Search results for "Public economics"
showing 10 items of 304 documents
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance?
2021
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how ‘adaptation success’ is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation intervent…
The Strategic Use of Innovation to Influence Environmental Policy: Taxes versus Standards
2015
Abstract This paper evaluates the strategic behavior of a polluting monopolist to influence environmental policy, either with taxes or with standards, comparing two alternative policy games. The first of the games assumes that the regulator commits to an ex-ante level of the policy instrument. The second one is the time-consistent policy game. We find that the strategic behavior of the firm is welfare improving and leads to more environmental innovation than under regulatory commitment if a tax is used to control pollution. However, the contrary occurs if an emission standard is used. Under commitment, it is shown that both policy instruments are equivalent. We conclude that the optimal env…
Overcomplying for profit
2005
To maximize their profit, multinationals can design and implement the same and toughest standard in all locations, regardless of domestic regulations. We discuss this kind of overcompliance and stress its underpinnings. Some potential extensions are suggested.
Natural versus manufactured capital: win–lose or win–win? A case study of the Finnish pulp and paper industry
2001
Abstract The effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win–win rhetoric, specifically in micro-level analysis. On the macro-level the win–win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital. Here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital-intensive industry over time. The paper shows that, rather than generalise the existence of win–win situations or the substitutability of capital, these positions are determined by purely situational factors. As …
Bioenergy chain building: a collective action perspective
2014
Depletion of natural resources has become a key issue on the European policy agenda. Bottom-up measures have emerged in several countries with a view to promoting awareness campaigns and environmental sustainability, with the agenda set by individuals who start up collective initiatives at the local level. Such collective action provides an incentive to free-ride on the contribution of others. Social norms and the consequent behavior of individuals involved in collective action assume a key role in ensuring sustainable use of a public good, achieving significant, long-lasting success. The present study aims to ascertain which determinants most affect farmers’ willingness to contribute to co…
Measuring freedom of choice: An alternative view of a recent literature
2004
A recent literature has emerged in social choice theory which attributes intrinsic importance to freedom in the evaluation of states of affairs. The literature’s philosophical basis lies in Berlin’s notion of positive liberty. Accordingly, axiomatic measures of availability of choices are developed and the information they convey used for ranking states on the basis of the extent of liberty they offer to individuals. This paper argues that the literature’s contributions have taken Berlin’s analytical framework for granted exceedingly narrowing the philosophical terms of the debate. It is shown that, once freedom is analyzed from the perspective of an alternative structure, the triadic synta…
Fiscal visibility in the european union member countries: New estimates
1998
Improvements in the efficient allocation of resources can be reached by increasing public revenue and expenditure visibility. This paper presents some indicators permitting the making of time and space fiscal visibility measurements and comparisons and advances new systematic estimates on fiscal visibility for systems and subsystems of public revenue now in force in the European Union member countries. Policy implications seem straightforward for these countries as present revenue visibility values are low in general. Allocation improvements could be obtained by implementing changes and reforms aiming to raise values of public revenue visibility and to make domestic fiscal systems and subsy…
Community currency (CCs) in Spain: An empirical study of their social effects
2016
Despite its sudden proliferation along the economic crisis period, no previous study has investigated the social effects of the community currency (CCs) experiences in Spain. Previous research on CCs experiences from different countries provided evidences about social capital improvement, introducing CCs as sustainability tools. This research uses the theoretical frameworks of social capital and complex adaptive systems to approach concepts like sustainability, networks, trust, norms, participation and cooperation. Statistical analysis of the data collected in June 2013 through online survey explores social capital and resilience indicators among the Spanish exchange community users, conclu…
Co-movement of public spending in the G7
2010
Abstract The size of government in the G7 countries in the last fifty years follows a common pattern (see the left panel of Fig. 1 below): it grows in the first three decades, and then turns flat at the beginning of the nineties, for all countries alike. We highlight this common pattern in a dynamic factor model, and argue that a satisfactory explanation for it would be desirable.
Tax authority to the European Parliament?
1995
In this paper we analyze whether countries of the EC community should plead for a decentralized system to finance the European funds rather than using a uniform tax imposed by the European parliament. The analysis is within a multistage game-theoretic framework in which the implication of the financing system of a confederation on the investment behavior in the respective states is considered. The paper is in the tradition of the literature which claims that from a view of global efficiency property-rights structures inducing ex-post efficient allocations may be worse than a system leading to an ex-post inefficient allocation. For this specific economic issue we elucidate the tradeoff betwe…