{"title":"Information, incentives, and environmental governance: Evidence from China’s ambient air quality standards","authors":"Pei Li , Yi Lu , Lu Peng , Jin Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103066","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103066","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Information and incentives are pillars of political accountability. We examine their effectiveness in achieving governance under China’s new ambient air quality standards. By exploiting the sequential introduction of pollution information disclosure and environmental performance evaluation, we show that transparency alone is insufficient to induce public monitoring or government responsiveness. But when information provision is combined with performance incentives, local bureaucrats take actions to reduce pollution. The findings suggest that in a top-down hierarchy, when superiors receive accurate environmental information and administer rewards or sanctions based on that information, local governments face greater accountability pressure and respond by improving environmental performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103066"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142419277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Too hot to sleep","authors":"Patrick Bigler , Benedikt Janzen","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103063","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103063","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Adequate sleep is important for a variety of economic outcomes. We study the relationship between ambient temperatures and human sleep using daily district-level data on sleep duration collected by nearly half a million individual consumer wearable sensors in Germany from 2020 to 2022. Our results illustrate a nonlinear relationship between temperature and sleep duration. Average sleep duration decreases at high temperatures and is unaffected by low temperatures. For instance, we find a small but statistically significant reduction in average sleep duration of 2.8% (12 min and 8 s) on a tropical night (when daily minimum temperature exceeds 20 °C) compared to a mid-temperature night. We document corresponding changes in physical activity (number of daily steps) and vital signs (resting heart rate) at high minimum temperatures, which could represent potential mechanisms for the link between temperature and sleep.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103063"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142419330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Focusing the view: Improved methods for assessing viewshed impacts of onshore wind turbines","authors":"Luran Dong , Corey Lang , Jason Parent","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103068","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103068","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Onshore wind turbine capacity continues to grow and will only accelerate, though siting can be challenging given community opposition. We apply the hedonic valuation method with residential property sales data to assess nearby residents’ willingness to pay to avoid having views of turbines from their property. In doing so, we aim to improve methods of assessing viewshed impacts for turbines and other amenities and disamenities that have a visual component. Our recommended viewshed approach uses a Digital Surface Model (DSM), which accounts for trees and buildings that obstruct views. For comparison, we also create viewsheds based on bare-earth Digital Elevation Model (DEM), which has been more typically used other studies. Using data from New England, USA, we use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with treatment defined by the visibility of a wind turbine, while also controlling for proximity-based treatment effects. The results suggest that property values decline by 2.2%–2.5% when a wind turbine is visible, with larger impacts in urban and coastal areas. DEM methods misclassify viewshed for about 75% of properties, when compared to the DSM-based viewshed, and the resulting DEM-based valuation estimates are attenuated.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103068"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142419329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Equity weighting increases valuations when using real-world data","authors":"Austin Burlile, Peter Maniloff","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103067","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103067","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Environmental economists have long debated whether and how to appropriately integrate distributional concerns into cost benefit analysis. Recent White House guidance instructs U.S. government analysts to weight different groups’ costs and benefits according to their incomes. Groups with incomes below the median would have weights above one, while groups with incomes above the median would have weights below one. We explore the impact of this method. We find that the average weight is above one in a policy-relevant setting. In this example, weighting increases the magnitude of monetized costs and benefits. The average weight varies with the unit of analysis and the choice of unit of analysis can change the sign of the net benefits.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103067"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142327546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The cost-efficiency carbon pricing puzzle","authors":"Christian Gollier","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103062","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103062","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Any global temperature target must be translated into an intertemporal carbon budget and its associated cost-efficient carbon price schedule. Under the Hotelling’s rule without uncertainty, the growth rate of this price should be equal to the interest rate. It is therefore a puzzle that many cost-efficiency IAM models yield carbon prices that increase at an average real growth rate above 7% per year, a very large return for traders of carbon assets. I explore whether uncertainties surrounding the development of green technologies could solve this puzzle. I show that future marginal abatement costs and aggregate consumption are positively correlated. This justifies doing less for climate change than in the safe case, implying a smaller initial carbon price, and an expected growth rate of carbon price that is larger than the interest rate. In the benchmark calibration of my model, I obtain an equilibrium interest rate around 1% and an expected growth rate of carbon price around 3.5%, yielding an optimal carbon price above 200 USD/tCO<span><math><msub><mrow></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow></msub></math></span> within the next few years. I also show that the rigid carbon budget approach to cost-efficiency carbon pricing implies a large uncertainty surrounding the future carbon prices that support this constraint. I show that green investors should be compensated for this risk by a large risk premium embedded in the growth rate of expected carbon prices, rather than by a collar on carbon prices as often recommended.