learning competitive pricing strategies by multi agent reinforcement learning abstract in electronic marketplaces automated and dynamic pricing is becoming increasingly popular agents that perform this task can improve themselves by learning from past observations possibly using reinforcement learning techniques co learning of several adaptive agents against each other may lead to unforeseen results and increasingly dynamic behavior of the market in this article we shed some light on price developments arising from a simple price adaptation strategy furthermore we examine several adaptive pricing strategies and their learning behavior in a co learning scenario with different levels of competition q learning manages to learn best reply strategies well but is expensive to train

environmental management in development the evolution of paradigms in the past quarter century environmental management has increasingly become a concern of governments more recently the traditional split between developers and conservationists has begun to break down conceptions of what is economically and technologically practical ecologically necessary and politically feasible are rapidly changing this report discusses the implications of five paradigms of environmental management in development the author notes that the remedial legalistic approach of environmental management is breaking down instead interest in the more economically integrated approach of resource management has recently taken hold several interdependent forces indicate that improving the economic management of pollution and resources may be a necessary but insufficient measure to create the conditions for sustainable development the perception of tradeoffs between development and environmental quality persists in the present debate but its necessity is greatly exaggerated according to this paper finally it is noted that paradigms may be impervious to evidence and institutions and societies too difficult to change whether when and how these issues are resolved may be modern civilization s most significant test

differentiating commitments world wide global differentiation of ghg emissions reductions based on the triptych approach a preliminary assessment in the context of global climate negotiations various approaches have been proposed to distribute commitments regarding greenhouse gas emissions mitigation over different countries one of them is the triptych approach which is a sector approach that accounts for differences in national circumstances such as population size and growth standard of living economic structure and fuel mix in power generation it was successfully applied in the negotiations on differentiation of commitments in the european union in 1997 in this study we aim to see what problems we encounter when applying the approach in a wider geographical context in order to reach this aim we establish a test differentiation of co2 emission reduction obligations for a selection of 48 countries the criteria we apply comprise technical emission reduction options only according to our triptych criteria including the choice for particular growth scenarios and a convergence of co2 emissions in the domestic sectors by the year 2030 the sum of co2 emissions in the 48 countries in 2015 is estimated to increase by 8 over 1990 levels with the criteria used the average reduction objective for the oecd will be somewhere between 10 and 20 for economies in transition to a market economy our calculations indicate on average a reduction between 30 and 50 for the developing countries we established increases varying roughly from 40 to 200 the choice for a particular growth scenario as well as the assumption for the period for the convergence of per capita emissions in the domestic sectors are crucial and may effect the outcome of the calculations to a large extent if these problems can be sufficiently solved the triptych approach can serve as a valuable tool to rank countries in a global differentiation scheme

regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in china evidence from the shapley value method abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions so as to realize its carbon reduction targets and establish the national cap and trade carbon market meanwhile it is supposed to be cost effective to jointly reduce china s carbon emissions through some collaborative activities among regions then a natural question is how to allocate the quotas among regions in light of the collaboration for this purpose the shapley value method is adopted and the results show that first the regions with higher gdp higher carbon outflow and higher carbon reduction connection should be allocated more carbon quotas moreover when the collaboration is considered the optimal allocation of carbon quotas among regions will change significantly compared to the basic quotas by the entropy method and the central region is allocated the largest proportion of carbon quota among regions which indicates its largest radiation effect besides the collaboration between the central region and northern coast region and that between the central region and the eastern region should be paid close attention these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in china

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

a walrasian approach to bargaining games abstract the paper presents and discusses an alternative approach to bargaining games n person bargaining games with complete information are shown to induce in a canonical way an arrow debreu economy with production and private ownership the unique walras stable competitive equilibrium of this economy is shown to coincide with an asymmetric nash bargaining solution of the underlying game with weights corresponding to the shares in production in the case of an economy with equal shares in production the unique competitive equilibrium coincides with the symmetric nash bargaining solution as this in turn represents the unique shapley nontransferable utility ntu value our paper solves a problem posed by shubik namely to find a model in which the shapley ntu value is a walrasian equilibrium there has been some controversy about the interpretation of the transfer value no consensus has yet emerged on the significance of these concerns which had been addressed in numerous explorations of the transfer value as a tool for analysing games and markets roth 1985

