international bargaining in the presence of global environmental change this model deals with the greenhouse effect that is to say with a problem of international pollution through a description of the bargaining process it aims to determine the different forms that may be taken by cooperation agreements between the countries involved we demonstrate in particular that under some conditions it is always possible for the countries to reach an agreement such agreements are the work of a group of so called leader countries characterized by their commitment in favour of cooperation these leader countries use transfers to induce other countries to join them but they can be insufficiently attractive to convince all the countries to cooperate so as we show in the discussion the cooperation is not necessarily total therefore the key of a common problem can be a partial cooperation and not necessarily a common cooperation

renewable natural resource management and use without markets natural resources by their nature are not readily bent to the status of private property efficient resource use is complicated by jurisdictional externalities public goods non use values and beneficiaries spatially separated from the location of resources the task is made more challenging by ecological complexity that obscures cause benefits and effects costs and dramatic time lags between individual actions and subsequent social consequences that together with substantial uncertainty introduce the chance of irreversibilities resource economists have played a major role in the literature on externalities the development of individual transferable quotas non market valuation techniques and common property management

negotiating an agreement on global warming a theoretical analysis abstract the outcome of international negotiation on combatting global warming is derived and analyzed using a two country bargaining model it is shown that while side payments between countries will generally be part of an agreement some of these payments are made purely as a result of asymmetry in bargaining power and have nothing to do with the polluter pays principle or the victim pays principle factors affecting the outcome of negotiation include a country s size of population the welfare level at the disagreement point and the order of making offers the enforcement issue is also discussed

the biodiversity supergame this paper considers the ability of developed countries to sustain a cooperative agreement to compensate developing countries for the incremental costs of biodiversity conservation it is shown that depending on certain parameter values and the model specification such an agreement could only codify the non cooperative outcome or achieve the full cooperative outcome where global net benefits are maximized however where the agreement can sustain the full cooperative outcome net benefits will be only slightly larger than in the noncooperative outcome

financing the provision of global public goods this paper examines the concept of global public goods gpgs and in that context explores the extent of aid oda presently being diverted to gpg provision and whether such diversion skews aid flows towards some recipients and whether diverting aid to gpg provision crowds out aid for conventional development activities these are examined on the basis of oecd data for the late 1990s the main argument of this paper is that oda should not be used for financing gpg provision by developing countries instead it is suggested that other sources of financing the provision of gpgs should be developed keeping in view the various technologies by which the gpgs can be produced and design principles for supra national institutions various arguments from sandler barrett and kanbur are considered in particular kanbur s suggestion of two tensions involving the principles of economies of scale subsidiarity economies of scope and specialization is explored further some examples of issues where a gpg is produced as a joint product of actions by national governments are considered by looking at data on eight different indicators for 1995 problems in using the joint product approach to gpg provision are also discussed

international trade and environmental quality a survey abstract international trade has been incorporating various aspects of environmental issues since 1970 the extent to which environmental problems might affect many facets of trade or vice versa has been the subject of considerable debate over these years in this article we have attempted to establish some of the links between international trade and environmental quality by performing a comprehensive literature review we discuss issues such as establishing direct and indirect effects of international trade on environmental quality effects of trade on economic development environmental quality and energy and their relation with each other and finally the role of governments and international organizations in this context studies have so far revealed some linkages between trade and environment through conventional trade theory however interactions between international trade and types of pollution their sink and assimilative capacity need to be analyzed using a general equilibrium approach currently very little knowledge and agreement on the nature of interactions between trade theories development process and environmental quality exist existing studies have shown that the structure of environmental regulations should be modified to reflect the existence of trade under imperfect competition therefore further research on the interaction between new trade theory and environmental regulation is needed also theoretical and quantitative analysis regarding the effects of environmental regulations on competitiveness and location decision is needed the intensity and type of environmental measures vary across issues and countries therefore harmonizing environmental measures creates an inefficient atmosphere and to assume that trade restrictions will either improve or reverse the environmental damages is a serious mistake given the dynamic and intricate nature of the problem trade and environment debate continues despite vast research and poses a challenge for researchers and policy makers in the foreseeable future