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103062"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069624001360/pdfft?md5=eaee85a73908226d0c9fbd60902405aa&pid=1-s2.0-S0095069624001360-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142314952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Resource dependence, recycling, and trade","authors":"Peter H. Egger , Christian Keuschnigg","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103064","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103064","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recycling waste from used goods can substitute for scarce virgin materials and reduce resource dependence. We present a model of waste collection, recycling, and final goods production using virgin and recycled materials. Environmentally safe disposal of trash (non-recycled waste) requires costly processing by landfill and burning which creates externalities. Trade between resource poor and resource rich countries involves non-trivial interactions between terms of trade effects and distortions in recycling and resource extraction. We analyze welfare improving policy intervention with local trash disposal and with trade in trash.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103064"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142419275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Carbon market design and market sentiment","authors":"Grischa Perino","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103057","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103057","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Concerns about systematic price distortions in the EU Emission Trading System (ETS) have risen in recent years. This paper shows how carbon-market design affects the impact of market sentiment, i.e. systematic deviations of price expectations from fundamentals by at least some market participants, on equilibrium prices. The Market Stability Reserve (MSR) of the EU ETS that adjusts supply based on past allowance banking undermines self-stabilization of the carbon market by discouraging rational intertemporal arbitrage. The MSR increases vulnerability of the EU ETS to market sentiments. Initially, the allowance price responds more to distorted expectations while the MSR (partially) prevents the distortion to spread across periods. Making the MSR more responsive to banking decisions increases the likelihood that distorted expectations turn out to be correct ex post. In contrast, a mechanism that adjust the cap based on the current allowance price does not face a trade off between stabilizing prices in the present and the future.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103057"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069624001311/pdfft?md5=638cfae0ea37b21c06d089ce5df7ce2d&pid=1-s2.0-S0095069624001311-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142314953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effect of extreme temperatures on evictions","authors":"Dylan Brewer, Sarah Goldgar","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103055","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103055","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using data on evictions in the United States, we estimate the relationship between temperature and eviction filings. We find that extreme heat days result in a statistically significant increase in filings, while extreme cold days do not have the same relationship. To explain these findings, we show that residential energy expenditures are more sensitive to extreme heat than extreme cold, and that energy assistance programs in the United States prioritize funding for heating rather than cooling. These findings suggest that relative to today, future climate change scenarios with more hot days and fewer cold days will increase eviction filings without other policy or private adaptation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103055"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142357219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The more the better? Synergies of prosocial interventions and effects on behavioural spillovers","authors":"Marius Alt , Hendrik Bruns , Nives Della Valle","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103061","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103061","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Incentivising prosocial and pro-environmental behaviours is a sensitive endeavour. While behavioural change is urgently needed to mitigate the consequences of climate change, monetary interventions often have negative side effects. Such interventions are prone to motivation crowding, which can impede lasting positive behavioural change and stimulate negative temporal spillovers to other prosocial behaviours. In this study, we investigate whether implementing monetary interventions as part of policy mixes can mitigate these negative side effects. In an online experiment involving 3782 participants, we test whether the use of nudges that make personal and social norms salient can counteract the motivation-crowding effect and explore the effects of such policy mixes on temporal spillovers. We find that policy mixes of norm-based nudges and monetary incentives are more effective at stimulating engagement in targeted prosocial behaviour than no intervention when controlling for sample characteristics. Analysing the temporal spillover effects of these interventions reveals that policy mixes can alleviate the tendency of monetary incentives to negatively affect subsequent prosocial behaviour. This indicates that norm-based nudges are suitable complements to monetary interventions, facilitating long-lasting positive effects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103061"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142322546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do time-of-use prices deliver energy savings at the right time?","authors":"Zheng Fu , Kevin Novan , Aaron Smith","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103054","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103054","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Time-of-use (TOU) electricity prices are increasingly being adopted to reduce consumption during the higher marginal cost afternoon hours. There is ample evidence that TOU rates reduce average consumption during the peak price hours of the day, but it is unknown how these energy savings are distributed across days. Using a unique dataset from households with smart thermostats, we find that adopting TOU rates causes large decreases in peak period AC usage, resulting in energy savings that are concentrated on the hottest, highest demand days when the benefits of conservation are the greatest.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103054"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142319159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}