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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2018‒09‒03
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Tipper, Adam; Harkness, Jane |
| Abstract: | Environmental accounting aims to understand the interactions between the environment and the economy. Environmental protection expenditure and taxes are two key environmental accounts that shed light on society’s economic response to environmental change. This paper discusses the role of environmental protection expenditure and taxes in the economy and presents the findings from Statistics New Zealand’s environmental-economic accounts on the extent to which these are used in New Zealand. Preliminary analysis of the relationship between environmental taxes and expenditure, using OECD data, shows a positive and significant empirical association between these two fiscal instruments. |
| Keywords: | Environmental accounting, Economy, New Zealand, Environmental taxation, Expenditure, |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vuw:vuwcpf:7627&r=res |
| By: | Gregor Semieniuk; Mariana Mazzucato (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK) |
| Abstract: | This paper surveys the current state of financing green growth in the energy sector, based on the insight that there are different qualities of finance. In past transformational changes in other sectors, public monies played a key role across the innovation landscape. Public financing was central also in a number of past national energy transitions, as reviewed here for Iceland (from fossil to geothermal energy), Norway (from mainly non-electricity energy to hydroelectricity), France (from oil to nuclear) and the United States (from conventional to shale gas). In the current transition to low-carbon energy supplies, there is much public activity, most directed and concerted in China, but also reasons to doubt it is enough and applied in the right places to be able to finance the transition to a low carbon sector on time scales consistent with current climate change mitigation targets. A discussion of opportunities and challenges to a more central role for public financing concludes, drawing also on insights from the recent mission-oriented innovation literature. |
| Keywords: | energy intensity, labor productivity, decoupling, green growth, stylized fact |
| JEL: | O44 O47 Q43 E17 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:soa:wpaper:210&r=res |
| By: | Duanmu, Jing-Lin; Bu, Maoliang; Pittman, Russell |
| Abstract: | Departing from the extant literature which assumes that firms pursue strong environmental performance as a differentiation strategy, we analyse the general relationship between firms’ competitive strategy and their response to heightened market competition. We find that, using a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms between 2000 and 2005, intensified market competition has an overall negative impact on firms’ environmental performance. The negative impact is exacerbated in firms adopting a cost-leadership strategy, but attenuated in those adopting a differentiation strategy. The results emphasize the importance of including an examination of the particular competitive strategies chosen by firms in seeking to understand the impact of intensified market competition. |
| Keywords: | Market competition, environmental performance, China, corporate social responsibility, cost leadership, differentiation, market concentration |
| JEL: | L11 L13 L21 L25 M14 M31 Q52 Q56 |
| Date: | 2018–04–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:88378&r=res |
| By: | Besley, Timothy; Ghatak, Maitreesh |
| Abstract: | This review explores the role of incentives in providing goods and services that have significant social returns not captured in private returns, and where outcomes and performances are not easy to measure. We discuss how the presence of prosocial motivation among agents involved in the provision of these goods and services changes the design of incentives. The review also emphasises how heterogeneous prosocial motivation puts a premium on selection of agents in this context. We also discuss alternative theories of prosocial motivation. |
| Keywords: | prosocial behavior; motivated agents; public services |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:90093&r=res |