the economics of the greenhouse effect the recognition that economic activity is contributing to climatic change with attendant costs that may be of large magnitudes has set in motion a substantial research effort this paper seeks to review the contribution of economics to analysis of the greenhouse effect and to the policies and instruments suggested as means of mitigating its damage a brief overview of the causes and consequences of global warming is given and a number of energy economy forecasting models are examined as the costs of global warming depend upon the extent to which preventative and adaptive measures are undertaken the techniques available to evaluate these costs are surveyed we examine extant targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction and explore the frameworks within which optimal policy targets can be designed the paper also considers the narrower question of minimized abatement costs and surveys the types of models used to estimate them the merits of alternative policy instruments are examined paying particular attention to the role that risk and uncertainty and the costs of monitoring and implementation of policy under conditions of imperfect information may play in the choice of instruments problems of international co operation in the development of abatement policy are examined and we consider the compensations across both nations and generations that are likely to be necessary conditions for effective action

management of transnational commons coordination publicness and treaty formation this paper focuses on the formation of treaties to manage transnational commons when efforts must be coordinated among a minimal sized group so as to make cooperation worthwhile by focusing on mixed strategy equilibria we are con cerned with instances where the intentions of others are uncertain the number of required participants the pattern of payoffs transaction costs and the underlying technology of public supply aggregation are key factors behind the achievement of coordina tion we apply our analysis to explain the outcome of negotiations on stratospheric ozone depletion global warming acid rain and tropical deforesta tion jel q20 d70

environmental consciousness and moral hazard in international agreements to protect the environment abstract a group of countries that can potentially commit to cooperation to protect the environment are identified as environmentally conscious countries conditions are examined under which they can provide self financing side payments too a second group of less environmentally conscious countries so that the two groups form a global or partial stable coalition that agrees to reduce emissions a mechanism that detects cheating is also developed in order to induce the desired emissions even when the emissions level of an individual country cannot be observed by the rest of the participating countries

the problem of global environmental protection what distinguishes global common property problems and global unidirectional externalities from the ones that arise under a single jurisdiction is that there is no global authority empowered to intervene and regulate use of global environmental resources cooperation is needed the paper discusses when cooperation is most needed and how it might be obtained cooperation might emerge from a noncooperative setting if supergames are played if the actions of any one country are explicitly contingent on the actions undertaken by other countries or if moral concerns lead countries to consider the consequences of their actions for others cooperation emerges in an explicit though limited form when countries commit to regulate themselves in signing international agreements in these cases the signatories cooperate but the agreements are self enforcing an attempt is made to relate these theoretical concepts to the practice of global environmental protection copyright 1990 by oxford university press

the assessment reforming environmental regulation in the uk quired in the light of new but highly uncertain scientific evidence research was initiated and as a result a series of largely ad hoc objectives and targets were adopted through a process of political negotiation thus the ukis now committed through a variety of international agreements to reduce emissions of sulphur dioxide by 60 per cent of their 1980 levels by the year 2003 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to their 1990 levels by the year 2000 and more vaguely to maintain biodiversity and sustainable development european directives on bathing beaches on drinking water and on urban waste water treatment required a major investment programme in water and sewage treat ment with the further commitment to end sewage dumping at sea by 1998 added to this programme substantial and sustained real increases in the price of water services to customers became necessary

carbon pricing and deep decarbonisation abstract experts frequently point to carbon pricing as the most cost effective tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions empirical studies show that carbon pricing can successfully incentivise incremental emissions reductions but meeting temperature targets within defined timelines as agreed under the paris agreement requires more than incremental improvements it requires achieving net zero emissions within a few decades to date there is little evidence that carbon pricing has produced deep emission reductions even at high prices while much steeper carbon prices may deliver greater abatement political economy constraints render their feasibility doubtful an approach with multiple instruments including technology mandates and targeted support for innovation is indispensable to avoid path dependencies and lock in of long lived high carbon assets we argue that carbon pricing serves several important purposes in such an instrument mix but also that the global commitment to deep decarbonisation requires acknowledging the vital role of instruments other than carbon pricing

