SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Stavins, Robert N.; Whitehead, Bradley W..

We examine what will be required if market-based environmental policy instruments are to become a major force in U.S. environmental policy. We define market-based instruments, and specify five categories: pollution charges; tradable permits; deposit refund systems; reducing market barriers; and eliminating government subsidies. We review major U.S. applications, including: EPA's emissions trading program; the leaded gasoline phasedown; water quality permit trading; CFC trading; SO2 allowance trading; and the RECLAIM program. We assess the U.S. experience in terms of the relatively limited use of these instruments and in terms of the mixed record of performance of implemented instruments. We ask how the next generation of market-based instruments can be...

A Meaningful U.S. Cap-and-Trade System to Address Climate Change

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy; Q28; Q48.

Ano: 1996

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10640

Do Consumers React to the Shape of Supply? Water Demand under Heterogeneous Price Structures

Palavras-chave: Cap-and-Trade System; Carbon Dioxide; Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Global Climate Change; Carbon Taxes; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q540; Q280; Q380; Q480; Q580.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/44469

Olmstead, Sheila M.; Hanemann, W. Michael; Stavins, Robert N..

Urban water pricing provides an opportunity to examine whether consumers react to the shape of supply functions. We carry out an empirical analysis of the influence of price and price structure on residential water demand, using the most price-diverse, detailed, household-level water demand data yet available for this purpose. We adapt the Hausman model of labor supply under progressive income taxation to estimate water demand under non-linear prices. Ours is the first analysis to address both the simultaneous determination of marginal price and water demand under block pricing and the possibility of endogenous price structures in the cross section. In order to examine the possibility that consumers facing block prices are more price-responsive, all else...

Palavras-chave: Non-linear pricing; Water demand; Price elasticity; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; D12; Q21; Q25; Q28; L95.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10672

Environmental Economics

This article, prepared for the forthcoming second edition of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, provides an overview of the economics of environmental policy. Included are the setting of goals and targets, notably the Kaldor-Hicks criterion, and the related method of assessment known as benefit-cost analysis. Also reviewed are the means of environmental policy, that is, the choice of specific policy instruments, featuring an examination of potential criteria for assessing alternative instruments, with focus on cost-effectiveness. The theoretical foundations and experiential highlights of individual instruments are reviewed, including conventional command-and-control mechanisms and market-based instruments.

What Drives Land-Use Change in the United States? A National Analysis of Landowner Decisions

Palavras-chave: Environmental economics; Efficiency; Cost-effectiveness; Benefit-cost analysis; Market-based instruments; Tradeable permits; Pollution taxes; Environmental Economics and Policy; K320; Q280; Q380; Q480.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10841

Lubowski, Ruben N.; Plantinga, Andrew J.; Stavins, Robert N..

Land-use changes involve important economic and environmental effects with implications for international trade, global climate change, wildlife, and other policy issues. We use an econometric model to identify factors driving land-use change in the United States between 1982 and 1997. We quantify the effects of net returns to alternative land uses on private landowners’ decisions to allocate land among six major uses, drawing on detailed micro-data on land use and land quality that are comprehensive of the contiguous U.S. This analysis provides the first evidence of the relative historical importance of markets and Federal farm policies affecting land-use changes nationally.

The Induced Innovation Hypothesis and Energy-Saving Technological Change

Palavras-chave: Land Use; Land-Use Change; Econometric Analysis; Simulations; Land Economics/Use; O51; Q15.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/44534

Newell, Richard G.; Jaffe, Adam B.; Stavins, Robert N..

We develop a methodology for testing Hick's induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product-characteristics model of energy-using consumer durables, augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the influence of government regulations. For the products we explored, the evidence suggests: (i) the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy prices and regulations, (ii) the direction of innovation was responsive to energy price changes for some products but not for others, (iii) energy price changes induced changes in the subset of technically feasible models that were offered for sale, (iv) this responsiveness increased substantially during the period after energy-efficiency product labeling was required, and (v) nonetheless, a sizeable portion of...

Lessons Learned from SO2 Allowance Trading

Palavras-chave: Induced innovation; Energy efficiency; Technological change; Economic incentives; Regulation; Standards; Climate change; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; L51; O31; O38; Q40; Q20; Q48.

Ano: 1998

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10521

How Do Economists Really Think About the Environment?

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/93329

Fullerton, Don; Stavins, Robert N..

