Carbon Taxes and Joint Implementation. An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis for Germany and India

Germany has committed itself toreducing its carbon emissions by 25 percent in2005 as compared to 1990 emission levels. Toachieve this goal, the government has recentlylaunched an environmental tax reform whichentails a continuous increase in energy taxesin conjunction with a revenue-neutral cut innon-wage labor costs. This policy is supposedto yield a double dividend, reducing both, theproblem of global warming and high unemploymentrates. In addition to domestic actions,international treaties on climate protectionallow for the supplementary use of flexibleinstruments to exploit cheaper emissionreduction possibilities elsewhere. One concreteoption for Germany would be to enter jointimplementation (JI) with developing countriessuch as India where Germany pays emissionreduction abroad rather than meeting itsreduction target solely by domestic action. Inthis paper, we investigate whether anenvironmental tax reform cum JI providesemployment and overall efficiency gains ascompared to an environmental tax reformstand-alone. We address this question in theframework of a large-scale general equilibriummodel for Germany and India where Germany mayundertake JI with the Indian electricitysector. Our main finding is that JI offsetslargely the adverse effects of carbon emissionconstraints on the German economy. JIsignificantly lowers the level of carbon taxesand thus reduces the total costs of abatementas well as negative effects on labor demand. Inaddition, JI triggers direct investment demandfor energy efficient power plants produced inGermany. This provides positive employmenteffects and additional income for Germany. ForIndia, joint implementation equips itselectricity industry with scarce capital goodsleading to a more efficient power productionwith lower electricity prices for the economyand substantial welfare gains.     

The impact of environmental regulation on productivity in German industries

The objective of this paper is to adjust a traditional total factor productivity (TFP) measure for the direct effect of environmental regulation on material and capital input. For this purpose we consider the fact that part of material input and pollution abatement capital have not been used to increase output but to cover the cost of using the environment as a factor of production. Therefore TFP growth rates are lower if part of the material input is allocated to abatement activities instead of producing output. We propose to treat compliance with environmental regulation as an unproductive input linked to the use of productive material input. Our aim is to answer and discuss two questions: How to measure the effect of environmental regulation on TFP, and does the effect matter. We examine data from 1975–1991 for ten pollution intensive German industries.We would like to thank Cornelia Oßwald for valuable research assistance. We are especially grateful to two anonymous referees for many helpful comments.     

Trade and Renewable Resources in a Second Best World: An Overview

We provide an overview and introduction to the emerging field of trade and renewable resources, and discuss the potential impact of trade liberalization on welfare and resource conservation. A key factor determining the effect of trade reform is the institutional context or property rights regime, and our survey is organized such that it loosely follows the development of new insights with respect to institutions in this literature. This implies a transition from the benevolent planners model to the polar opposite benchmark of open access in the 1990s. Currently the pendulum is swinging back towards management and regulation, but institutions are treated as endogenous. We discuss and compare various key models in some detail and search for common ground between protagonists and antagonists of free trade. Paper based on Keynote address by Erwin Bulte, 12th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Bilbao (Spain), June 28–30, 2003.     

Long memory in volatilities of German stock returns

We show that there is strong evidence of long-range dependence in the volatilities of several German stock returns. This will be done by applying a method using the difference of the classical log-periodogram regression estimator for the memory parameter and of the tapered periodogram based estimator. Both estimators give similar values for the memory parameter for each series and this indicates long memory. To support our findings we apply also a methodology using the sample variance and a wavelet based estimator to the data. Also these two methods show clear evidence of long-range dependence in the volatilities of German stock returns.First version received: December 2001/Final version received: March 2003The computational assistance of Eleni Mitropoulou and Björn Stollenwerck as well as the helpful comments of two unknown referees are gratefully acknowledged. Research supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under SFB 475. Stock returns were obtained from Deutsche Finanzdatenbank (DFDB), Karlsruhe.     

