The implications for households of environmental tax reform (ETR) in Europe

The paper discusses the distributional implications of environmental tax reform (ETR) for households, and presents new results from modelling the impacts of a major ETR for the European Union. The distributional effects arise from the new environmental taxes, any tax reductions made as part of the ETR, the wider macroeconomic impacts from the ETR, any special provisions in the ETR, and the environmental benefits from the ETR. The paper's literature review makes clear that while the impacts from taxes on the household use of energy are very often regressive, transport taxes tend not to be, although the impacts differ between urban and rural households. Moreover, the net distributional impact is often less regressive, or not at all, once the wider distributional effects are taken into account. Residual regressive effects can in principle be removed by further adjustments in the tax or benefits system. The modelling results suggest that an ETR in Europe will actually increase real incomes across the EU as a whole, and will not be generally regressive, although the results differ by country and for different socio-economic groups. The political acceptability of ETR may depend on the worst effects on these groups being mitigated in some way.     

Wealth inequality in Central and Eastern Europe: Evidence from household survey and rich lists’ data combined*

We study how the problem of the ‘missing rich’, the underrepresentation of the wealthiest in household surveys, affects wealth inequality estimates for the post‐socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The survey data from the second wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) are joined with the data from the national rich lists for Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia. Pareto distribution is fitted to the joined survey and rich lists’ data to impute the missing observations for the largest wealth values. We provide the first estimates of the top‐corrected wealth inequality for the CEE region in 2013/2014. Despite a short period of wealth accumulation during the post‐1989 market economy period, our adjustment procedure reveals that wealth inequality in the Baltic countries is comparable to that of Germany (one of the most wealth‐unequal countries in Europe), while in Poland and Hungary it has reached levels observed in France or Spain. We discuss possible explanations of these findings with reference to the speed and range of privatization processes, extent of income inequality, and the role of inheritances and wealth taxes in the region.     

Beyond fuelwood savings: Valuing the economic benefits of introducing improved biomass cookstoves in the Purépecha region of Mexico

Half of the world population relies on biomass for cooking, with very significant health as well as climate change impacts. Improved cookstoves have been disseminated as an alternative to reduce these impacts. However, few detailed studies about the economic benefits of improved cookstoves (ICS) interventions, including environmental and health co-benefits, exist to date. In this paper we perform a comprehensive economic evaluation of a dissemination program of ICS in rural Mexico. The resulting cost–benefit analysis (CBA) of the Patsari improved cookstove is presented, utilizing estimation of direct costs and benefits, including fuelwood savings, income generation, health impacts, environmental conservation, and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis is based on comprehensive data obtained through monitoring studies carried out in the Study Area from 2003 to the present. Results show that Patsari cookstoves represent a viable economic option for improving living conditions of the poorest inhabitants of rural Mexico, with benefit/cost ratios estimated between 11.4:1 and 9:1. The largest contributors to economic benefits stemmed from fuelwood savings and reductions in health impacts, which constituted 53% and 28% of the overall benefit, respectively.     

Driving restrictions that work? Quito's Pico y Placa Program

Programs to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution by restricting use of motor vehicles on working days have generally not met with success, given existing studies of such programs. We conduct the first study of Quito, Ecuador's four‐year‐old Pico y Placa program and find that it has reduced ambient concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO), a pollutant primarily emitted by vehicles, by 9% to 11% during peak traffic hours. Given that ambient concentrations of CO generally track the spatial and temporal distributions of traffic, these reductions in pollution suggest similar reductions in vehicle flows. We find no significant evidence that traffic has shifted to other times of the day or week, or to other locations.     