technological change efficiency gains and capital accumulation in labour productivity growth and convergence an application to the spanish regions the main objective of this article is to analyse labour productivity growth and convergence in the spanish regions between 1965 and 1995 decomposing total factor productivity gains into technological progress and efficiency change by means of malmquist productivity indices on the basis of this decomposition labour productivity growth is broken down into components attributable to technological change shifts in the frontier efficiency gains movements toward the frontier and capital accumulation movements along the frontier the approach followed in this study is based on work initiated by fare et al where a link between the economic growth and convergence literature and the production frontier approach was established furthermore in the spirit of quah s approach the evolution of the whole distribution is considered thus the analysis of the dynamics of the entire distribution of labour productivity and the factors behind it technological progress efficiency gains and capital accumulation

how elastic is calorie demand parametric nonparametric and semiparametric results for urban papua new guinea this article seeks further evidence on the elasticity of calorie demand with respect to household resources the case presented is for urban areas of papua new guinea where just over one half of the population appear to obtain less than the recommended amount of dietary energy the relationship between per capita calorie consumption and per capita expenditure in urban areas of papua new guinea is not consistent with the view that income changes have negligible effects on nutrient intakes the unconditional calorie demand elasticity is approximately 0 6 for the poorest half of the population using parametric and semiparametric estimation to control for a wide range of other influences on calorie consumption does not materially reduce the size of the elasticity therefore these results are not supportive of growth pessimism and instead suggest that policies that increase urban household incomes will also act to reduce undernutrition

carbon leakage from unilateral environmental tax reforms in europe 1995 2005 abstract studies of the effects of the kyoto protocol have shown carbon leakage typically from tax and permit schemes with lump sum revenues recycling to be in the range of 5 20 using static computable general equilibrium models however in practice researchers have found that carbon leakage from the implementation of the eu ets is unlikely to be substantial because transport costs local market conditions product variety and incomplete information all tend to favour local production this study investigates potential carbon leakage from six eu member states mss that implemented environmental tax reform etrs unilaterally over the period 1995 2005 the study uses the large scale multisectoral integrated energy environment economy e3 model of 27 european countries energy environment economy model of europe e3me to undertake a dynamic comparative analysis to assess any carbon leakage effects over the longer term 1995 2012 a counterfactual reference case is constructed assuming that the six countries did not introduce etrs then alternative scenarios are developed to assess the effects of the etrs including effects on co2 emissions for the eu25 economies most mss recorded a reduction in co2 emissions when comparing the baseline case to the reference case the results show that carbon leakage is very small and in some cases negative due to technological spillover effects

technology and firm size wage differentials in colombia mexico and taiwan china in many economies studies have found large wage differentials not accounted for by workforce characteristics collective bargaining or market power researchers attribute these differentials to either unobserved worker quality or pay incentives designed to elicit worker effort this article finds empirical support for an alternative explanation these wage differentials result from firms technology generating activities using firm level data from colombia mexico and taiwan china the article compares the effects of research and development worker training and exports by employers on the wages of skilled and unskilled workers the results suggest that technology investments lead to large wage premiums for skilled workers but not for unskilled workers these wage premiums are primarily the result of investments in research and development and in training while exporting is relatively less important except in colombia

on the efficiency of green trade policy the paper derives conditions for second best environmental policy when there are foreign countries which fail to implement appropriate environmental regulations it is shown that in such cases efficiency in the global economy will not be achieved unless domestic environmental regulations are supplemented by trade provisions the result is independent of whether environmental problems are local or international furthermore when trade provisions are implemented efficiency requires that domestic environmental taxes are fixed at the pigouvian tax rate the results imply that there is an economic rationale for regulating the trade between signatories and non signatories of international environmental agreements efficient trade regulations will either take the form of trade restrictions or trade promotions depending on whether the environmental problem is created by production or consumption activities and whether the net import of the relevant commodity is positive or negative it is argued that an efficient climate agreement signed by a group of fuel importing countries e g the oecd countries should include a subsidy on the import of fossil fuels