competitive equilibrium as a bargaining solution an axiomatic approach abstract the paper introduces an axiomatic characterization of a solution to bargaining problems bargaining problems are specified by a the preference relations of the bargaining parties b resources that are the subject of bargaining and c a pre specified disagreement bundle for each party that would result if bargaining fails the approach is ordinal in that parties preferences are over bundles of goods and do not imply any risk attitudes the resulting solution is accordingly independent of the specific utilities chosen to represent parties preferences we propose axioms that characterize a solution matching each bargaining problem with an exchange economy and assigning the set of equilibrium allocations corresponding to one equilibrium price vector of that economy the axioms describe a solution that results from an impartial arbitration process expressing the view that arbitration is a natural method to settle disputes in which agents have conflicting interests but can all gain from compromise

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

optimal path for controlling co2 emissions in china a perspective of efficiency analysis this paper examines the optimal control of co2 emissions from a perspective of efficiency analysis several centralized data envelopment analysis dea models are introduced to study the optimal allocation of co2 emissions under spatial temporal and spatial temporal allocation strategies respectively the models have been used to determine the optimal paths for controlling co2 emissions at provincial and regional levels in china a sensitivity analysis of the optimal path on the emission control coefficient under spatial temporal allocation strategy is further carried out our empirical results show that more developed regions should take emission reduction responsibility earlier than less developed regions in china of the three allocation strategies spatial temporal allocation strategy seems to be a better choice for achieving the optimal control of co2 emissions at country level since it is more encompassing by allowing both timing and spatial substitutions it is also found that there exists an inverted u shape relationship between the aggregate optimal gdp and the emission control coefficient which shows that modest emission reduction policy might be more appropriate for china in order to achieve the joint goals of economic development and co2 emission reduction

the optimal initial allocation of pollution permits a relative performance approach the initial allocation of pollution permits is an important aspect of emissions trading schemes we generalize the analysis of bohringer and lange 2005 eur econ rev 49 8 2041 2055 to initial allocation mechanisms that are based on inter firm relative performance comparisons including grandfathering and auctions as well as novel mechanisms we show that using firms historical output for allocating permits is never optimal in a dynamic permit market setting while using firms historical emissions is optimal only in closed trading systems and only for a narrow class of allocation mechanisms instead it is possible to achieve social optimality by allocating permits based only on an external factor which is independent of output and emissions we then outline sufficient conditions for a socially optimal relative performance mechanism

a comprehensive review of the evolving and cumulative nature of eco innovation in the chemical industry different bodies of literature have attempted to explain what factors and events drive industries throughout processes of environmental change the latter is a gradual historical process of evolution from lower to higher degrees of development based on concepts derived from evolutionary economics greening technological progress and resource based view of the firm this article informs the sustainability transitions literature by providing an account of the evolution in the chemical industry s striving for the design use and production of environmentally sound chemical processes and products based upon eco innovation a conceptual model was elaborated depicting five stages of environmental change in the chemical industry in the period 1901 2030 the authors empirically tested this model by conducting a longitudinal computer aided content analysis of 255 documents addressing different environmental and innovation aspects in this industry in the same period of time the results of this article advance our modern understanding of the different stages of evolution of the chemical industry in terms of environmental change consistent with the conceptual model hitherto presented the findings of this article highlight a number cumulative of factors that enabled the evolution of the chemical industry throughout time supporting eco innovation highlighting the intertwined nature of regulation innovation and technological change it is plausible that the future development of this industry might be shaped by the policy driven paradigms of sustainability and resource efficiency 2015 the authors