The convergence in domestic value-added of exports in the EU

Difficulties in measuring domestic value-added in exports (DVA) have led to the development of alternative measures of trade in value-added terms. These new measures have enabled more accurate estimates that reveal that the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE10) exhibit an approximately five percentage points lower DVA share of exports compared with other EU countries (EU15). The lag is on average the highest in knowledge-intensive manufacturing sectors (eight percentage points) and the lowest in knowledge-intensive services (0.3 percentage points). However, this article argues that the CEE10 economies have acquired new knowledge by participating in GVCs and thus have gradually started increasing their level of DVA. Based on EU trade data, this article presents evidence of convergence of DVA in manufacturing and especially in the services sector. It is also shown that a negative relationship exists between participation in GVCs and DVA in the CEE10 economies that is declining over time in both manufacturing and services exports.     

A note on the trade potential of Central and Eastern Europe

This paper discusses the results of recent studies which use the so-called ‘gravity’ approach to predict the potential volume and direction of the trade of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It also examines how the trade of the former socialist economies have evolved following external liberalization. It then compares the predictions made using the PPP based estimates of GDP for 1989 with actual 1992 trade data and the corrected predictions based on actual 1992 GDP figures. The results indicate that the CEE trade responded very quickly to the new regime and being redirected away from CMEA and towards EU markets. CEE's actual trade patterns do not now considerably differ from that of similar Western European countries. Moreover, the projection based on the data of 1992 do not indicate any remaining unused CEE trade potential.     

Enterprise restructuring and social benefits

Soviet era firms provided generous social benefits, including health and child care. Despite recent cuts, firm survey data show that benefits have remained a major component of total compensation. With benefits largely firm-specific and firms dominated by insiders, continuing attachment of workers as well as widespread informal sector participation has resulted. This has impeded restructuring, in part by generating significant set-up costs for new private firms. We simulate the effects of a cut in subsidies to benefits provision. We show that while this leads to falls in benefits and employment and an increase in wages, the outcome critically depends on the availability of alternative providers. The key to cushioning these adverse consequences is the stimulation of a market in benefits provision. Given initial conditions, rapid removal of benefits supports will require transitional income support scheme of transitional support and show that it can be financed from the savings from removal of current subsidies to benefits.     

Dimensions of quality upgrading

The impact of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies’ trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading: upgrading across industries, upgrading across different quality segments within industries and, finally, product upgrading within quality segments inside industries. For the analysis we partition industries into quality segments based on EU‐15 import unit values. The results for ten CEE countries (comprising the CEE‐5, the Baltics and South East Europe) and thirteen industries suggest fundamental differences, both across country groups and across the three different notions of quality upgrading. The CEE‐5 show no evidence of entering a ‘low‐quality trap’ in all three dimensions. By contrast, while there is a general catching‐up process across industries and inside quality segments, the second notion of low‐quality specialization may be applicable within the high‐tech industries to the performance for the Baltics and South East Europe as a group.     

Environmental impacts of changes to healthier diets in Europe

Food consumption causes, together with mobility, shelter and the use of electrical products, most life cycle impacts of consumption. Meat and dairy are among the highest contributors to environmental impacts from food consumption. A healthier diet might have less environmental impacts. Using the E3IOT environmentally extended input output database developed in an EU study on Environmental Impacts of Products (EIPRO), this paper estimates the difference in impacts between the European status quo and three simulated diet baskets, i.e. a pattern according to universal dietary recommendations, the same pattern with reduced meat consumption, and a ‘Mediterranean’ pattern with reduced meat consumption. Production technologies, protein and energy intake were kept constant. Though this implies just moderate dietary shifts, impact reductions of up to 8% were possible in reduced meat scenarios. The slightly changed food costs do not lead to significant first order rebound effects. Second order rebounds were estimated by applying the CAPRI partial equilibrium model. This analysis showed that European meat production sector will most likely respond by higher exports to compensate for losses on the domestic meat market. Higher impact reductions probably would need more drastic diet changes.     

