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Environmental issues have large impacts on both developed and developing economies. In this dissertation, I focus on three environmental issues, assess their impacts, and evaluate the effectiveness of related remedies, using both ex-post evaluation and ex-ante forecasting methods.Using individual travel diary data collected before and after the rail transit coverage expansion in urban Beijing, the first chapter estimates the impact of rail accessibility improvement on the usage of rail transit, automobiles, buses, walking, and bicycling, measured as percent distance traveled by each mode in an individual trip. My results indicate that the average rail transit usage significantly increased, by 98.3% for commuters residing in the zones where the distances to the nearest station decreased because of the expansion, relative to commuters in the zones where the distances did not change. I also find that auto usage significantly decreased, by 19.8%, while the impact on bus usage was small and not statistically significant. Average walking and bicycling distance (combined) increased by 11.8%, indicating that walking and bicycling are complements to urban rail transit, instead of substitutes. Furthermore, I find that estimated changes in auto usage and rail transit usage vary significantly with auto ownership and income.Based on a coauthored paper with Peter Berck and Jintao Xu, the second chapter studies the collective forest tenure reform in China. In this reform, the Chinese government allowed collective village forest land to pass into individualized ownership. The government's purpose was to alleviate rural poverty, stimulate investment in forests, and improve forest conservation. Using data collected from 288 villages, in eight provinces, over three years, this chapter measures the effect of the individualization on one aspect of forest investment, forestation. Because villages voted on the reform, we identify the causal effect of the reform by an instrumental variable estimator based on the countywide decision to offer the reform package. We find an increase in forestation of 7.87% of forest land in the year of the reform, and no significant change in harvesting. It implies that the individualization of the village forestlands is on track to meet the societal goals concerning forest conditions.The third chapter is based on a coauthored paper with Sarah Lewis, Maximilian Auffhammer, and Peter Berck. In this chapter, we study crop coverage adaption to climate change. In the face of warming weather, famers may grow different crops that better fit in the new landscape. This type of adaptation may offset the negative effects of climate change. However, adaptation may be restricted by soil conditions, which determine crop yields and whether the substitution crops could fit in. The feasible amount of adaptation could be small, even in the face of substantial warming. Therefore, the negative effects of climate change can be offset only to a limited extent. In this paper, we pair a 10-year panel of satellite-based crop coverage and soil data with a fine-scale weather data set that incorporates the whole distribution of temperatures within each day and across all days in the 10-year period. Combining a proportion type model with local regressions, we simultaneously address the econometric issues of proportion dependent variables and spatial correlation of unobserved factors. Based on the estimates of crop choices, we predict future crop maps under several climate change scenarios. We find that rice and cotton spread toward the north, corn share increases, and soy share decreases on average. We also find that crop shifting patterns vary across quality levels of soils. There is less crop adaptation on better soils than on soils with lower quality.

[eng] Fighting poverty and protecting the environment are two of the most urgent challenges facing the international community at the start of the 21st century (United Nations, 2015). One aspect that will be crucial in this challenge is aligning environmental, energy and development policy in order to create a triple dividend between the three policy fields. Additionally, integrating environmental protection policies with poverty reduction strategies is by no means a new concept, but as we continue to think about these challenges, it is important to link environmental and economic components together through a type of development that is economically feasible, socially desirable and environmentally benign. Within each of these challenges lies different possible interventions, but space must be created for public policy to be at the center of these challenges in order to generate the best available evidence and guide our decision making. This dissertation consists of three independent chapters that represent responses to these challenges, and provides empirical evidence that can guide specific policy recommendations in the fields of development economics, and environmental and resource economics. Universal access to modern energy services is central to the international sustainable development agenda. According to the International Energy Agency (2010, 2017), 1.4 billion people across the world did not have access to electricity, and 2.7 billion people still rely on traditional use of solid biomass. The international development agenda has placed an emphasis on improving access to electricity as well as made large investments in the energy sector throughout developing countries. It is argued that the universalization of access to electric energy in the world is of fundamental importance for the eradication of poverty and the reduction of social inequality (Kaygusuz, 2011). Despite the large investments made in the energy sector to increase rural electrification and the diffusion of modern cooking systems, ...

