Every so often I get an email with the new environmental economics papers posted on RePec. Here are a few recent ones that might be of interest to env-econ readers.
We've talked about this one before:
The "Stern Review" on the Economics of Climate Change
Date: 2006-12
By: William D. Nordhaus
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12741&r=env
How much and how fast should the globe reduce greenhouse-gas emissions? How should nations balance the costs of the reductions against the damages and dangers of climate change? This question has been addressed by the recent "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," which answers these questions clearly and unambiguously. We need urgent, sharp, and immediate reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. An analysis of the "Stern Review" finds that these recommendations depend decisively on the assumption of a near-zero social discount rate. The Review's unambiguous conclusions about the need for extreme immediate action will not survive the substitution of discounting assumptions that are consistent with today's market place.
Mark Thoma posted this when it appeared as a NBER working paper and it is forthcoming in the first issue of REEP:
Uncertainty In Environmental Economics
Date: 2006-12
By: Robert S. Pindyck
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12752&r=env
In a world of certainty, the design of environmental policy is relatively straightforward, and boils down to maximizing the present value of the flow of social benefits minus costs. But the real world is one of considerable uncertainty -- over the physical and ecological impact of pollution, over the economic costs and benefits of reducing it, and over the discount rates that should be used to compute present values. The implications of uncertainty are complicated by the fact that most environmental policy problems involve highly nonlinear damage functions, important irreversibilities, and long time horizons. Correctly incorporating uncertainty in policy design is therefore one of the more interesting and important research areas in environmental economics. This paper offers no easy formulas or solutions for treating uncertainty -- to my knowledge, none exist. Instead, I try to clarify the ways in which various ki! nds of uncertainties will affect optimal policy design, and summarize what we know and don't know about the problem.
Mark Thoma posted when this appeared as an NBER working paper and it has gotten alot of attention elsewhere:
Is the Endangered Species Act Endangering Species?
Date: 2006-12
By: John A. List
Michael Margolis
Daniel E. Osgood
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12777&r=env
We develop theory and present a suite of theoretically consistent empirical measures to explore the extent to which market intervention inadvertently alters resource allocation in a sequentialmove principal/agent game. We showcase our approach empirically by exploring the extent to which the U.S. Endangered Species Act has altered land development patterns. We report evidence indicating significant acceleration of development directly after each of several events deemed likely to raise fears among owners of habitat land. Our preferred estimate suggests an overall acceleration of land development by roughly one year. We also find from complementary hedonic regression models that habitat parcels declined in value when the habitat map was published, which is consistent with our estimates of the degree of preemption. These results have clear implications for policymakers, who continue to discuss alternative regulatory! frameworks for species preservation. More generally, our modeling strategies can be widely applied -- from any particular economic environment that has a sequential-move nature to the narrower case of the political economy of regulation.
