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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2014‒04‒05
seven papers chosen by |
| By: | Metaxas, Theodore; Tsavdaridou, Maria |
| Abstract: | The environmental policy and Corporate Social Responsibility are two notions of high importance for enterprises and nations. Numerous pages have been written about the environmental policy of companies in their CSR reports. Whether it concerns to raise environmental awareness among their employees or local communities or to give in detail their environmental footprint at the end of the story it is about giving proofs of their environmental policy. Climate change is among the topics of CSR reports and is under examination in this paper. A case study analysis will be applied in order to present how climate change is interpreted in the CSR reports of Greek companies from the petroleum refining industry. |
| Keywords: | CSR, CSR reports, climate chande, environmental policy, content analysis |
| JEL: | M10 M12 M14 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:55027&r=res |
| By: | Halkos, George; Papageorgiou, George |
| Abstract: | In this paper, the basic assumption is that the environment provides two different kinds of services. First, the environment may serve as an input to the production of conventional goods. For example, the exploitation of an oil source from which one firm extracts the oil which in turn is used as a fossil fuel for an industry. In the worst case, the use of the environment for industrial purposes will negatively affect the environment, e.g. the water quality of a paper mill along a river. Nevertheless, the possibility to pollute, i.e., to save abatement costs, lowers production costs. Hence, firms and consumers evaluate this service positively. Second, the environment itself-clean air, natural creeks and rivers instead of paper mills, hydro power plants, etc.-provides amenities and thus a second service that is different, because enjoying this service does not degrade environmental quality. As it is intuitively clear, the environment provides consumptive and non-consumptive uses. In renewable resources means, the environmental stock may be harvested and used as an input for conventional goods’ production but provides simultaneously a positive externality. The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamics of pollution and the possibility of cycles and instability, while the major finding of this paper is the following: Taking the simplest pollution model with one state and one control variables and extending it into two state variables, equilibrium may change from the fixed point into a limit cycle equilibrium, i.e. the optimal emissions rate may be cyclical. |
| Keywords: | Renewable resources; environmental economics; pollution management. |
| JEL: | C61 C62 D43 H21 Q50 Q52 Q53 |
| Date: | 2014–03–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:54915&r=res |
| By: | Iwata, Hiroki |
| Abstract: | In recent years, voluntary approaches are expected to function as new environmental protection tools. This article analyzes whether environmental information of firms should be mandatorily disclosed or disclosed voluntarily, where consumers consider the environmental burdens of firms when buying their goods. If a mandatory policy is implemented, every firm in the market will be required to disclose their environmental burdens. On the contrary, only firms that want to disclose their environmental burdens will share their environmental information if a voluntary approach is implemented. This article particularly demonstrates the effects of the disclosure rule (mandatory or voluntary) on investment to reduce environmental burdens. The model has two types of firms, clean and dirty ones. Firms that investigate their environmental burdens and turn out to be dirty can invest to reduce them and become clean before they disclose their environmental information. The main conclusions in this article are as follows. (1) Mandatory disclosure policies may induce firms to invest more than a voluntary approach. (2) Firms may have lower expected profit under the mandatory rule than the voluntary approach. (3) Under full information disclosure policy, the environmental burden is smaller than that of other policies. |
| Keywords: | Environmental information disclosure; Investment; Asymmetric information |
| JEL: | D82 L15 Q55 |
| Date: | 2014–03–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:54784&r=res |
| By: | Makram El-Shagi; Claus Michelsen; Sebastian Rosenschon |
| Abstract: | The impact of environmental regulation on technology diffusion and innovations is studied using a unique data set of German residential buildings. We analyze how energy efficiency regulations, in terms of minimum standards, affects energy-use in newly constructed buildings and how it induces innovation in the residential-building industry. The data used consists of a large sample of German apartment houses built between 1950 and 2005. Based on this information, we determine their real energy requirements from energy performance certificates and energy billing information. We develop a new measure for regulation intensity and apply a panel-error-correction regression model to energy requirements of low and high quality housing. Our findings suggest that regulation significantly impacts technology adoption in low quality housing. This, in turn, induces improvements in the high quality segment where innovators respond to market signals. |
| Keywords: | Environmental regulation, innovation, technology diffusion, residential real estate, energy efficiency |
| JEL: | D2 Q4 R5 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1371&r=res |
| By: | Rotillon, Gilles; Jouvet, Pierre-André; Bréchet, Thierry |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the dynamic general equilibrium path of an economy and the associated optimal growth path in a two-sector overlapping generation model with a stock pollutant. A sector (power generation) is polluting, and the other (final good) is not. Pollution is regulated by tradable emission permits. The issue is to see whether the optimal growth path can be replicated in equilibrium with pollution permits, given that some permits must be issued free of charge for the sake of political acceptability. We first analyze the many adverse impacts of free allowances, and then we propose a policy rule that allows optimality and acceptability to be reconciled. |
| Keywords: | General equilibrium; Optimal growth; Pollution; Tradable emission permits; Acceptability; |
| JEL: | D61 D9 Q28 |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dau:papers:123456789/12953&r=res |
| By: | Marta Olazabal; Sonia De Gregorio Hurtado; Eduardo Olazabal; Filomena Pietrapertosa; Monica Salvia; Davide Geneletti; Valentina D?Alonzo; Efrén Feliú; Senatro Di Leo; Diana Reckien |
| Abstract: | Cities are widely recognised as being pivotal to fight climate change. They magnify the drivers of climate change, experience the impacts and also concentrate the highest room for action. Although urban areas are broadly claimed to be climate leaders, there is no archetype of right actions given the highly contextual differences among them. Yet, the how and why cities respond to global environmental challenges in the context of increasingly competitive economies needs further research. In this paper we aim at advancing in this regard by assessing the state of the art on urban climate actions in two European Mediterranean Countries: Spain and Italy that face similar climate change challenges. Based on an extensive review of documents, we analyse mitigation and adaptation plans of 26 Spanish and 32 Italian Urban Audit cities, as representative samples. Our results show relevant differences between Spanish and Italian cities in terms of the starting time of their climate actions as well their implementation. We concur with existing literature in that mitigation is more advanced than adaptation actions and take evidence in both countries and we also demonstrate that international and national networking initiatives are being instrumental in engaging cities in climate action. |
| Keywords: | urban climate action; mitigation plan; adaptation plan; Spain; Italy; Urban Audit |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bcc:wpaper:2014-03&r=res |
| By: | Devin Bunten; Matthew E. Kahn |
| Abstract: | In the typical asset market, an asset featuring uninsurable idiosyncratic risk must offer a higher rate of return to compensate risk-averse investors. A home offers a standard asset's risk and return opportunities, but it also bundles access to its city's amenities|and to its climate risks. As climate change research reveals the true nature of these risks, how does the equilibrium real estate pricing gradient change when households can sort into different cities? When the population is homogeneous, the real estate pricing gradient instantly reflects the "new news". With population heterogeneity, an event study research design will underestimate the valuation of climate risk for households in low-risk cities while overestimating the valuation of households in high-risk areas. |
| JEL: | Q54 R3 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20018&r=res |