carbon dioxide emissions allocation a review carbon dioxide co2 emissions allocation plays a fundamental role in determining reduction responsibility at economy level or emission permits at firm level past decades have seen the development and applications of various methods for co2 emissions allocation this paper provides a literature review of co2 emissions allocation with emphasis on the evolution of allocation methods used it begins with a summary of the most popular allocation principles and criteria that lay a foundation for the development of allocation methods we then classify the existing allocation methods into four groups namely indicator optimization game theoretic and hybrid approaches the main features and findings of past studies are identified and summarized while the fairness principle prevails in earlier studies the efficiency principle has been found to receive increasing attention recently we also present a comparison of the empirical results based on ten popular indicator methods to show how indicator choice affects the allocation results issues related to selecting appropriate methods in co2 emissions allocation are finally discussed further research may be carried out to strike a balance between fairness and efficiency so that the allocation results become more widely acceptable and economically feasible

niche diversification in environmental ecological economics abstract this paper is devoted to the identification and comparison of the niches of neoclassical environmental economics nee and ecological economics eco it is presented in four sections section 1 argues that the existing literature does not make the differences and relations between the sister disciplines neatly transparent section 2 critically examines the antecedents of the subjects with reference to three structural dimensions such as scarcity perception problem solving orientation and range of integration section 3 collates the elements and reformulates the definitions section 4 is coda on the essay the divide between the paradigms which came to the surface during the 1960s became prominent through the growth controversy of the subsequent decade the controversy over the need for change of economic theory to cope with the growing intensity of environmental uncertainty makes the disciplines sore about each other the neoclassical paradigm comprising of elements like relative scarcity allocative approach market correction and technological optimism characterises nee the distinguishing characteristics of eco include thermodynamic irreversibility absolute scarcity economy ecosystem symbiosis biophysical approach ecological stewardship and prudent pessimism the niches are competitive and complementary in some respects and thus provide a unique example of fruitful niche diversification within environmental ecological economics we have a feeling that the economics profession can trace out the interface of the disciplines in some policy areas and raise the effectiveness of prescriptions so that this academic species diversity can serve humankind to its full potential

beyond environmental and ecological economics proposal for an economic sociology of the environment the vast majority of approaches in environmental economics attribute the current ecological crisis to the fact that from its inception the industrial economic system was founded on premises that made no allowance for the limits and regulatory functions of ecosystems according to these approaches we must therefore remedy the historical error of dissociating the fields of economics from the natural sciences notably by restoring the links between these two disciplines distinguishing themselves from the two historic approaches environmental economics and early ecological economics the emerging institutionalist schools evoke not only the constructed nature of the environmental crisis generally viewed as an objective fact by both traditional environmental economists and ecological economists but also the socially constructed nature of the economy and its institutions an actionalist regulationist approach allows us to formalize this twofold construction and lays the groundwork for a new economic sociology of the environment in which the technical modalities of ecological modernization are studied in light of social relations with the understanding that social relations are also affected by the materiality of the environmental crisis this actionalist regulationist approach also lends itself to anticipating likely trajectories in the future ecological modernization of economic institutions

a review of recent multi region input output models used for consumption based emission and resource accounting abstract the interest in consumption based emission and resource accounting has grown significantly many studies juxtapose consumer emissions carbon footprint and producer territorial emissions of greenhouse gases in order to demonstrate the effects of trade on the national emission budget to this end a respectable number of studies have been undertaken worldwide in order to estimate emissions embedded in international trade of numerous countries and world regions input output approaches and increasingly multi region input output mrio models are commonly chosen as they provide an appropriate methodological framework for complete carbon footprint estimates at the national and supra national level with increasing processing capabilities of computers and a wider availability of economic accounts environmental accounts and trade data such models are now being implemented on a wide scale after a brief overview of salient single region input output studies i provide an in depth review of the most recent multi region input output models used for the purpose of consumption based environmental accounting the main methodological features and important results are described for around twenty studies covering the years 2007 to 2009 this is followed by a detailed review of studies dealing with uncertainty in mrio analysis an area which has not received a lot of attention so far i conclude that further research is mainly needed in two areas a improvements in data availability and quality and b improvements in the accuracy of mrio modelling

burden sharing in a greenhouse egalitarianism and sovereignty reconciled the allocation of emission entitlements across countries is the single most controversial issue in international climate policy extreme positions within the policy debate range from entitlements based on current emission patterns sovereignty to entitlements based on equal per capita allocations egalitarianism this paper shows that gradual convergence from sovereignty towards egalitarianism could provide a pragmatic solution to the equity debate when combined with international emissions trading the convergence approach stands out for offering the developing countries substantial incentives for participation in the international greenhouse gas abatement effort without imposing excessive burdens on the industrialized countries