ftt power a global model of the power sector with induced technological change and natural resource depletion abstract this work introduces a model of future technology transformations for the power sector ftt power a representation of global power systems based on market competition induced technological change itc and natural resource use and depletion it is the first component of a family of sectoral bottom up models of technology designed for integration into the global macroeconometric model e3mg itc occurs as a result of technological learning produced by cumulative investment and leads to highly nonlinear irreversible and path dependent technological transitions the model uses a dynamic coupled set of logistic differential equations as opposed to traditional bottom up energy models based on systems optimisation such differential equations offer an appropriate treatment of the times and structure of change involved in sectoral technology transformations as well as a much reduced computational load resource use and depletion are represented by local cost supply curves which give rise to different regional energy landscapes the model is explored for a single global region using two simple scenarios a baseline and a mitigation case where the price of carbon is gradually increased while a constant price of carbon leads to a stagnant system mitigation produces successive technology transitions leading towards the gradual decarbonisation of the global power sector

production of chlorofluorocarbons in anticipation of the montreal protocol anticipation of an international environmental agreement provides an incentive for countries to change their production behavior prior to negotiations in order to gain a favorable bargaining position increased historical production figures at the time of negotiations may influence the magnitude of the baseline from which cutbacks will be specified in this paper we empirically measure the magnitude of

altruism and global environmental taxes a global externality like the ghg emissions leading to climate change are both due to free riding at the individual level as well as the government level a government aiming to maximise domestic social welfare may make individuals internalise the damage within their country but will free ride on the damage caused to other countries only a global cooperative solution could internalise global damage entirely if individuals have altruistic concern for others but continue to believe that their consumption is negligible relative to the total they will not change their behaviour however this paper shows that in a multi country setting the global equilibrium levels of consumption for both the non cooperative and cooperative solutions are affected by altruism the key results are a that non cooperative governments maximising domestic welfare will internalise some of the damage inflicted on other countries depending on the level of altruistic concern individuals have and b the cooperative global optimum also changes as altruism leads individuals to effectively experience damage in other countries as well as the direct damage to them since altruistic concern for others may vary across countries global welfare then becomes a function of the relative levels of altruistic concern between countries

an economic and environmental assessment of future electricity generation mixes in japan an assessment using the e3mg macro econometric model abstract in this paper we consider future options for japanese energy and climate policy we assess the economic and environmental impacts of changing the share of electricity generated by nuclear power and varying the mid term ghg targets the quantitative approach we use is based on the global macro econometric e3mg model our analysis reveals that the cost of denuclearisation to japanese gdp is close to zero and for employment the impact is slightly positive our results also show a double dividend effect if revenue neutral carbon taxes are levied in order to meet the ghg reduction targets and this double dividend effect is largest in the scenarios without nuclear power however our analysis suggests that a very high carbon tax rate would have to be imposed in order to achieve a 25 reduction in ghg emissions in 2020 compared to 1990 levels while simultaneously phasing out nuclear power

collective action in an asymmetric world abstract a central authority possessing tax and expenditure responsibilities can readily provide an efficient level of a public good absent a central authority voluntary arrangements must replace coercive ones and significant under provision must be expected international public goods are particularly challenging due to the substantial asymmetries among nations small interest nations have strong incentives to ride cheaply our empirical results reveal cheap riding intentions in providing for climate change mitigation a critical international public good the evidence is provided by individual nations intended nationally determined contributions voluntarily pledged for the paris climate change conference we find that larger nations made much larger pledges in proportion to both their gross national incomes and their historical emissions implications for the nordhaus climate club and carbon tax proposals are discussed to achieve pareto optimality despite disparate cheap riding incentives we propose the cheap riding efficient equilibrium that solution takes the nash equilibrium as a base point and then applies the principles of either the nash bargaining solution or the lindahl equilibrium to proceed to the pareto frontier

nonparametric regression techniques in economics this introduction to nonparametric regression emphasizes techniques that might be most accessible and useful to the applied economist the paper begins with a brief overview of the class of models under study and central theoretical issues such as the curse of dimensionality the bias variance trade off and rates of convergence the paper then focuses on kernel and nonparametric least squares estimation of the nonparametric regression model and optimal differencing estimation of the partial linear model constrained estimation and hypothesis testing is also discussed empirical examples include returns to scale in electricity distribution and hedonic pricing of housing attributes

