{"title":"Environmental taxes, offshoring and welfare: The effects of environmental damage and pollution intensity","authors":"Takeshi Iida , Arijit Mukherjee","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103075","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103075","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We analyze the effects of domestic environmental damage and pollution intensity on a monopolist final good producer’s incentive for offshoring a critical intermediate good. Contrary to the usual pollution haven hypothesis, we find that a higher domestic environmental damage, which creates a higher domestic environmental tax, may decrease the incentive for offshoring. This trend is enhanced by a higher pollution intensity of the final good production. Hence, a lower pollution intensity of the final good production may increase offshoring and pollution leakage. Offshoring in our analysis can be excessive or insufficient from the point of view of the domestic country.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"130 ","pages":"Article 103075"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143181980","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":"Polluting my downwind neighbor: Evidence of interjurisdictional free riding from air polluter locations in China","authors":"Zheng Li","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103077","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103077","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Based on comprehensive firm-level datasets and wind pattern information in China, I find evidence of the ‘polluting my neighbor’ phenomenon at the provincial level. Large air-polluting manufacturing firms tend to be disproportionately situated near downwind borders, particularly when wind speeds are lower. Quantitatively, the expected number of new large air polluters (top 10%) in a county-year cell decreases by 11% as the county’s distance to the downwind province border increases by one standard deviation (192 km). Additionally, a one-standard-deviation (0.27 m/s) increase in wind speed reduces the expected number of large air polluters by 6% in counties 100 km closer to the downwind border. The results are robust across various empirical strategies and withstand multiple placebo tests and robustness checks. This finding is predominantly driven by top 10% largest air polluters since placing larger polluters closer to the border can externalize more environmental costs. Furthermore, I demonstrate that this strategic siting of air polluters leads to air quality inequality, disproportionately affecting socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in downwind areas within a province.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"130 ","pages":"Article 103077"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143183285","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":"Unintended environmental consequences of anti-corruption strategies","authors":"Elías Cisneros , Krisztina Kis-Katos","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103073","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103073","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>High agricultural profits motivate politicians to collude with local elites and ignore illegal conversion of natural forests. Fighting corruption through fiscal audits can improve local governance in general but may also unintentionally intensify such collusion and rent extraction activities within the less scrutinized forestry sector. This paper highlights such unintended consequences of a federal anti-corruption strategy in Brazil by documenting the causal effects of randomized fiscal audits on deforestation dynamics, a non-targeted outcome. Between 2003 and 2011, public audits of federal funds increased deforestation by about 10% in municipalities of the Brazilian Amazon within the first three years after the audit. The audits triggered forest loss, especially during election years, in municipalities governed by first-term mayors who managed to win re-elections afterwards, and in places with a high share of cattle ranching, indicating potential collusion between local politicians and the agricultural sector.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103073"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142657507","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":"Blowin’ in the wind: Long-term downwind exposure to air pollution from power plants and adult mortality","authors":"Shinsuke Tanaka","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103072","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103072","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We estimate the causal effects of long-term exposure to air pollution emitted from fossil fuel power plants on adult mortality. We leverage quasi-experimental variation in daily wind patterns, which is further instrumented by the county orientation from the nearest power plant. We find that the county’s fraction of days spent downwind of plants within 20 miles in the last 10 years is associated with increased mortality from COVID-19 through the third peak in mortality in January 2021. This effect is more pronounced in fenceline communities with high poverty rates, low health insurance coverage, and low educational attainment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103072"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142571508","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}
Emanuele Campiglio , Alessandro Spiganti , Anthony Wiskich
{"title":"Clean innovation, heterogeneous financing costs, and the optimal climate policy mix","authors":"Emanuele Campiglio , Alessandro Spiganti , Anthony Wiskich","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103071","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103071","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Access to finance is a major barrier to clean innovation. We incorporate a financial sector in a directed technological change model, where research firms working on different technologies raise funding from financial intermediaries at potentially different costs. We show that, in addition to a rising carbon tax and a generous but short-lived clean research subsidy, optimal climate policies include a clean finance subsidy directly aimed at reducing the financing cost differential across technologies. The presence of an endogenous financing experience effect induces stronger mitigation efforts in the short-term to accelerate the convergence of heterogeneous financing costs. This is achieved primarily through a carbon price premium of 39% in 2025, relative to a case with no financing costs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103071"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142552749","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":"Labor market impacts of eco-development initiatives in protected areas","authors":"Anca Balietti , Sreeja Jaiswal , Daniel Schäffer","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103070","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103070","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Eco-development seeks to balance economic development with biodiversity conservation, enhancing the effectiveness of protected area management. This paper examines the labor market impacts of eco-development initiatives implemented in the protected areas of the Western Ghats, India, a significant biodiversity hotspot facing intense socio-economic pressures. Our findings show that eco-development has substantially altered labor market outcomes in villages within and surrounding protected areas, resulting in a higher share of non-farm employment. This shift is marked by a reduction in year-round work and an increase in seasonal employment. These effects appear to stem from the specific types of jobs created by eco-development and the changes in land use patterns it promotes, such as a higher proportion of forested land and increased reliance on rainfed agriculture over irrigated farming. Descriptive evidence also suggests that, despite improvements in literacy, the affected villages experience lower consumption levels and higher poverty rates.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103070"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142534663","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":"Combining private and common property management: The impact of a hybrid ownership structure on grassland conservation","authors":"Min Liu , Pengfei Liu , Kaixing Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103069","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103069","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study finds that a hybrid property structure, where private ownership and communal ownership coexist, outperforms pure private or pure public ownership in terms of grassland conservation after a grassland tenure reform in China. The tenure reform of privatization replaced public ownership gradually and led to a significant 5.4% increase in grassland quality on average. The grassland quality increase is twice as large for private grassland with additional access to public grassland compared to those without such access. Interestingly, public grassland quality did not decline, indicating sustainable utilization by herders. These findings are consistent with the literature which suggests that a properly structured hybrid ownership arrangement could benefit from the positive effects of grassland privatization while mitigating the negative impacts of natural disasters. We further provide empirical support and show that the gains from public grassland access are substantially larger when there are adverse climatic shocks. Our study provides important policy implications for property rights and sustainable grassland management under more frequent climate events.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103069"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142419276","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}
Paul E. Carrillo , Ivette Contreras , Carlos Scartascini
{"title":"Turn off the faucet: Can individual meters reduce water consumption?","authors":"Paul E. Carrillo , Ivette Contreras , Carlos Scartascini","doi":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103065","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103065","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>When consumption of water and other utilities is measured collectively for many households and the payment of such services is equally shared among members of the group, individuals may use more than what is socially optimal. In this paper, we evaluate how the installation of individual meters affects water consumption. Using administrative data from the public water utility company in Quito, Ecuador, and an event study approach, it is estimated that water consumption decreases by about 20% as a result of the introduction of individual metering. The effect is large and economically significant: in order to obtain the same effect using the price mechanism in Quito, prices would have to increase by at least 66%. Individual water metering could be a useful tool to curve down consumption in both developing and developed countries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15763,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Environmental Economics and Management","volume":"128 ","pages":"Article 103065"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142419278","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":"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}