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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2016‒11‒27
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Stephen Gibbons |
| Abstract: | This study provides quantitative evidence on the local benefits and costs of wind farm developments in England and Wales, focussing on their visual environmental impacts. In the tradition of studies in environmental, public and urban economics, housing sales prices are used to reveal local preferences for views of wind farm developments. Estimation is based on quasi-experimental research designs that compare price changes occurring in places where wind farms become visible, with price changes in appropriate comparison groups. These groups include places close to wind farms that became visible in the past, or where they will become operational in the future and places close to wind farms sites but where the turbines are hidden by the terrain. All these comparisons suggest that wind farm visibility reduces local house prices, and the implied visual environmental costs are substantial. |
| Keywords: | housing prices; environment; wind farms; infrastructure; energy |
| JEL: | Q4 Q51 R3 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:62880&r=res |
| By: | Martin Weitzman |
| Abstract: | This paper postulates the conceptually useful allegory of a futuristic “World Climate Assembly” (WCA) that votes for a single worldwide price on carbon emissions via the basic democratic principle of one-person one-vote majority rule. If this WCA framework can be accepted in the first place, then voting on a single internationally- binding minimum carbon price (the proceeds from which are domestically retained) tends to counter self-interest by incentivizing countries or agents to internalize the externality. I attempt to sketch out the sense in which each WCA-agent's extra cost from a higher emissions price is counter-balanced by that agent's extra benefit from inducing all other WCA-agents to simultaneously lower their emissions in response to the higher price. The first proposition of this paper derives a relatively simple formula relating each emitter's single-peaked most-preferred world price of carbon emissions to the world “Social Cost of Carbon” (SCC). The second and third propositions relate the WCA-voted world price of carbon to the world SCC. I argue that the WCA-voted price and the SCC are unlikely to differ sharply. Some implications are discussed. The overall methodology of the paper is a mixture of mostly classical with some behavioral economics. |
| JEL: | F51 H41 K23 Q54 Q58 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22813&r=res |
| By: | Matthew E. Kahn; Jerry Nickelsburg |
| Abstract: | Airline transport generates a growing share of global greenhouse gas emissions but as of late 2016, this sector has not faced U.S. fuel economy or emissions regulation. At any point in time, airlines own and lease a set of durable vehicles and have invested in human and physical capital and an inventory of parts to maintain these vehicles. Each airline chooses whether to scrap and replace airplanes in their fleet and how to utilize and operate their fleet of aircraft. We model these choices as a function of real jet fuel prices. When jet fuel prices are higher, airlines fly fuel inefficient planes slower, scrap older fuel inefficient planes earlier and substitute miles flown to their more fuel efficient planes. |
| JEL: | L11 L62 R4 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22830&r=res |