Clean technology — Innovation and environmental regulation

The development and diffusion of clean technologies has an important role to play in preventing pollution. Government must address the issue of how firms can be given the necessary incentive to develop environmentally sound production techniques and products. This paper focus on how subsidies can — under certain restrictive conditions — stimulate innovation. Subsidization is usually assumed to involve unit subsidies for pollution reduction. Unit subsidies have little to do with the subsidy schemes in actual use. Our focus is on subsidy schemes specifically designed to promote the development of clean technologies through the use of grants/financial aid. Based on data from the development projects initiated through The Danish Clean Technology Programme we analyze how environmental innovations take place when the polluters, their suppliers and consultants are actively engaged in the development processes. The main merit of subsidy schemes like the Danish one is its direct focus on the innovation processes and the active incorporation of the network of firms surrounding the polluters. Our findings lead us to conclude that when it comes to subsidization, the role of government should be redefined. Government can act as a matchmaker by providing firms with informative incentives and necessary contacts for finding more efficient technological solutions to specific environmental problems.     

Optimal taxation of car ownership, car use and public transport: Insights derived from a discrete choice numerical optimization model

We formulated and numerically evaluated a model of car ownership, car use and public transport use for peak and off-peak hours of the day. The model was used to study the optimal tax structure for passenger transport in Belgium, with special emphasis on the optimal tax treatment of diesel versus gasoline cars. We obtained a number of interesting results. First, if the government can set all fixed and variable transport taxes optimally, the higher marginal external cost of diesel use implies that the optimal tax per kilometre for the use of a diesel car is higher than for the use of a gasoline car. Moreover, high congestion implies that the taxes on car use in the peak period are more than twice their current levels. However, the optimal tax on ownership of a diesel car is some 200€ below its current level. Second, if the government uses kilometre taxes that do not differentiate between fuel types, the optimal ownership tax on a diesel car is twice as high as the tax on a gasoline car. Furthermore, if political constraints restrict user taxes to their current levels, we find that optimal ownership taxes on diesel cars double, whereas those on gasoline cars rise by 30%. Finally, subsidies to public transport are found to be optimal as long as variable car taxes are not differentiated between periods.     

How cannibalistic is the Internet channel? A study of the newspaper industry in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands

During the past decade, irrational exuberance has turned into a possibly equally irrational pessimism about what the Internet can accomplish. The fear of getting ruined through cannibalization losses has recently deterred many firms from deploying the Internet as a distribution channel. But do Internet channels really cannibalize firms' entrenched channels, or is this widely held assumption exaggerated? To answer this question, we apply recent structural-break time-series econometrics to quantify the impact of an Internet channel addition on the long-run performance evolution of a firm's established channels. Using a database of 85 Internet channel additions over the last 10 years in the newspaper industries of the UK and The Netherlands, we find that the often-cited cannibalization fears have, at least in this information-goods industry, been largely overstated. The Internet therefore need not be disruptive to established companies and channels. This does not, however, imply that firms enjoy free play in setting up Internet channels. In cases where the newly established Internet channel too closely mimics the entrenched channels, substantial cannibalization is more likely to take place.     

Reducing Costs of Censuses in Norway Through Use of Administrative Registers

The purpose and methodology of the Norwegian census has changed considerably during the last 35 years. While the census was previously the main source of socio-demographic information, it is to day just one of several sources. After an identification number for each individual was introduced and used in various administrative registers, the dominating role of the census has changed dramatically. For some years it has been the policy of Statistics Norway to collaborate with various governmental agencies in order to use administrative registers in statistics production. This policy has been supported politically, and a new Statistics Act has been useful in these efforts. The purpose of this paper is to present the strategy and methodology used to produce statistics in general, census statistics in particular, when based on a combined use of administrative registers and directly collected data. Experiences from Norwegian censuses since 1960 will be presented.     

The geneva hydrocarbon protocol: Economic insights from a belgian perspective

This paper extends the methodology for the economic analysis of tropospheric ozone regulation reported in Repetto (1987). Firstly, the acid rain objective is explicitly incorporated by assigning an additional benefit to the acidifying precursors of ozone. Secondly, we introduce the transboundary dimension which is of particular importance to Europe. The methodology is applied to the evaluation of the costs and benefits of the Geneva Protocol on hydrocarbons for Belgium.     

Network dependency and airline competition – Consequences for remote areas in Norway

Due to the long stretched shape of the country and sparse population many regions in Norway are dependent on air travel that involves chained trips with two or more legs. Northern Norway and the west coast are particularly dependent on such networks. In these areas a number of short take-off and landing airports and subsidised regional airlines engaged in a public service obligations route tendering systems. However, regions dependent on competitive network travel have not all benefited from the last ten years of competition which has lead to lower fares on the main routes and ‘through-fares’ for network travellers have become relatively expensive. This is because there is only one network airline offering through fares. Network travel where one leg is commercially provided and not covered by public service obligation rules, leaving regulation authorities to intervention when fares are excessively high on other legs.