On a topic like the environment, communication among scholars from different disciplines in the natural and social sciences is both important and difficult, but such communication has been far from perfect. Economists themselves may have contributed to some rather fundamental misunderstandings about how economists think about the environment, perhaps through our enthusiasm for market solutions, perhaps by neglecting to make explicit all of the necessary qualifications, and perhaps simply by the use of jargon that has specific meaning only to other economists. In this brief essay, we seek to clarify some of these misunderstandings and thus to improve future interdisciplinary communication. We hope that natural scientists and other non-economists will take...

Comparing Price and Non-price Approaches to Urban Water Conservation

Palavras-chave: Market failure; Economic analysis; Efficiency; Equity; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q2; H4; L51.

Ano: 1998

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10910

Olmstead, Sheila M.; Stavins, Robert N..

Urban water conservation is typically achieved through prescriptive regulations, including the rationing of water for particular uses and requirements for the installation of particular technologies. A significant shift has occurred in pollution control regulations toward market-based policies in recent decades. We offer an analysis of the relative merits of market-based and prescriptive approaches to water conservation, where prices have rarely been used to allocate scarce supplies. The analysis emphasizes the emerging theoretical and empirical evidence that using prices to manage water demand is more cost-effective than implementing non-price conservation programs, similar to results for pollution control in earlier decades. Price-based approaches also...

The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy

Palavras-chave: Cost-effectiveness; Water Conservation; Market-based Approaches; Policy Instrument Choice; Water Price; Q25; Q28; Q58; L95.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/42919

Keohane, Nathaniel O.; Revesz, Richard L.; Stavins, Robert N..

In the realm of environmental policy instrument choice, there is great divergence between the recommendations of normative economic theory and positive political reality. Four gaps stand out. First, despite the advantages of market-based policy instruments, they have been used to a minor degree, compared with conventional, command-and-control instruments. Second, pollution-control standards have typically been much more stringent for new than for existing sources, despite the inefficiency of this approach. Third, in the few instances in which market-based instruments have been adopted, they have nearly always taken the form of grandfathered tradeable permits, rather than auctioned permits or pollution taxes, despite the advantages in some situations of...

A Tale of Two Market Failures: Technology and Environmental Policy

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy; L51; H11; P16; K32; Q28.

Ano: 1997

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10759

Jaffe, Adam B.; Newell, Richard G.; Stavins, Robert N..

Market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies. These combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives, and can be cost-effectively harnessed through the use of economicincentive based policy. In the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies, investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely...

Cost Heterogeneity and the Potential Savings from Market-Based Policies

Palavras-chave: Technology; Research and development; Environment; Externality; Policy; Environmental Economics and Policy; O38; Q28; H23.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10815

Newell, Richard G.; Stavins, Robert N..

Policy makers and policy analysts are frequently faced with situations where it is unclear whether market-based instruments hold real promise of reducing costs, relative to conventional command-and-control approaches. We develop rules-of-thumb that can be employed with minimal amounts of information to estimate the potential cost savings associated with marketbased policies, with an application to the environmental policy realm. Our hope is that these simple formulae can aid policy analysts and policy makers in the early stages of exploring alternative policy instruments by helping them identify approaches that merit greater attention and more detailed analysis. We illustrate the use of the rules-of-thumb with an application to nitrogen oxides control in...

The Problem of the Commons: Still Unsettled after 100 Years

Palavras-chave: Environment; Policy instruments; Cost-effective; Market-based; Tradable permits; Uniform standards; Industrial Organization; Q28; Q38.

Ano: 2000

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10577

The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the U.S. and other economies have grown, the carrying-capacity of the planet - in regard to natural resources and environmental quality — has become a greater concern, particularly for common-property and open-access resources. The focus of this article is on some important, unsettled problems of the commons. Within the realm of natural resources, there are special challenges associated with renewable resources, which are frequently characterized by open access. An important example is the degradation of open-access fisheries. Critical commons problems are also...

Experience with Market-Based Environmental Policy Instruments

Palavras-chave: Common-Property Resource; Open-Access Resource; Fisheries; Global Climate Change; Land Economics/Use; Q220; Q280; Q500; Q540; Q580.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/98048

Environmental policies typically combine the identification of a goal with some means to achieve that goal. This chapter for the forthcoming Handbook of Environmental Economics focuses exclusively on the second component, the means - the "instruments" - of environmental policy, and considers, in particular, experience around the world with the relatively new breed of economic-incentive or market-based policy instruments. I define these instruments broadly, and consider them within four categories: charge systems; tradable permits; market friction reductions; and government subsidy reductions. Within charge systems, I consider: effluent charges, deposit-refund systems, user charges, insurance premium taxes, sales taxes, administrative charges, and tax...

Interpreting Sustainability in Economic Terms: Dynamic Efficiency Plus Intergenerational Equity

Palavras-chave: Market-based policy; Economic incentives; Tradable permits; Emission taxes; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q28.