equity implications of two burden sharing rules for stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations this paper focuses on the equity aspects of international burden sharing for global co2 emission stabilization it first summarizes and classifies equity principles proposed in the published literature of the field of these the authors selected three major equity principles i e egalitarian equity horizontal equity and proportional equality often referred to also as sovereign equity to carry out a detailed examination of two sets of quantitative emission entitlements which are based on two burden sharing rules i e the equal emissions per capita approach and the carbon intensity approach the two burden sharing rules were chosen as not only particularly popular but also because their application results in distinctly different burden sharing among countries to make the two rules comparable we used a global carbon emission path until the year 2050 that leads to an atmospheric co2 concentration of 550 ppm we then used the two rules for allocating the global emissions described by that path to allocate carbon emission entitlements to 67 countries and 9 world regions in general developing countries receive relatively higher entitlements under the equal emissions per capita approach whereas industrialized countries are relatively better off under the carbon intensity approach in some countries and regions emission entitlements as calculated by any of the two burden sharing rules are so low that it would be unrealistic to assume that actual emissions can be limited to the emission entitlements assigned to them without using flexibility mechanisms such as those defined in the kyoto protocol in this sense the calculated entitlements can be also interpreted as the initial allocation of tradable emission allowances of countries or regions nonetheless we considered any numerical determination of resulting carbon trade flows to be outside the scope of our paper

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

distributional biases in the analysis of climate change abstract the economic analysis of global warming is dominated by models based on optimal growth theory these representative agent models have an intrinsic distributional bias in favor of the rich the bias is compounded by the use of revenue neutrality in the allocation of emission permits the result is mitigation recommendations that are biased downwards

measuring the immeasurable a survey of sustainability indices sustainability indices for countries provide a one dimensional metric to valuate country specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development economic environmental and social conditions at the policy level they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country s development can be measured and even a cross country comparison can be performed this paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice we show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice

equity and carbon emissions trading a model analysis carbon emissions trading is a key instrument of climate policy it helps to bring about emission reductions in that place where they are least costly however fair burden sharing is about more than just cost efficiency while focussing on the instrument of emissions trading this paper touches upon equity issues that frame decisions on emission rights allocation the analysis is based on the iclips model the model study gives new insights on how the equal per capita allocation principle influences the intertemporal emission paths and about the distribution of mitigation costs in the long run apart from the intuitive economic evaluation of model results this paper also attempts to provide an evaluation from an equity point of view for a variety of assumptions model results show that several developing countries could benefit considerably from joining an international emissions trading system thereby becoming potential collaborators in post kyoto climate agreements

asymmetric nash bargaining solutions and competitive payoffs we establish a link between cooperative and competitive behavior for every possible vector of weights of an asymmetric nash bargaining solution there exists a market that has this asymmetric nash bargaining solution as its unique competitive payoff vector

tradeable emission permits and the control of greenhouse gases this article reiterates the case for tradeable permits as a global policy option for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and considers the detailed design of a global tradeable permit regime emphasising the importance of the initial assignment of property rights and arguing that the relevant property rights in this case are the rights of every member of the world community to share in a sustainable global atmosphere and climate the allocation of permits should therefore be done on a per capita basis across the world community with the result that rents generated by the process of reducing carbon emissions would accrue to non polluters most of whom live in the south the international transfers of income and wealth implied by the proposed scheme are large but feasible there is therefore a real prospect that an international convention on carbon dioxide emissions could end the debt crisis and finance sustainable development in the south

