polluting good and reduces environmental disutilities the importing country s social welfare however does not necessarily increase with trade liberalization the weaker the environmental group s lobbying efficiency or the stronger the foreign firm s lobbying efficiency the more likely it is that trade liberalization will enhance the importing country s welfare

the marginal efficiency effects of taxes and subsidies in the presence of externalities a computational general equilibrium approach abstract using 1983 data we develop a 19 sector computational general equilibrium model incorporating producer producer externalities and producer consumer externalities simulation results indicate that when additional government expenditure is financed by pigouvian taxes the marginal cost of public funds is substantially below one labor sales and output taxes also affect the output of the polluting industries and thus have indirect pigouvian effects which tend to reduce the associated marginal costs of public funds pigouvian taxes are usually more efficient than pigouvian subsidies since the tax revenue can be used to reduce other taxes

a discrete choice equilibrium approach to valuing large environmental changes abstract this study develops a discrete choice locational equilibrium model to evaluate the benefits of the air quality improvements that occurred in the los angeles area following the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa the discrete choice equilibrium approach accounts for the fact that air quality improvements brought about by the 1990 caaa will change housing choices and prices the study also provides new evidence for the distributional welfare impacts of the 1990 caaa in the los angeles area findings suggest that the air quality improvements that occurred in the los angeles area between 1990 and 2000 provided substantial general equilibrium benefits to households the analysis reveals noticeable differences between partial and general equilibrium welfare gains demonstrating that ignoring equilibrium effects will likely misrepresent the benefits of large environmental changes in addition we find that the equilibrium welfare impacts of the 1990 caaa in the los angeles area varied significantly across income groups