Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Three Essays on Regulatory Issues in Environmental Economics
Author: Three Essays on Environmental and Regulatory Economics
Author: Three Essays On Environmental Regulation and Economic Activities
Author: Yue GaoPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental policy
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Three Essays in Environmental Economics and Environmental Human Rights
Author: Christopher R. JeffordsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
Essays on Environmental Economics
Author: Qu TangPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 97
Book Description
Abstract Essays on Environmental Economics by Qu Tang Doctor of Philosophy in Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Berkeley Professor Gordon C. Rausser, Chair This dissertation is comprised of three essays that apply microeconomics theory and econometric methods to study important issues in environmental economics. In the first essay, I investigate the impacts of imposing inter-state trade restrictions on the compliance costs of coal-fired electric generating units (EGUs) in the context of a U.S. SO2 emissions trading program (the Acid Rain Program). Over the past decade, tremendous efforts have been devoted to modifying emissions trading programs to address cross-state air pollution problems. The modification involves imposing more restrictions on emissions trading across geographical areas. The empirical question is how severe trade restrictions affect the regulated firms' compliance costs. Using rich data from the Acid Rain Program, this essay developed a discrete-continuous model to estimate electric generating units' compliance strategies and marginal abatement costs associated with the nationwide uniform emissions trading as the program was implemented in practice. Based on the estimation results, this essay then simulated units' compliance behaviors and the corresponding compliance costs if interstate trading had been prohibited. The results show that the aggregate compliance costs would increase more than one and a half times for the same emissions reduction goal due to the narrower trading markets in the counterfactual policy design with trade restrictions, and the costs would vary dramatically across space. Combined with the analysis on the benefit side, the results of this essay could be used to predict welfare impacts associated with trade restrictions at both national level and state level. And it may shed light on the future modification and implementation of EPA's cross-state air pollution regulations. The second essay applies an equilibrium sorting model to a brand-new housing market in Beijing, China to estimate household preferences for neighborhood public goods provision, including public transportation services, public primary schools, and environmental amenities. The equilibrium sorting model is based on a discrete choice model of household residential location decisions. Relying on a unique, detailed data set on housing location, price, and other household characteristics, I estimate the model following the two-step BLP method, taking into account the heterogeneity of household preferences, incorporating neighborhood-specific unobservable characteristics, and addressing the endogeneity of housing prices using instrumental variables. The results suggest that in general, lower housing price, better environmental amenities, and being closer to job centers will increase the choice opportunity of a neighborhood, and public transportation systems play a more important role in the neighborhoods far away from urban centers. Moreover, different households show varying preferences for these public goods. A distinct fact is that in addition to income, people's preferences vary greatly with generation (head age of households) and job type (whether there are public employees), which reveal the significant differences between generations and illustrate the welfare for public employees within the context of the transitional economy in China. This preference heterogeneity implies that future policies should be more geographically asymmetric, locally targeted and tailored based on specific socio-economic characteristics. The third essay estimates the impact of climate change on the crop yields in China. I use a 11-year county-level panel data set covering more than 1,000 counties to estimate the effects of random year-to-year variation in weather on three major crops yields, including rice, wheat, and corn. Because it is not easy for small-scale farmers to adapt to climate change quickly in short time, these estimates could be used to plausibly predict the short to medium-run impacts of climate change on crop yields in China. The essay finds that over the period 2040-2060, projected climate change would reduce rice yield by 1.18% under a comparatively high emission scenario and by 0.08% under a medium-low scenario, reduce corn yield by 2.21% and 1.64% under the two emission scenarios, respectively, and increase wheat yield by 6.68% and 5.48% under the two emission scenarios, respectively. These findings may shed light on future policy designs to enhance the adaptive capacity of agriculture in China and thus ensure food security in the context of climate change.
Three Essays on Energy and Environmental Economics: Empirical, Applied, and Theoretical
Author: Three Essays on Environmental Regulation
Author: Subhadra GanguliPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Air
Languages : en
Pages : 172
Book Description
Three Essays on Environmental Economics
Author: Zihan ZhuoPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The dissertation studies three seemly independent topics on environmental economics, but they share the same theme: the reactions of local governments and firms on promotional incentives and environmental regulations in China.The first chapter examines whether China's Two Control Zone policy has successfully shifted the relative share of SO2 emissions from control zones to non-control zone areas. With a difference-in-differences framework, I find that although the policy failed to achieve its total emission control targets, it caused a partial shifting of SO2 emissions and industrial output from control zones to non-control zone areas and promoted economic growth in relatively less industrialized, less populated, and less developed counties at a cost of higher environmental health damage within those areas. Estimations from this paper suggest that the policy caused the firms in control zone areas to produce 23% less SO2 emission than those in non-control zone areas. My findings highlight the importance of the spillover effect from regional total emission control programs.The second chapter studies a campaign-style innovative environmental enforcement strategy, the Central Environmental Protection Inspection (CEPI), which has assumed an important role in China's environmental enforcement since 2016. With the help of daily water pollution records from 2015 to 2018, this chapter documents the policy's short-term and long-term impacts. Utilizing a difference-in-differences style strategy and comparing water pollution readings from stations belonging to different batches of the policy, evidence is found indicating that local polluters tend to decrease emissions as a precaution prior to inspection periods. Meanwhile, the campaign achieves consistent pollution progress in terms of increasing dissolved oxygen and reducing ammonia nitrogen and total organic carbon emissions. The rebound effects are not strong enough to override water quality improvements. The results indicate that campaign-style enforcement, though possible to be manipulated by local polluters and governments in the short-run, remains a potentially efficient tool for policymakers to pursue long-term environmental enforcement goals.In the third chapter, I examines the existence and scale of interjurisdictional spillovers in China. I apply the difference-in-differences strategy to a unique dataset of more than 100 thousand firms' SO2 and COD emission records from 1998 through 2005. With the help of historical weather information, I identify the windward and leeward status for counties near provincial borders and find that firms located in windward counties relatively increase their SO2 emissions when local windspeed is higher. Heterogeneous analysis further finds that transboundary pollution is especially pronounced for private firms and across borders with yearly average wind speed around median level. The results suggest that a certain level of recentralization in environmental governance can be efficient for reducing transboundary pollution from windward counties in China.
Three Essays on Environmental Quality with Polluting Sectors
Author: Nathaly Macarena Rivera CasanobaPublisher:
ISBN: 9780438313095
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation
Author: Jody FreemanPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198040865
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 501
Book Description
Over the last decade, market-based incentives have become the regulatory tool of choice when trying to solve difficult environmental problems. Evidence of their dominance can be seen in recent proposals for addressing global warming (through an emissions trading scheme in the Kyoto Protocol) and for amending the Clean Air Act (to add a new emissions trading systems for smog precursors and mercury--the Bush administration's "Clear Skies" program). They are widely viewed as more efficient than traditional command and control regulation. This collection of essays takes a critical look at this question, and evaluates whether the promises of market-based regulation have been fulfilled. Contributors put forth the ideas that few regulatory instruments are actually purely market-based, or purely prescriptive, and that both approaches can be systematically undermined by insufficiently careful design and by failures of monitoring and enforcement. All in all, the essays recommend future research that no longer pits one kind of approach against the other, but instead examines their interaction and compatibility. This book should appeal to academics in environmental economics and law, along with policymakers in government agencies and advocates in non-governmental organizations.