Reinterpreting the performance of immigrant wages from panel data

Immigrants differ from the native born in terms of unobserved factors, such as motivation, and observed factors, including those related to the interruption of labour market activity and earning capacity, which may bias estimates of immigrant integration. Using panel data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, we show that using potential experience, rather than actual experience, exaggerates estimates of the disruption and recovery caused by immigration. More importantly, we find support for omitted variables bias, arising from unobserved fixed effects. Instrumental variable estimates for both pooled and separate samples of immigrant and native born men demonstrate a wage disadvantage for immigrants upon entry that persists through their lifetime. Standard estimates of a modest wage advantage for the children of immigrants also suffer from omitted variables bias arising from unobservables. Contrary to most of the literature to date, our instrumental variable estimates which allow for unobservable fixed effects suggest that immigrants never catch up to otherwise comparable native born workers, but their children do just as well. We would like to thank Statistics Canada for permitting access to the data and solving associated technical problems, the Prairier Centre for Research on Immigration and Integration for financial assistance, and Peter Schnabl for excellent research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the 10th International Conference on Panel Data in Berlin, July 5–6, 2002. The authors take sole responsibility for errors, omissions and interpretation of the data.     

Enforcing Emissions Trading when Emissions Permits are Bankable

We propose enforcement strategies for emissions trading programs with bankable emissions permits that guarantee complete compliance with minimal enforcement costs. Our strategies emphasize imperfect monitoring supported by a high unit penalty for reporting violations, and tying this penalty directly to equilibrium permit prices. This approach is quite different from several existing enforcement strategies that emphasize high unit penalties for emissions in excess of permit holdings. Our analysis suggests that a high penalty for excess emissions cannot be used to conserve monitoring effort, and that it may actually increase the amount of monitoring necessary to maintain compliance.The authors are grateful to Anthony Heyes and three anonymous referees for their valuable comments. Partial support for this research was provided by the Cooperative State Research Extension, Education Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station under Project No. MAS00871.     

Efficiency wages and union-firm bargaining with private information

We consider efficiency wage effects in a union-firm bargaining model with private information. We show that an increase in the efficiency wage effects does not necessarily increase the wage level at equilibrium, even when the wage bargaining with private information is close to one with complete information. However, if it is commonly known that the firm is stronger than the union and the demand is sufficiently elastic, then an increase in the efficiency wage effects increases for sure the wage at equilibrium.JEL Classification: J41, J50, J52We thank Juan Dolado and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. Vincent Vannetelbosch is Chercheur Qualifié at the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique. The research of Ana Mauleon has been made possible by a fellowship of the Fonds Européen du Développement Economique Régional (FEDER). Financial support from the Belgian French Communitys program Action de Recherches Concertée 99/04-235 (IRES, Université catholique de Louvain) is gratefully acknowledged.     

Physical Search

Unidirectional search is an evolutionarily stable outcome in an economy where homogenous buyers and sellers can either move or stay. It is more efficient than bidirectional search. In unidirectional search, it is more efficient if the more numerous agents move and the less numerous agents stay, than vice versa.     

Von Neumann-Morgenstern stable sets, discounting, and Nash bargaining

We establish a link between von Neumann-Morgenstern stable set and the Nash solution in a general n-player utility set. The stable set-solution is defined with respect to a dominance relation: payoff vector u dominates v if one player prefers u even with one period delay. We show that a stable set exists and, if the utility set has a smooth surface, any stable set converges to the Nash bargaining solution when the length of the period goes to zero.     

Analysis of Visitor Decision Making System When Visiting Natural Recreation Sites by Multinomial Logit Model

Multinomial Logit Model has analyzed the relationship between the frequency of visits to recreation areas and the motivational factors affecting the visits. Kastro Environment Preserving Site that is located in the Black Sea coast of Marmara region in Turkey, has been chosen as the site for this study. Kastro bay is a natural park that is visited only for recreational visits. The study has been conducted on a photogenic study group due to the proximity factor of Kastro bay close to Istanbul. Kastro bay is a popular recreational park due to its characteristic advantages such as a 200 m wide and approximately 2.5 km long beach and with its high quality vegetation. The vegetation type includes ash tree, oak tree, black pine, sand lily etc. Kastro bay is also the site for the Mediterranean seals (Monachus-monachus) which are at the level of extinction. Approximately 50,000 visitors visit the region during the months of July and August. It has been concluded that there is high direct correlation between the frequency of visits and the motivational factors. It has been determined that the visits are mostly based on the sea and the ecological tourism.Jel: O13, Q20, Q26, Q51, Q56, Q57