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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2015‒04‒11
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Nicolò Barbieri (Deptartment of Economics. University of Bologna, Italy.) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to shed light on the drivers that encourage a shift from incumbent internal combustion engine technologies towards low-emission vehicle technologies. We emphasise the role of fuel prices, one of the main drivers of environmental innovation, and other features of the technology space (such as technological proximity), in impacting technological dynamics and fossil fuel technological lock-ins. Specifically, we investigate whether green technological efforts come at the expense of other environmental or non-environmental inventive activities. In doing so, we employ Self-Organised Maps (SOMs) to detect the main technological domains exploited by the automotive industry during the period 1982-2008, using triadic patent families as a proxy for technological efforts pursued in each technological field. On the one hand, we test whether these drivers foster the substitution of non-green patents with green ones. On the other, we analyse if they favour substitution between technological efforts related to alternative vehicles, de facto influencing low-emitting vehicle competition. Our findings suggest that higher tax-inclusive fuel prices (used as a proxy for carbon tax) are effective in redirecting patenting activities from non-green to green technological fields. In addition, we observe a similar impact when we focus on green technological fields. Although this result may involve the risk of potential lock-in into sub-optimal substituting technologies, there are insights that the competition within the environmental technological domain mainly regards technological efforts spent on greening conventional cars and developing low-emission vehicles. |
| Keywords: | Environmental technologies, Self-Organising Maps, Crowding out, Fuel prices, Patent data |
| JEL: | O32 Q55 L62 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:srt:wpaper:0615&r=res |
| By: | Böhringer, Christoph (Department of Economics, University of Oldenburg, Germany); Bye, Brita (Statistics Norway, Research Department); Fæhn, Taran (Statistics Norway, Research Department); Rosendahl, Knut Einar (School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences) |
| Abstract: | Climate effects of unilateral carbon policies are undermined by carbon leakage. To counteract leakage and increase global cost-effectiveness carbon tariffs can be imposed on the emissions embodied in imports from non-regulating regions. We present a theoretical analysis on the economic incentives for emission abatement of producers subjected to carbon tariffs. We quantify the impacts of different carbon tariff designs by an empirically based multi-sector, multi-region CGE model of the global economy. We find that firm-targeted tariffs can deliver much stronger leakage reduction and higher efficiency gains than tariff designs operated at the industry level. In particular, because the exporters are able to reduce their carbon tariffs by adjusting emissions, their competitiveness and the overall welfare of their economies will be less randomly and less adversely affected than in previously studied carbon tariff regimes. This beneficial distributional impact could facilitate a higher degree of legitimacy and legality of carbon tariffs. |
| Keywords: | carbon leakage; border carbon adjustment; carbon tariffs; computable general equilibrium (CGE) |
| JEL: | D61 H20 Q43 Q54 |
| Date: | 2015–03–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nlsseb:2015_008&r=res |
| By: | Tulkens, Henry (Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, Belgium) |
| Abstract: | In a game with positive externalities, such as e.g. the standard environmental externality game used in the analysis of international environmental agreements, the solutions having the property of coalitional internal stability, when they exist, are compared in this paper with the solutions with the property of ?-core stability. Key instruments for that comparison are the notions of stable imputations, on the one hand, and on the other, of partial agreement Nash equilibria relative to a coalition as they result from unacceptable, i.e. unstable imputations. The relation between internal and core stable solutions is claimed to be one of compatibility, the former concept complementing the latter in the games where internally stable solutions exist. But this class of games is more restricted than the one for which only ?-core solutions exist. The argument is first presented graphically, then analytically. The relations here exhibited between core and internal forms of stability arouse some concluding thoughts on efficiency, coalitional stability, and on motivations in sharing the surplus generated by cooperation in international environmental issues |
| Keywords: | environmental externalities, game theory, coalitions, core, internal stability |
| JEL: | C7 H4 H87 Q5 |
| Date: | 2014–11–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cor:louvco:2014058&r=res |
| By: | Andrea Rampa (Dipartimento di Economia Diritto e Istituzioni. University of Tor Vergata, Italy.); Alessio D'Amato (Deptartment of Economics and Management. University of Tor Vergata, Italy.) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical model in order to analyse environmental policy under uncertainty regarding the possibility of a natural disaster. We adopt a two-periods analytical model, to investigate two different institutional settings, one featuring a myopic social planner, choosing emissions in each time period to maximize current net bene?ts, and one featuring a forward-looking planner, who maximizes the expected net present value of welfare across the two periods. As in Barrett (2013), uncertainty regards a threshold pollution level that, if violated, triggers a natural disaster. We conclude that under a myopic social planner welfare may increase or decrease over time, while in a non-myopic scenario welfare always increases across periods. Also, our model supports the idea that a myopic social planner pushes emissions closer to the edge of the natural disaster, but then, if the latter does not take place in the ?rst period, bene?ts from having done that in terms of welfare in the second period. Introducing a stochastic decay rate, we also show that the environment may reward (punish) myopic behaviour ex post. Finally, the comparison between myopic and forward looking settings is not straightforward: this depends on a risk spreading vs. information learning trade off. |
| Keywords: | Catastrophe, Uncertainty, Environmental Policy, Risk, Natural Disaster |
| JEL: | Q54 O13 Q38 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:srt:wpaper:0315&r=res |