the econometric analysis of models with risk terms summary in this paper we have attempted to provide an integrated approach to the estimation of models with risk terms it was argued that there exist orthogonality conditions between variables in the information set and higher order moments of the unanticipated variable density these could be exploited to provide consistent estimators of the parameters associated with the risk term specifically it was recommended that an iv estimator should be applied with instruments constructed from the information set four existing methods commonly used to estimate models with risk terms are examined and applications of the techniques are made to the estimation of the risk term in the us c exchange market and the effects of price uncertainty upon production

interior matching equilibria in a public good economy an aggregative game approach abstract if the equilibrium generated by a matching mechanism is to be the desired pareto optimal outcome it is necessary for every player to be at an interior solution at that equilibrium using the aggregative game approach developed by cornes and hartley 2003 2007 this paper analyzes the conditions under which matching mechanisms in a public good economy lead to interior matching equilibria at which all agents make strictly positive flat contributions to the public good in particular we show that the distribution of income among the agents is crucial for both the existence of interior matching equilibria and warr neutrality in the case of matching

the dynamics of technology diffusion and the impacts of climate policy instruments in the decarbonisation of the global electricity sector this paper presents an analysis of climate policy instruments for the decarbonisation of the global electricity sector in a non equilibrium economic and technology diffusion perspective energy markets are driven by innovation path dependent technology choices and diffusion however conventional optimisation models lack detail on these aspects and have limited ability to address the effectiveness of policy interventions because they do not represent decision making as a result known effects of technology lock ins are liable to be underestimated in contrast our approach places investor decisionmaking at the core of the analysis and investigates how it drives the diffusion of low carbon technology in a highly disaggregated hybrid global macroeconometric model ftt power e3mg ten scenarios to 2050 of the electricity sector in 21 regions exploring combinations of electricity policy instruments are analysed including their climate impacts we show that in a diffusion and path dependent perspective the impact of combinations of policies does not correspond to the sum of impacts of individual instruments synergies exist between policy tools we argue that the carbon price required to break the current fossil technology lock in can be much lower when combined with other policies and that a 90 decarbonisation of the electricity sector by 2050 is affordable without early scrapping 2014 the authors published by elsevier ltd this is an open access article under the cc by license

international cooperation for sale abstract this paper shows that strong asymmetry among countries warrants a change in the rules of the game of global public goods provision with the consequence that cooperation by some countries is bought by others and aggregate welfare is increased perhaps substantially side payments on their own have virtually no effect on the outcomes that can be sustained by self enforcing cooperative agreements but when the rules of the game are changed by strong asymmetry when some countries are effectively committed to being non signatories to an agreement eschewing money transfers side payments become the vehicle for increasing participation in a cooperative agreement

bilateral or multilateral bargaining in the face of global environmental change this model deals with the problem of the greenhouse effect a problem of transfrontier pollution it consists of determining through the description of a bargaining process the conditions under which it is preferable for the developing countries to speak with a united voice and those conditions under which it is preferable for them to negotiate separately one from the other in particular it is shown that the agreements arising from the bargaining cannot be equitable and for that reason they include only a limited number of countries

optimal taxation global externalities and labor mobility this paper concerns transboundary environmental problems in the context of an optimal tax model we assume that part of the labor force is mobile across countries and that the set of tax instruments includes a nonlinear income tax and a commodity tax on the dirty good that is causing damage to the environment the purpose is to compare the globally optimal second best policy of a cooperative equilibrium with the policy implicit in a noncooperative equilibrium we show that the commodity taxes differ between equilibria because of i transboundary externalities not internalized by national governments ii interaction effects between environmental and other policies and iii labor mobility

bretton woods blueprint for a greenhouse gas agreement abstract this paper describes the remarkable parallels between the problems faced in the drafting of the 1944 bretton woods agreement which established the rules and institutions governing the international financial system and the problems faced in drafting a greenhouse gas agreement the parallels include the need to induce countries to sacrifice economic sovereignty in order to provide a public good the need to facilitate capital investment and provide adjustment loans to be fair to developing versus developed nations to offer technical assistance monitor behavior punish offenders and promote a globally efficient allocation of resources it is claimed that between them the organizations which emerged from the bretton woods agreement namely the imf gatt and world bank have the necessary attributes of the needed global atmospheric control agency furthermore it is argued that there are striking parallels between the reserve accounts at the imf and the crediting and debiting of greenhouse gas emissions and absorptions between special drawing rights sdrs and rights for greenhouse gas emissions as well as in numerous other characteristics the paper concludes by noting that the almost half century of influence of the bretton woods institutions suggests we might borrow from their charters organizational designs membership incentives and procedures for adaptation and change

