Suchergebnisse

Standard environmental economics prescribes policies which are optimal and implemented immediately. The paper argues that, in reality, environmental policy often deviates from the optimum and implementation is not deterministic but subject to major uncertainty and frequent change. We present a model with a stochastic policy process that affects investors' decisions and the composition of capital. We assume that pollution is reduced by private green services and public abatement. The government subsidizes green services and taxes dirty capital albeit at a rate which may become random, causing unexpected capital write-offs. Tax jumps depend on environmental degradation and the share of green services. We show how policy uncertainty affects capital valuation and how it alters individual portfolios, green services, and economic growth.

We study the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on optimum growth and environmental policy by using an expansion-in-varieties growth model with polluting non-renewable resources. Climate change harms the capital stock. Our main contribution is to introduce and extensively explore the naturally determined time lag between greenhouse gas emission and the damages due to climate change which proves to be crucial for the transition of the economy towards its steady state. The social optimum and optimal abatement policies are fully characterized. The inclusion of a green technology delays optimal resource extraction. The optimal tax rate on emissions is proportional to output. Poor understanding of the emissions diffusion process leads to suboptimal carbon taxes and suboptimal growth and resource extraction. ; February 2017

We study the impact of economic policy on the importance of history and expectations for the macroeconomic performance of an economy. In our model the energy mix is based on the conversion of heterogeneous energy sources. Markups over marginal costs are endogenous so that the marginal revenue product of capital becomes non-monotonic in capital. We derive multiple steady states and identify regions in which initial conditions are insufficient as a selection criterion for development. In these situations, pure expectations determine the equilibrium selection process which is crucial for long-run performance. Energy policy affects the interplay between history and expectations by shifting the region where expectations matter and by affecting the location of the equilibria in the dirty and the clean economy. We find that taxes and subsidies should be used simultaneously to guide an energy transition. We argue that expectations and momentum effects are important for the energy transition because they decrease policy costs and thus raise political acceptance.

We build a two-country model of endogenous growth to study the welfare effects of taxes on tradable primary inputs when countries engage in asymmetric trade. We obtain explicit links between persistent gaps in productivity growth and the incentives of resource exporting (importing) countries to subsidize (tax) domestic resource use. The exporters' incentive to subsidize hinges on slower productivity growth and is disconnected from the importers' incentive to tax resource inflows i.e., rent extraction. Moreover, faster productivity growth exacerbates the im- porters' incentive to tax, beyond the rent-extraction motive. In a strategic tax game, the only equilibrium is of Stackelberg type and features, for a wide range of parameter values, positive exporters' subsidies and importers' taxes at the same time. The model predictions concerning the impact of resource taxes on relative income shares are supported by empirical evidence.

We study the impact of economic policy on the importance of history and expectations for the macroeconomic performance of an economy. In our model the energy mix is based on the conversion of heterogeneous energy sources. Markups over marginal costs are endogenous so that the marginal revenue product of capital becomes non-monotonic in capital. We derive multiple steady states and identify regions in which initial conditions are insufficient as a selection criterion for development. In these situations, pure expectations determine the equilibrium selection process which is crucial for long-run performance. Energy policy affects the interplay between history and expectations by shifting the region where expectations matter and by affecting the location of the equilibria in the dirty and the clean economy. We find that taxes and subsidies should be used simultaneously to guide an energy transition. We argue that expectations and momentum effects are important for the energy transition because they decrease policy costs and thus raise political acceptance.

We study the impact of economic policy on the importance of history and expectations for the macroeconomic performance of an economy. In our model the energy mix is based on the conversion of heterogeneous energy sources. Markups over marginal costs are endogenous so that the marginal revenue product of capital becomes non-monotonic in capital. We derive multiple steady states and identify regions in which initial conditions are insufficient as a selection criterion for development. In these situations, pure expectations determine the equilibrium selection process which is crucial for long-run performance. Energy policy affects the interplay between history and expectations by shifting the region where expectations matter and by affecting the location of the equilibria in the dirty and the clean economy. We find that taxes and subsidies should be used simultaneously to guide an energy transition. We argue that expectations and momentum effects are important for the energy transition because they decrease policy costs and thus raise political acceptance.