pareto improvement through a reallocation of carbon emission quotas abstract this article presents a methodology that discusses a reallocation of carbon emission quotas based on the zsg dea model also introduces the process of solving the zsg dea model in extensive detail and derives theorems 1 and 2 theorem 1 shows the equivalence in competition and the cooperation case while theorem 2 indicates the correlation between quota adjustment and efficiency change through this zsg dea model the determination of carbon emission quotas is no longer subjective and reasonable carbon emission quotas among countries can be obtained the reallocation of carbon emission quotas can not only ensure that all countries have 100 efficiencies but also help all countries gain through pareto improvement the conclusions of this paper are that most developed countries should increase their carbon emission quotas and that most less developed countries need to reduce theirs including the two most populous countries of china and india the reallocation process should be paid by selling the quotas of low efficient countries so that they can obtain funds to support their development while at the same time high efficient countries can produce more due to relaxation of environmental constraints thus achieving global pareto improvement

economy and environment a theoretical essay on the interdependence of economic and environmental systems preface notation guide 1 introduction part i the physical economy environment system 2 closed physical systems a model 3 structure and time in the physical system 4 technological change and the environmental constraints to physical growth part ii the economic system 5 the price system 6 prices property and the environment 7 economic conflict and environmental change part iii environmental strategies in an evolutionary economy environment system 8 time uncertainty and external effects 9 the market solution 10 the stationary state 11 conclusions references index

an effective allocation criterion for co2 emissions abstract the kyoto protocol has set relatively easy targets for emission limitations for annex i parties these are not sufficient to save the earth from climate change or to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference of the climate it is the contention of the authors that eventually all parties to the protocol will have to undertake commitments equal per capita emissions with simple and transparent adjustments for the short and medium term could be the most equitable basis for allocating emissions rights it is reasonable to accept an individual as the unit of account since we are discussing anthropogenic emissions i e those which are generated by humans besides being equitable for any criterion to be successful it should be effective and implementable in order to be effective global emissions have to be restricted to a pre determined level this is possible with the widest participation which would include both annex i and non annex i countries the approach should be practical flexible and one which is easy to implement this paper proposes a very simple exposition of the common but differentiated responsibility concept article 4 1 of the fccc it aims to strike a balance between the concerns relating to the choice of the numeraire viz population and gdp in determining emission targets in other words both equity and efficiency considerations are addressed in the approach suggested herein the authors would like to acknowledge dr leo schrattenholzer for providing invaluable comments and dr tom wigley for providing critical information

data envelopment analysis of different climate policy scenarios abstract recent developments in the political scientific and economic debate on climate change suggest that it is of critical importance to develop new approaches able to compare policy scenarios for their environmental effectiveness their distributive effects their enforceability their costs and many other dimensions this paper discusses a quantitative methodology to assess the relative performance of different climate policy scenarios when accounting for their long term economic social and environmental impacts the proposed procedure is based on data envelopment analysis here employed in evaluating the relative efficiency of eleven global climate policy scenarios the methodology provides a promising comparison framework it can be seen as a way of setting some basic guidelines to frame further debates and negotiations and can be flexibly adopted and modified by decision makers to obtain relevant information for policy design three major findings emerge from this analysis i stringent climate policies can outperform less ambitious proposals if all sustainability dimensions are taken into account ii a carefully chosen burden sharing rule is able to bring together climate stabilisation and equity considerations and iii the most inefficient strategy results from the failure to negotiate a post 2012 global climate agreement

case study on initial allocation of shanghai carbon emission trading based on shapley value abstract carbon emission trading is an effective measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide china has publicized plans to initiate the demonstration of carbon emission trading in seven regions as of 2013 initial allocation is fundamental but it proposes difficulty in the mechanism design of the carbon emission trading system benchmark grandfathering and the shapley value have been employed to simulate a specific case which consists of the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances of three power plants in shanghai china the results of the shapley value are regarded as a theoretical equitable reference the results of benchmark are similar to those of the shapley value however it is apparent that the allocation regarding grandfathering is inequitable considering other factors we proposed the following at the introduction of experimental stage free allocation pertaining to grandfathering can be adopted meanwhile benchmark should be prepared and adopted at the appropriate time furthermore a portion of the initial allowances can be reserved for auction and this portion for auction will escalate to the extent of 100 upon entering the formal stage in addition the tiered price mechanism and the subsidy policy are also suggested

international equity and differentiation in global warming policy ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries long standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden sharing moreover individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations this paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits a non linear programming model which distinguishes between allocation based and outcome based rules is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes the model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications

regional allocation of co2 emissions allowance over provinces in china by 2020 the mitigation efforts of china are increasingly important for meeting global climate target since the rapid economic growth of china has led to an increasing share in the world s total co2 emissions this paper sets out to explore the approach for realizing china s national mitigation targets submitted to the unfccc as part of the copenhagen accord that is to reduce the intensity of co2 emissions per unit of gdp by 40 45 by 2020 as well as reducing the energy intensity and increasing the share of non fossil fuel consumption through regional allocation of emission allowance over china s provinces since the realization of china s mitigation target essentially represents a total amount emission allowance allocation problem an improved zero sum gains data envelopment analysis optimization model which could deal with the constant total amount resources allocation is proposed in this study by utilizing this model and based on several scenarios of china s economic growth co2 emissions and energy consumption a new efficient emission allowance allocation scheme on provincial level for china by 2020 is proposed the allocation results indicate that different provinces have to shoulder different mitigation burdens in terms of emission intensity reduction energy intensity reduction and share of non fossil fuels increase

allocation of fossil co2 emission rights quantifying cultural perspectives cultural perspectives play an important role in framing international climate policy the concept we have introduced is designed to enable quantification of the influence of such cultural perspectives on the allocation of fossil co2 emission rights a model is presented which allocates future emission rights to world regions an emission budget which incorporates an historical component is defined for the specific period which is required if climate change policy targets are to be met allocation of the budget to regions is based on a weighted mix of indicators such as population size gnp and energy consumption subtracting historical emissions results in future regional emission rights uncertainties in the selection of parameter values for the model and in generating scenarios of future developments are here regarded as being related to cultural perspectives we have assumed that cultural perspectives can be quantified by reference to distributions of preferred parameter values and preferred future scenarios distributions of regional emission rights biased towards preferred allocations as determined by the perspectives can thus be described in fact the proposed approach envisages an uncertainty analysis based on the characteristics of cultural perspectives

how can china reach its co2 intensity reduction targets by 2020 a regional allocation based on equity and development in late 2009 the chinese government committed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp by 40 to 45 of 2005 levels by 2020 this has raised the issue of how to allocate the co2 reduction target regionally to meet the national reduction target to meet this objective the following aspects may be taken into consideration equity principles common but differentiated responsibilities intensity reduction target fulfillment and economic difference and reduction potential among provinces this paper selects per capita gdp accumulated fossil fuel related co2 emissions and energy consumption per unit of industrial added value as indicators for emission reduction capacity responsibility and potential respectively based on these three indicators a comprehensive index is developed and an intensity allocation model constructed as decision makers may have different preferences when allocating the reduction burden we allocate different weights to the indicators analyzing the results using cluster analysis the following aspects may also be considered together with the national regional development strategy to determine how to share the burden the reduction potential of various regions implementation potential of the plans and promotion of a highly efficient low carbon economic development model

abatement costs of post kyoto climate regimes abstract this article analyses the abatement costs of three post kyoto regimes for differentiating commitments compatible with stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations at 550 ppmv co 2 equivalent in 2100 the three regimes explored are 1 the multi stage approach assumes a gradual increase in the number of parties involved who are adopting either emission intensity or reductions targets 2 the brazilian proposal approach i e the allocation or reductions based on countries contribution to temperature increase 3 contraction convergence with full participation in convergence of per capita emission allowances in 2050 the global costs increase up to about 1 of the world gdp ranging from 0 5 to 1 5 depending on baseline scenario and marginal abatement costs four groups of regions can be identified on the basis of similar costs expressed as the percentage of gdp these are 1 oecd regions with average costs 2 fsu the middle east and latin america with high costs 3 south east asia and east asia incl china with low costs and 4 south asia incl india and africa with net gains from emissions trading for most regimes the brazilian proposal approach gives the highest costs for groups 1 and 2 the distribution of costs for the contraction convergence approach highly depends on the convergence year the multi stage approach and contraction convergence convergence year 2050 seem to result in relatively the most even distribution of costs amongst all parties