Ano: 2001

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10909

Stavins, Robert N.; Wagner, Alexander F.; Wagner, Gernot.

Economists have expended considerable effort to develop economically meaningful definitions of the somewhat elusive concept of "sustainability." We relate such a definition of sustainability to well known concepts from neoclassical economics, in particular, potential Pareto improvements (in the Kaldor-Hicks sense) and interpersonal compensation. In the inter-temporal realm, we find that dynamic efficiency is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a notion of sustainability that has normative standing as a goal for public policy. We define sustainability as dynamic efficiency plus intergenerational equity. Further, we argue that it is not unreasonable for economists to focus on the efficiency element, leaving equity considerations to the political...

Land-Use Change and Carbon Sinks: Econometric Estimation of the Carbon Sequestration Supply Function

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10810

Lubowski, Ruben N.; Plantinga, Andrew J.; Stavins, Robert N..

When and if the United States chooses to implement a greenhouse gas reduction program, it will be necessary to decide whether carbon sequestration policies - such as those that promote forestation and discourage deforestation - should be part of the domestic portfolio of compliance activities. We investigate the cost of forest-based carbon sequestration. In contrast with previous approaches, we econometrically examine micro-data on revealed landowner preferences, modeling six major private land uses in a comprehensive analysis of the contiguous United States. The econometric estimates are used to simulate landowner responses to sequestration policies. Key commodity prices are treated as endogenous and a carbon sink model is used to predict changes in...

Determinants of Land-Use Change In the United States 1982-1997

Palavras-chave: Abatement; Carbon; Climate change; Costs; Forestry; Greenhouse gases; Land use; Land-use change; Sequestration; Land Economics/Use; Q540; Q230; Q240; Q150.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10561

Lubowski, Ruben N.; Plantinga, Andrew J.; Stavins, Robert N..

Changes in the use of land in the United States produce significant economic and environmental effects with important implications for a wide variety of policy issues, including protection of wildlife habitat, management of urban growth, and mitigation of global climate change. In contrast to previous descriptive and qualitative analyses of the trends in national land use, this paper uses an econometric approach to isolate the importance of historical changes in land-use profits and key government policies in determining national land-use changes from 1982 to 1997. The policies we examine are the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and total government payments to crop producers. We estimate a national-level discrete choice model of changes among the major...

Environmental Protection and Economic Well-Being: How Does (and How Should) Government Balance These Two Important Values?

Palavras-chave: Land use; Econometric model; Counterfactual simulation; Conservation Reserve Program (CRP); Land Economics/Use; C53; Q1; Q24; R14; R15.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10714

The organizers of an Aspen Institute conference have identified what they characterize as "the critical conundrum" - how business, government, and communications media balance the competing values of economic growth and a healthy environment. In this paper, prepared for discussion at the conference, I focus on government policy, and ask how government integrates economic concerns into its development of environmental policies. In addition, I ask whether and how government should carry out such integration of economic and environmental concerns. I consider two dimensions of environmental policy, which are closely interrelated but conceptually distinct: (1) what is the appropriate (and actual) degree of government activity; and (2) what form should (and...

What Has Kyoto Wrought? The Real Architecture of International Tradable Permit Markets

Palavras-chave: Environmental Economics and Policy.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10565

Hahn, Robert W.; Stavins, Robert N..

We investigate a central issue in the climate change debate associated with the Kyoto Protocol: the likely performance of international greenhouse gas trading mechanisms. Virtually all design studies and many projections of the costs of meeting the Kyoto targets have assumed that an international trading program can be established that minimizes the costs of meeting overall goals. This conclusion rests on several simplifying assumptions. We focus on one important issue that has received little, if any, attention: the interaction between an international trading regime and a heterogeneous set of domestic greenhouse policy instruments. This is an important issue because the Protocol explicitly provides for domestic sovereignty regarding instrument choice,...

Introduction to the Political Economy of Environmental Regulations

Palavras-chave: Climate change; Tradable permits; International policy; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q28; Q25.

Ano: 1999

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10747

This paper introduces a volume of collected papers on the political economy of environmental regulation: economic analyses of the processes through which political decisions regarding environmental regulation are made, principally in the institutional context found in the United States. Despite this geographic focus, many of the papers contain analytical models that are methodologically of interest and/or have lessons that are relevant in other parts of the world. In the environmental realm, questions of political economy emerge along three fundamental dimensions, which are closely interrelated but conceptually distinct: (1) the degree of government activity; (2) the form of government activity; and (3) the level of government that has responsibility. The...