the co2 abatement game costs incentives and the enforceability of a sub global coalition abstract this paper studies the economic incentives and the institutional issues governing the outcomes of a short term climate change policy package guided by the united nations framework convention on climate change and the berlin mandate initiatives game theoretic tools and the global trade environment interface are explored within a 26 region 13 commodity computable general equilibrium framework to characterize the incentives of oecd regions to comply with a non binding agreement in a carbon abatement coalition the results showed that in the absence of side payments the achievement of such a coalition might require the design of suitable trade instruments

nonparametric and semiparametric methods for economic research abstract developments in the vast and growing literatures on nonparametric and semiparametric statistical estimation are reviewed the emphasis is on useful methodology rather than statistical properties for their own sake some empirical applications to economic data are described the paper deals separately with nonparametric density estimation nonparametric regression estimation and estimation of semiparametric models

the impacts of the trade liberalization of environmental goods on power system and co2 emissions abstract the trade liberalization of environmental goods eg through as environmental goods agreement ega is crucial in low carbon electricity technology diffusion however there is a big gap of the eg definition lists and the integrated effectiveness analysis of ega this paper analyses the effects of the trade liberalization of eg based on macroeconomic and electricity sector models and attempts to find a more efficient eg trade policy by comparing different eg lists considering end use control and combining the eg policy with a carbon tax the results show that the trade liberalization of eg does not necessarily benefit the environment without other policies as the effects of the multiple end uses of eg on conventional energy might result in environmental damage we find that merging an ega into a global carbon tax system would enhance the effects of carbon tax on co2 reduction by 33 and simultaneously lower the gdp loss due to the carbon tax by 75 the economic benefits from the ega could offset the costs of other environmental policies thus end use control and other environmental policies should be considered at both the global and regional levels in the setting of international trade agreements that target eg

count data models with variance of unknown form an application to a hedonic model of worker absenteeism we examine an econometric model of counts of worker absences due to illness in a sluggishly adjusting hedonic labor market we compare three estimators that parameterize the conditional variance least squares poisson and negative binomial pseudo maximum likelihood to generalized least squares gls using nonparametric estimates of the conditional variance our data support the hedonic absenteeism model semiparametric gls coefficients are similar in sign magnitude and statistical significance to coefficients where the mean and variance of the errors are specified ex ante in our data coefficient estimates are sensitive to a regressor list but not to the econometric technique including correcting for possible heteroskedasticity of unknown form

conditional cooperation and climate change it is widely believed that international cooperation can arise through strategies of reciprocity in this paper we investigate whether citizens in the united states and 25 other countries support reciprocity to deal with climate change we find little public enthusiasm for intrinsic reciprocity in which countries restrain their consumption of fossil fuels if and only if other countries do the same in contrast we find significant support for extrinsic reciprocity in which countries enforce cooperation by linking issues citizens support economic sanctions against polluters and are willing to shame them in international forums especially when the polluters are violating a treaty cooperation could therefore emerge from efforts to link climate with other issues and to embed climate commitments in international law

corruption and air pollution in europe this paper examines how the effectiveness of regulatory framework influences levels of sulphur emissions in a scenario where to reduce its emission tax payments a polluting firm may under report emissions level at the risk of being audited and fined first a model to explain how changes in regulatory framework e g audit effectiveness and transboundary spillovers affect both actual and reported emissions is developed then the theoretical predictions using data for 39 european countries from 1999 to 2003 are tested and inferences about true emission levels are made the empirical analysis supports the theoretical predictions with significant implications for the interpretation of pollution data reported to international monitoring agencies countries with effective regulation are likely to have relatively high reported emissions of sulphur but this should not automatically be interpreted as weak environmental performance because their actual pollution levels are likely to be lower than in nations with less effective regulation

semiparametric econometrics a survey summary semiparametric econometric models contain both parametric and nonparametric components reflecting in some fashion what has been learned from economic theory and previous empirical experience and what remains unknown they raise such questions as how well the parametric component can be estimated and how to construct rules of inference with good statistical properties the paper attempts to survey the econometric and most relevant statistical literature on semiparametric inference and includes a partial bibliography