an integrated ant colony optimization approach to compare strategies of clearing market in electricity markets agent based simulation in this paper an innovative model of agent based simulation based on ant colony optimization aco algorithm is proposed in order to compare three available strategies of clearing wholesale electricity markets i e uniform pay as bid and generalized vickrey rules the supply side actors of the power market are modeled as adaptive agents who learn how to bid strategically to optimize their profit through indirect interaction with other actors of the market the proposed model is proper for bidding functions with high number of dimensions and enables modelers to avoid curse of dimensionality as dimension grows test systems are then used to study the behavior of each pricing rule under different degrees of competition and heterogeneity finally the pricing rules are comprehensively compared using different economic criteria such as average cleared price efficiency of allocation and price volatility also principle component analysis pca is used to rank and select the best price rule to the knowledge of the authors this is the first study that uses aco for assessing strategies of wholesale electricity market

emission allowances and mitigation costs of china and india resulting from different effort sharing approaches to meet ambitious global climate targets mitigation effort in china and india is necessary this paper presents an analysis of the scientific literature on how effort sharing approaches affect emission allowances and abatement costs of china and india we find that reductions for both china and india differ greatly in time across and within approaches and between concentration stabilisation targets for china allocated emission allowances in 2020 are substantially below baseline projections moreover they may be below 2005 emission levels particularly for low concentration targets below 490 ppm co2 eq effort sharing approaches based on allocating reduction targets lead to relatively lower reductions for china than approaches that are based on allocating emission allowances for 2050 emission allowances for china are 50 80 below 2005 levels for low concentration targets with minor differences between approaches still mitigation costs of china including emissions trading remain mostly below global average according to literature chinese emission allowances peak before 2025 2030 for low concentration targets india s emission allowances show high increases compared to 2005 levels if emission trading is allowed financial revenues from selling credits might compensate mitigation costs in most approaches even for low concentration targets india s emission allowances peak around 2030 2040 for all concentration targets c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

single leader multiple follower games with boundedly rational agents abstract this paper studies a class of hierarchical games called single leader multiple follower games slmfgs that have important applications in economics and engineering we consider such games in the context of boundedly rational agents that are limited in the information and computational power they may possess agents in our slmfg are modeled as adaptive learners that use simple reinforcement learning schemes to learn their optimal behavior the proposed learning approach is illustrated using a well studied problem in economics it is shown that with a patiently learning leader the repeated plays of the game result in approximate equilibrium outcomes

fairness in a tradeable permit treaty for carbon emissions reductions in europe and the former soviet union this paper evaluates the distributional implications of alternative permit allocations in a tradeable permit regime for carbon emissions reductions 20 below baseline in 2010 for a region consisting of europe and the states of the former soviet union fsu participation in such a regime is expected to hinge on the fairness of the distributional consequences we find that initial permit allocations by populationand or gdp are unlikely to induce participation by most countries of eastern europe and fsu because of the net costs involved we identify a set of initial allocations that would at least compensate these countries a fair treatment of the countries in western europe we is here one which equalizes net costs pergdp for a wide set of cost functions for carbon emission reductions the cost gains that we would reap from a tradeable permit system relative to unilateral reductions by we as a group are found to be on the order of 85 percent this would imply among other things a significant increase in we scapacity to make further emissions reductions

allocation of carbon permits within a country a general equilibrium analysis of the united kingdom abstract the kyoto agreement includes international trade in carbon permits from 2008 we have used a cge model to evaluate methods of allocating permits within the uk auctioning is broadly similar to a carbon tax with revenues recycled to reduce other distortions grandfathering some permits free to large firms would mean a loss of recycling and possibly give windfall profits to foreigners alternatively regularly revised allocation using best practice estimates would be similar to recycling revenue as an output subsidy such a system could allow much of the potential double dividend to be realised though an auction system might still be preferable

constraining equitable allocations of tradable co2 emission quotas by acceptability since the signing of the kyoto protocol future commitments are likely to be framed in terms of tradable quotas the discussions on the allocation of the quotas among countries will be based at least partly on rules corresponding to a certain conception of equity for instance allocating quotas in direct proportion to population in relation to gdp or according to past emissions has been advocated taking a long term perspective we compute such allocations of tradable quotas with a dynamic closed loop model the total amount of quotas to be distributed at each period corresponds to the world optimal amount of emissions to be realized at each period we observe that most equitable allocation rules do not make the agreement individually rational for every country along the entire time path we then propose a mechanism which determines allocations of quotas that are as close as possible to any equitable allocation while satisfying individual rationality

