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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2012‒03‒21
five papers chosen by |
| By: | Russu, Paolo |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this work is to analyze the dynamics of a model describing the interaction between tourists (T) and environmental resource (E) in the presence or absence of a tourist tax , used to protect the environmental resource. The model highlights how the introduction of tourist tax complicates the dynamics of the system, thus giving origin a new internal equilibrium that is a saddle point, which the stable manifold separates the basin attraction of the locally attractive internal positive point from the one equilibrium point (K; 0), which is also locally stable. Moreover, starting from a system with beta= 0, which has an unstable internal equilibrium, a suitable combination of tourist tax and defensive expenditures leads to a stabilization the protect system. |
| Keywords: | Words–tourism economics; tourism taxation; Hopf bifurcation; environmental quality; economic modelling |
| JEL: | Q5 C02 L83 |
| Date: | 2012–03–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:37213&r=res |
| By: | Bowen, Alex |
| Abstract: | The term'green jobs'can refer to employment in a narrowly defined set of industries providing environmental services. But it is more useful for the policy-maker to focus on the broader issue of the employment consequences of policies to correct environmental externalities such as anthropogenic climate change. Most of the literature focuses on direct employment created, with more cursory treatment of indirect and induced job creation, especially that arising from macroeconomic effects of policies. The potential adverse impacts of green growth policies on labor productivity and the costs of employment tend to be overlooked. More attention also needs to be paid in this literature to how labor markets work in different types of economy. There may be wedges between the shadow wage and the actual wage, particularly in developing countries with segmented labor markets and after adverse aggregate demand shocks, warranting a bigger and longer-lasting boost to green projects with high labor content. In these circumstances, the transition to green growth and job creation can go hand in hand. But there are challenges, especially for countries that have built their industrial development strategies around cheap carbon-based energy. Induced structural change, green or otherwise, should be accompanied by active labor market policies. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics&Policies,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Labor Markets,Climate Change Economics,Labor Policies |
| Date: | 2012–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5990&r=res |
| By: | Christine Bertram, Katrin Rehdanz |
| Abstract: | Marine and coastal ecosystems – and thus the benefits they create for humans – are subject to increasing pressures and competing usages. For this reason, the European Union (EU) adopted the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which is to guide future maritime policy in the EU and aims at achieving or maintaining a good environmental status (GES) of the European seas by 2020. To this end, the MSFD requires the development of improvement measures, which have to be assessed inter alia by examining their cost-effectiveness and by carrying out cost-benefit analysis (CBA) before their implementation. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of environmental CBA in the marine context and identify and discuss problems that may hamper the environmental effectiveness of the MSFD. For example, marine ecosystem services are much less tangible than terrestrial ecosystem services. This implies greater challenges for the quantification of societal benefits in a marine context. One finding is that the limitations of environmental valuation methods regarding their ability to capture the whole total economic value of improvement measures are a potential source of problems, as the MSFD allows countries to disregard measures with disproportionately high costs. The trans-boundary nature of the main European seas adds to the complexity of the valuation task, e.g. due to the danger that benefits that occur outside of national territories are neglected. Moreover, the current state of knowledge on the functioning of complex marine ecosystems and the links to socio-economic impacts and human well-being seems insufficient to meet the MSFD requirements |
| Keywords: | Cost-benefit analysis, ecosystem services, environmental valuation, EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive, Europe |
| JEL: | Q51 Q53 Q57 Q58 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1760&r=res |
| By: | Mahul, Olivier; Verma, Niraj; Clarke, Daniel J. |
| Abstract: | India's crop insurance program is the world's largest with 25 million farmers insured. However, issues in design, particularly related to delays in claims settlement, have led to 95 million farmer households not being covered, despite significant government subsidy. To address this and other problems, the Government of India is piloting a modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme, a market-based scheme with involvement from the private sector. Compared with the existing scheme, the new program has a design that can offer more timely, claim settlement, less distortion in the allocation of government subsidies and cross-subsidies between farmer groups, and reduced basis risk. Implementation and technical challenges lie ahead which can be addressed but will require a comprehensive strategy, innovative solutions, and timely roll out. This paper describes and analyzes both programs, and discusses lessons learned in developing and implementing the new program. |
| Keywords: | Climate Change Economics,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Hazard Risk Management,Debt Markets,Emerging Markets |
| Date: | 2012–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5987&r=res |
| By: | Resnick, Danielle; Tarp, Finn; Thurlow, James |
| Abstract: | The concept of â..green growthâ.. implies that a wide range of developmental objectives, such as job creation, economic prosperity and poverty alleviation, can be easily reconciled with environmental sustainability. This study, however, argues that rather than being win-win, green growth is similar to most types of policy reforms that advocate the acceptance of short-term adjustment costs in the expectation of long-term gains. In particular, green growth policies often encourage developing countries to redesign their national strategies in ways that might be inconsistent with natural comparative advantages and past investments. In turn, there are often sizeable anti-reform coalitions whose interests may conflict with a green growth agenda. We illustrate this argument using case studies of Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa, which are engaged in development strategies that involve inorganic fertilizers, biofuels production, and coal-based energy, respectively. Each of these countries is pursuing an environmentally suboptimal strategy but nonetheless addressing critical development needs, including food security, fuel, and electricity. We show that adopting a green growth approach would not only be economically costly but also generate substantial domestic resistance, especially amongst the poor. |
| Keywords: | development policy, green growth, political economy, Southern Africa |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2012-11&r=res |