European country heterogeneity in financial distress prediction: An empirical analysis with macroeconomic and regulatory factors

This study tried to improve the understanding of the impact of context variables on the risk of financial difficulties from an European companies experience. To this end, a multilevel logistic model is developed to exploit the benefits of transnational analysis and to examine the effects of contextual factors in countries and the individual impacts of companies within each country. The resulting estimates and the post-estimation analysis based on non-parametric techniques demonstrated that country effects vary randomly but that significant variance exists in the level of financial distress within and between countries. The results also corroborate that companies’ financial variables provide extremely important information. However, the macroeconomic and regulatory factors of the environments in which these companies operate help to explain, to a large extent, the existing heterogeneity among countries.     

International differences in social security and saving

The U.S. Social Security Administration, in cooperation with similar agencies in other countries, recently developed estimates of social security benefits for twelve major industrial countries. The present paper uses these data to estimate the effects of social security benefits on saving and retirement in an extended life cycle model. The parameter estimates indicate that, with retirement behavior given, social security significantly reduces private saving; an increase of the benefit-to-earnings ratio by 10 percentage points reduces the saving rate by approximately 3 percentage points.     

Economic fluctuations in Central and Eastern Europe: the facts

This article provides a detailed empirical analysis of quarterly frequency dynamics in macroeconomic aggregates in 12 countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It shows that business fluctuations in CEE countries are, in general, more pronounced than in developed ones, and are of similar size as in other emerging market economies. Private consumption is particularly volatile. Relative to major developed economies government spending is dominantly procyclical, and net exports are strongly countercyclical. The most frequent country outliers are the high inflation countries of Bulgaria, Romania and Russia, especially in labour market, price and exchange rate variables. Excluding these countries from the sample makes many of the observed patterns in cyclical dynamics more homogenous, and broadly similar to ones established in developed economies.     

Firms and wage inequality in Central and Eastern Europe

We use large linked employer-employee data to analyze wage inequality patterns in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries between 2002 and 2014. We show that, unlike in many other advanced economies, wage inequality levels have decreased in almost all CEE countries. These reductions in wage inequality resulted from disproportionately large increases in wages at the bottom of the wage distribution, and from decreases in between-firm wage inequality. We further find that the declines in wage inequality were driven by large wage structure effects that compensated for changes in the composition of workers.     

The behaviour of expected short-term real interest rates in the UK

The existence of persistent technical inefficiency offers the opportunity for a ‘free lunch’ not typically implied by the neoclassical theory of the firm. When external effects are related to the use of particular inputs, reduction of persistent technically inefficient levels of input use represents a means of reducing external impacts. An important example is found in agriculture where substantial environmental impacts are generated by particular inputs. Within this context, this paper considers the usefulness of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for estimation of potential input reductions and assessment of potential reductions of environmental impacts of agricultural inputs. An application for French cereal production provides estimates that indicate that substantial potential exists for reduction of input use and environmental impacts.     

Equity weighting and the marginal damage costs of climate change

Climate change will give rise to different impacts in different countries, and different countries have different levels of development. Equity-weighted estimates of the (marginal) impact of greenhouse gas emissions reflect these differences. This paper analyses the impact of equity weighting on the marginal damage cost of carbon dioxide emissions, and reaches four main conclusions. First, equity-weighted estimates are substantially higher than estimates without equity-weights; equity-weights may even change the sign of the social cost estimates. Second, estimates differ by two orders of magnitude depending on the region to which the equity weights are normalised. Third, equity-weighted estimates are sensitive to the resolution of the impact estimates. Depending on the assumed intra-regional income distribution, estimates may be more than twice as high if national rather than regional impacts are aggregated. Fourth, variations in the assumed inequality aversion have different impacts in different scenarios, not only because different scenarios have different emissions and hence warming, but also because different scenarios have different income differences, different growth rates, and different vulnerabilities.     