a non simplistic approach to composite indicators and rankings an illustration by comparing the sustainability of the eu countries composite indicators are very popular despite being affected by several problems that often result in lack of robustness of the rankings involved the aim of this paper is to show that composite indicators can be safely used provided that rankings are built via uncertainty analysis rather than using a single composite for this purpose the approach we follow first combines different normalisation aggregation rules and weighting systems to calculate many different composites and then derives the rankings from the frequency distribution of the rankings of each competitor according to each composite such an approach appears to be a good compromise between the need for a more concise overview when looking at many variables and the loss of relevant information occurring when indicators are aggregated into a single composite indicator to illustrate the approach we rank eu countries in terms of their sustainability

green growth an assessment green growth is almost tautologically required for global welfare to rise in the long run economic growth is desirable not least because over 1 billion people still live in conditions of poverty undermining the ecological basis for human civilization will damage human welfare and further undermine economic growth there are large adverse environmental externalities from economic activity that affect human welfare directly and indirectly through lower measured output finding ways to tackle these externalities will enhance wellbeing and allow continued growth of gdp while preserving aggregate natural capital however achieving this goal presents societies with major challenges the composition of gdp is likely to have to change significantly with more emphasis on new ideas and less on increased material throughputs the role of the state in a green growth transition will have to go beyond internalizing externalities to get prices right the necessary transformation will be large system wide and structural so the state must also provide at the least overall strategic direction innovation will be central to any successful strategy as will be dealing with the distributional consequences of stronger environmental policies particularly in developing countries organizing the appropriate collective action at the right levels in the face of inadequate information while ensuring that the appropriate governance arrangements are in place will not be easy policy experimentation is needed with more rigorous ex post evaluation and where successful rapid dissemination of the results

a regional dynamic general equilibrium model of alternative climate change strategies outcomes and noncooperative equilibria this study finds that cooperative policies show much higher levels of emissions reductions than do noncooperative strategies that there are substantial differences in the levels of controls in both the cooperative and the noncooperative policies among different countries and that high income countries may be the major losers from cooperation jel h41 q4 q2 q20

willingness to pay and compensation demanded experimental evidence of an unexpected disparity in measures of value aside from possible income effects measures of the maximum amounts people will pay to avoid a loss and the minimum compensation necessary for them to accept it are generally assumed to be equivalent unexpectedly wide variations between these sums however have been noted in survey responses to hypothetical options this paper reports the results of a series of experiments that confronted people with actual money payments and cash compensations the results indicate that the compensation measure of value seems to exceed significantly the willingness to pay measure which would appear to call into some question various rules of entitlement damage assessments and interpretations of indifference curves

reducing conflict in global warming policy the potential of equity as a unifying principle abstract international agreement on global warming mitigation is likely to prove difficult efficiency based policies will result in disparate costs and benefits among nations and thus hinder cooperation this paper suggests that consideration be given to an equitable sharing of the economic impacts of global warming policy acknowledging that there is no universally held concept of equity the policy implications of several alternatives are explored because there is considerable variation in these implications it will be important for decision makers to clarify their preferred concepts of equity during the course of their negotiations on policies to address global warming

non parametric frontier approach to modelling the relationships among population gdp energy consumption and co2 emissions abstract in this paper a non parametric approach based in data envelopment analysis dea is proposed as an alternative to the kaya identity a k a impact this frontier method identifies and extends existing best practices population and gdp are considered as input and output respectively both primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas ghg emissions are considered as undesirable outputs several linear programming models are formulated with different aims namely a determine efficiency levels b estimate maximum gdp compatible with given levels of population energy intensity and carbonization intensity and c estimate the minimum level of ghg emissions compatible with given levels of population gdp energy intensity or carbonization index the united states of america case is used as illustration of the proposed approach