the structure of the climate debate first best climate policy is a uniform carbon tax which gradually rises over time civil servants have complicated climate policy to expand bureaucracies politicians to create rents environmentalists have exaggerated climate change to gain influence other activists have joined the climate bandwagon opponents to climate policy have attacked the weaknesses in climate research the climate debate is convoluted and polarized as a result and climate policy complex climate policy should become easier and more rational as the paris agreement has shifted climate policy back towards national governments changing political priorities austerity and a maturing bureaucracy should lead to a more constructive climate debate

coalitions in transboundary pollution reduction during emission reductions countries render services to each other by reducing transboundary pollution which should be recognized as an additional source of benefit since transboundary pollution fluxes are often significant the underestimation of this factor can substantially affect the choice of emission reduction strategies and eventually restrain pollution reduction this factor is a specific feature of the transboundary pollution problem that in the taxonomy of m iler 1990 relates to the case of regional reciprocal externalities cooperation in the case of regional reciprocal externalities has been often studied explicitly or implicitly in terms of cooperative games with transferable utilities tu one reason for this is that within this approach side payments are allowed which theoretically give higher gains to participants as compared to the approach with non transferable utilities ntu another reason is that the theory of ntu games is not yet sufficiently developed as compared with the theory of tu games but the standard tu approach to regional environmental regulation shows significant drawbacks discussing the analyses of the canadian american agreement on the columbia river by krutilla 1966 1968 and of the mexican american agreement on the colorado river by kneese 1988 m iler 1990 points out that the countries do not use side payments in the explicit form moreover the amounts of implicit side payments seem to be in contradiction with the criteria of economic benefits producing an impression of irrationality of the countries choices mner 1990 in this paper the tu approach is abandoned in favour of the ntu approach to treat the case of regional reciprocal externalities from the viewpoint of the ntu game an irrational behaviour of a participant occurs when his preferences involve hidden goals while his implicit side payments favourably affect the other participants expected choices of strategies with respect to these hidden goals the ntu approach becomes immune to irrational behaviour if it allows consideration of the participants utilities reflecting their respective hidden goals through the above mechanism of transposed preferences non transferability of utilities generally means incommensurability of

thinking economically about climate change abstract uncertainty over both the regional impacts and timing of climatic changes the way they tend to magnify the likelihood of so called natural disasters and their irreversibility require careful analysis of policy options from an economic standpoint the best approach is to apply cost benefit thinking the essential trade off is between doing nothing now and investing in either important preventive or adaptive measures the choices involve analysis of incurring costs now against the benefits of reducing vulnerability and future damage costs for any given level of warming the aim is to minimize the sum of policy costs and costs of adaptation by individuals any resulting policy decision will have to address issues of international cooperation and compensation these considerations may in turn influence the resulting policy choices between carbon taxes marketable permits and regulatory restrictions

the fast decay process in outdoor recreational activities and the use of alternative count data models despite a number of significant advances in count data modeling during the last two decades and the growing popularity of these models in recreation demand analysis standard count data models are inadequate to address the fast decay process of the dependent variable and the associated long tail this article demonstrates how one and two parameter alternative count data models can be used to properly model the fast decay process and the associated long tail commonly observed in recreation demand analysis econometric results from an illustrative application suggest satisfactory performance of four of the eight alternative count data models proposed in this article

potentially harmful international cooperation on global public good provision recent international climate negotiations suggest that complete agreements are unlikely to materialize instead partial cooperation between like minded countries appears a more likely outcome in this paper we analyze the effects of such partial cooperation between like minded countries in doing so we link the literature on partial cooperation with so called matching approaches matching schemes are regarded as providing a promising approach to overcome undersupply of public goods like climate protection the functioning of matching mechanisms in a setting with an incomplete agreement i e a contract where only a subset of the players participates has however not been investigated yet this paper fills this research gap by analyzing incomplete matching agreements in the context of international climate protection we analyse their effect on both welfare and the global climate protection level we show that matching coalitions may bring about a decline in global public good provision and a reduction in the welfare of outsiders