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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2013‒08‒23
seven papers chosen by |
| By: | Ramungul, Nudjarin; Michida, Etsuyo; Nabeshima, Kaoru |
| Abstract: | The rules governing the trade of goods in global markets have shifted toward non-tariff measures related to environmental and chemical safety. Unlike traditional environmental/safety requirements, the scope of modern regulations covers products’ environmental performance and chemical safety. To comply with these modern regulations, production practices along the entire supply chain must be realigned to manage certain chemical substances incorporated into the final product. This paper examines the implications of product-related environmental and chemical safety regulations on different firms operating in Thailand. |
| Keywords: | Thailand, Environmental law, Environmental protection, Exports, Industrial policy, Environment, Regulation |
| JEL: | F18 O25 Q56 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper383&r=res |
| By: | Khanna, Madhu; Oliver, Anthony |
| Abstract: | A range of policies have been implemented in the agricultural, transportation, and electric power sectors, which comprise the majority of GHG emissions in the US. Two prominent policy sets are the national RFS and state-level RPSs. The purpose of this research is to examine the GHG implications of the state RPSs and their welfare costs of mitigating GHG emissions. We also analyze the interactions between the RFS and state RPS policies and the extent to which these policies create competition or complementarity in their use of biomass for meeting the standards since the production of cellulosic biofuels also generating renewable electricity as a co-product that can substitute for fossil fuel based grid electricity and contribute to meeting the RPS. We compare the cost effectiveness of these policies implemented jointly to a carbon tax policy that achieves the same level of GHG emissions. We find that while a carbon tax increases social welfare, the RPS imposes a welfare cost on the economy. However, the implementation of the RFS does reduce the welfare costs of the RPSs by substituting co-product electricity for costly biomass electricity and providing a terms of trade benefit in the agricultural and fuel sectors. We find that the RPSs cause an increase in renewable energy based generation, which primarily offsets natural gas based generation rather than coal and increases total electricity consumption. The joint implementation of RFS and RPSs results in reduction in the use of co-firing and dedicated biomass. Coal based generation increases relative to the RPSs only scenario, while natural gas generation decreases relative to the RPSs only scenario. The implication of this is that the effects of jointly implementing the RFS and RPSs on GHG emissions are not additive. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea13:154999&r=res |
| By: | Lars-Erik Borge; Pernille Parmer; Ragnar Torvik |
| Abstract: | The large variation in revenues among Norwegian local governments can partly be explained by revenues collected from hydropower production. This revenue variation, combined with good data availability, can be used to extend the literature on the resource curse in two directions. First, to ensure that there is no problem of endogeneity in the analysis we obtain a purely exogenous measure of local revenue by instrumenting the variation in hydropower revenue, and thus total revenue, by topology, average precipitation and meters of river in steep terrain. Second, using data for revenue derived from hydropower production in Norwegian local governments we test the ’Rentier State’ hypothesis; that revenue derived from natural resources should harm efficiency more than revenue derived from other sources such as taxation. Although we do ?nd that higher local government revenue reduces the efficiency in production of public goods, we do not ?nd that this effect is stronger for natural resource revenue than for other revenue. |
| Keywords: | resource curse, rentier state, identi?cation, local government, political economy. |
| JEL: | D78 H11 H27 H71 H72 H75 Q2 |
| Date: | 2013–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bny:wpaper:0014&r=res |
| By: | OKUBO Toshihiro; Robert J.R. ELLIOTT; Matthew A. COLE; Ying ZHOU |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we examine the spatial distribution of Japanese pollution-intensive firms. Employing spatial econometric techniques, our results show that firm-level carbon dioxide emissions are spatially correlated and spatial correlations with our dependent variable are perhaps due to demonstration or imitation effects. We also find evidence of feedback effects where the emissions of firms affect those of other firms located nearby. |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:rdpsjp:13054&r=res |
| By: | Winchester, Niven; McConnachie, Dominic; Wollersheim, Christoph; Waitz, Ian A. |
| Abstract: | The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a goal that one billion gallons of renewable jet fuel is consumed by the US aviation industry each year from 2018. We examine the economic and emissions impacts of this goal using renewable fuel produced from a Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA) process from renewable oils. Our approach employs an economy-wide model of economic activity and energy systems and a detailed partial equilibrium model of the aviation industry. If soybean oil is used as a feedstock, we find that meeting the aviation biofuel goal in 2020 will require an implicit subsidy from airlines to biofuel producers of $2.69 per gallon of renewable jet fuel. If the aviation goal can be met by fuel from oilseed rotation crops grown on otherwise fallow land, the implicit subsidy is $0.35 per gallon of renewable jet fuel. As commercial aviation biofuel consumption represents less than two per cent of total fuel used by this industry, the goal has a small impact on the average price of jet fuel and carbon dioxide emissions. We also find that, under the pathways we examine, the cost per tonne of CO2 abated due aviation biofuels is between $50 and $400. |
| Keywords: | Aviation, Biofuels, Climate Change, Emissions abatement, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea13:155003&r=res |
| By: | Richard S.J. Tol (Department of Economics, University of Sussex; Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands); Francisco Estrada (Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico) |
| Abstract: | Estimates of the impacts of observed climate change during the 20th century obtained by different integrated assessment models (IAMs) are separated into their main natural and anthropogenic components. The estimates of the costs that can be attributed to natural variability factors and to the anthropogenic intervention with the climate system in general tend to show that: 1) during the first half of the century, the amplitude of the impacts associated to natural variability is considerably larger than that produced by anthropogenic factors and according to most models the effects of natural variability were mainly negative. These non-monotonic impacts are mostly determined by the low-frequency variability and the persistence of the climate system; 2) IAMs do not agree on the sign (nor on the magnitude) of the impacts of anthropogenic forcing but indicate that they steadily grew over the first part of the century, rapidly accelerated since the mid 1970's, and decelerated during the first decade of the 21st century. The economic impacts of anthropogenic forcing range in the tenths of percentage of the world GDP by the end of the 20th century; 3) the impacts of natural forcing are about one order of magnitude lower than those associated to anthropogenic forcing and are dominated by the solar forcing. Human activities became dominant drivers of the infrapolated economic impacts at the end of the 20th century, rivaling in magnitude with those of natural variability. FUNDn3.6 allows to further decompose the natural and anthropogenic contributions into different sectors. The benefits of anthropogenic contribution in agriculture and energy are shown to outweigh the losses in health and water resources. |
| Keywords: | climate change; impacts; 20th century |
| JEL: | Q54 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sus:susewp:6213&r=res |
| By: | Colin Busby (C.D. Howe Institute); Alex Laurin (C.D. Howe Institute) |
| Abstract: | A revenue-neutral tax swap would improve Alberta’s fiscal prospects, according to a report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “The 8 Percent Solution: A Sensible Tax Compromise for Albertans,” authors Colin Busby and Alexandre Laurin propose a change that would better equip Alberta’s government to meet its longer-term fiscal challenges, which include plunging resource revenues and growing budget deficits. |
| Keywords: | Fiscal Policy and Tax Competitiveness |
| JEL: | H20 H21 H30 H61 H62 H71 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdh:ebrief:159&r=res |