The Ancillary Benefits from Climate Policy in the United States

This study investigates the benefits to human health that would occur in the United States (US) due to reductions in local air pollutant emissions stemming from a federal policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In order to measure the impacts of reduced emissions of local pollutants, this study considers the Warner-Lieberman bill (S.2191) of 2007 and the paper considers the impacts of reduced emissions in the transport and electric power sectors. This analysis provides strong evidence that climate change policy in the US will generate significant returns to society in excess of the benefits due to climate stabilization. The total health-related co-benefits associated with a representative climate policy over the years 2010–2030 range between 103 billion and103 billion and 1.2 trillion in present value terms. Much of the co-benefit stems from between 32,000 and 189,000 avoided premature mortalities associated with exposure to PM_2.5 and O₃. Most of the co-benefits are due to reduced emissions of SO₂ from coal-fired power plants since these are an important contribution to ambient concentrations of PM_2.5. Among the most important determinants of co-benefits is the relationship between climate policy and existing policies governing SO₂ discharges from coal-fired power generation capacity. If SO₂ emissions are permitted to remain at current levels, total co-benefits are cut by 65%. We find that the co-benefit per ton of CO₂ emissions ranges between 1 and1 and 77 depending on modeling assumptions and year.     

The determinants of service exports from Central and Eastern Europe

The transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have become important exporters of many types of services to Western Europe. We identify the sources of CEE’s advantages over competing exporters, such as India, China and Brazil, using disaggregated data on service exports and a novel estimation technique for the gravity equation. Our results indicate that the importance of geographical distance varies substantially across types of service exports. Geography is important for exports of construction services, but it has a negligible impact on computer‐related services. However, the relative quality of legal institutions influences trade across a broad range of service categories. The results demonstrate that aggregating services that are not homogeneous could conceal important differences in the effects of geographical distance and other variables on the pattern of service trade.     

Environmental Liability and Privatization in Central and Eastern Europe: Toward an Optimal Policy

It has been estimated that the costs of remediating contaminated sites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) will be very high. These contingent environmental liabilities have emerged precisely at the time CEE countries are attempting to privatize their capital stocks, creating major challenges for privatization agencies. It is also generally agreed that an inadequate handling of these liabilities in the past has reduced sales of state-owned enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe.This paper uses an analytical model to identify optimal policies for minimizing the damage to privatization processes from environmental liabilities. Policy simulations are conducted which evaluate the effects of the use of liability indemnifications and environmental audits on privatization sales, prices and government revenues net of environmental costs. The major finding of the paper is that goals to mitigate the effects of environmental liability on privatizations and maximize government net revenues from privatization sales require equivalent environmental liability policies. Both goals require optimal provision of information and indemnifications to investors, and moreover it is found that the two policies are complementary rather than substitutes.     

Motivation for bilateral aid allocation: Altruism or trade benefits

This paper argues that OECD countries allocate more aid to recipient nations who import goods in which donor nations have a comparative advantage in production. The estimates indicate that a substantially larger amount of aid is provided to recipients who import capital goods, while imports by other category groups have no significant effects. Given that developed donor nations are major producers and exporters of capital goods, this result at least partially supports their trade benefits motive. Donors also appear to be more concerned about alleviating physical miseries (infant mortality) and rewarding good human rights conditions, but less towards reducing economic hardships (poverty). Moreover, the usual political and strategic considerations of donors continue to be the major determinants of aid allocation even in the Post Cold War era.     

Decentralisation and income inequality in Central and Eastern European countries

This paper provides empirical evidence for the association between fiscal decentralisation and income distribution for a panel of 11 economies from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during 1992–2016. We focus on three research topics: the effect of decentralisation on income inequality; the effects of the structure of subnational government finance on income inequality; and the validity of the Kuznets hypothesis. The main findings from the empirical exercise are as follows: first, we provide firm evidence on the presumed favourable effects of fiscal decentralisation on income distribution in the CEE countries; second, our empirical model suggests that the effects of fiscal decentralisation on income inequality are dependent on the source of finance of subnational governments, i.e. intergovernmental transfers may have a role in income equalisation; third, we cannot confirm the validity of the Kuznets hypothesis in CEE countries.