{This thesis uses the tools of applied econometrics to study the impact of economic incentives on household welfare and decision-making and the environmental outcome of urban transportation policies in the U.S. and in developing countries.Transportation is an essential component of day-to-day life. An extensive transportation system offers mobility, expanding individuals' access to employment opportunities, agglomeration benefits to firms and employees, reduced trade costs, and an overall increase in productivity. The positive effects of an efficient transportation network in an economy are often accompanied by rising motorization rates. This, in turn, can lead to air pollution, road congestion, and increasing dependence on fossil fuels. In the past few decades, climate change concerns have made policymakers and governments agencies in both developed and developing countries incentivize improvement in fuel economy of vehicles as well as promote alternative fuel vehicles.Alternative fuel vehicles currently arriving in the market offer better driving performance compared to their predecessors, and their market penetration is higher than before. However, most people still do not consider these alternative fuel vehicles as a substitute of traditional gasoline cars. Incentives offered to consumers to promote adoption have achieved varied results. The first chapter of the dissertation studies the stated vehicle transaction decisions of 3,154 survey respondents located in the state of California. While the effectiveness of policy incentives like tax credits and rebates is found to be more universal, the effect of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane permit or free parking benefit on adoption decision depends on the likelihood of the household being able to use the benefits. In addition, familiarity with an alternative fuel technology is found to be positively correlated with the preference for electric battery or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Prior ownership of a hybrid vehicle made the household more likely to purchase an alternative fuel vehicle in the future. This persistence in choice behavior can be attributed to heterogeneity among vehicle purchasers or considered as a sign of positive experience. Experience can reduce skepticism about alternative fuel vehicles and induce future adoption. Accounting for the number of years of ownership of alternative fuel vehicles, the results show that more experience has a positive effect on the probability of repurchase of the same or a newer technology vehicle. This result contributes towards a long standing debate of whether the incentives work only as a marketing mechanism or does it have any long term benefits. The positive correlation in preference pattern and the willingness to pay measures indicate that even if the price-based incentives work as a marketing mechanism they play an important role in initiating potential state dependence in purchase behavior to improve adoption in the long run. In recent years, emerging economies like India and China have been experiencing the externalities related to increased motorization. Urbanization accompanied with increasing per capita income has led to a rise in private automobile demand. Historically, the infrastructure of major metropolitans in these emerging economies was not designed to support a sudden rise in the use of automobiles. As a result, a majority of these metropolitans suffer from congestion and pollution from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The local government and policymakers in these economies are considering a variety of policies like to scrap old polluting vehicles, impose fuel standards, cordon tolls, and driving restrictions to address these issues. Driving restrictions has been implemented in several metropolitan cities in emerging economies like Beijing, China, Santiago, Chile, Mexico City, Mexico, S\~{a}o Paulo, Brazil, Bogot\'{a}, Colombia, and recently New Delhi, India. According to this policy, cars with license plate numbers ending with certain digits are allowed to be driven on separate days of the week. A number of studies have shown that though the license plate based policy is effective in the short run in reducing local pollutants as well as GHG emissions, it is not effective in the medium or long run. In spite of these results, it is considered more equitable compared to price-based policies like congestion tax or a cordon toll that may impose a greater financial burden on the low-income commuters. At present, there is a limited number of studies that consider the distributional effect of the policy. The second chapter on license-plate-based driving restriction policy considers the distributional effect of the policy in comparison to a cordon toll and a vehicle mile tax by analyzing the mode choice of commuters in Santiago, Chile. Analysis of different policy scenarios suggests that though the restriction has a negative distributional effect on all commuters, in the absence of a revenue recycle mechanism the effect is less adverse in comparison to a vehicle mile tax or a cordon toll for the same level of reduction in total car trips.Transportation and the power sector are the leading sources of GHG emissions in the U.S. Policies and programs trying to reduce GHG emissions from the power sector like the federal Clean Power Plan, rebates and tax credits for the adoption of rooftop photovoltaic cells, and the renewable portfolio standard incentivizes investment in renewable energy resources. The programs have increased the share of renewable resources in the grid but, utilities are finding it hard to integrate these intermittent sources of energy into the regular dispatch module. In the transportation sector, the policy focus has mostly been on encouraging adoption of electric vehicles (EV). The latter has zero tailpipe emissions but has to be connected to the grid to operate the vehicle. Electricity pricing will play a major role in dealing with this quandary. The third chapter on electricity pricing and EV charging behavior considers the environmental impact of shifting from tiered or block pricing structure to a time-of-use rate structure that matches consumption with the time-varying cost of electricity production. The results provide evidence supporting the decision to change the pricing structure as marginal emissions of carbon dioxide is lower under the time-of-use rate structure compared to the tiered pricing plan. Moreover, the analysis of emissions in each time-of-use period brings forth the importance of defining the periods such that utilities and environmentalists can maximize the benefits of EV adoption and the increasing share of renewable energy resources in the power sector.

Environmental economics is an increasingly important area of research, though is often misunderstood by natural scientists, policymakers, and neoclassical economists alike. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Environmental Economics aims to bridge this gap, offering an expansive overview of the field's key concepts, practical applications, and interdisciplinary perspectives from a set of diverse and authoritative authors. Major themes of the collection include environmental regulation, valuation, sustainability, natural resources, impacts on risk and human health, among others. Articles introduce readers to the topic at an accessible level while also being of interest to high level scholars in environmental economics and related fields seeking greater understanding of the subject.

Introduction -- PART I THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT -- Differing Views on the Environment -- The International Dimension of the Environment -- PART II THEORETICAL ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS -- Basics of Environmental Economics -- Allocation Problems in a Market Economy -- The Internalization of External Effects -- Public Goods in Environmental Economics -- PART III ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY -- From Theory to Policy: Information Deficits -- Command-and-Control Policy -- The Price-Standard Approach to Environmental Policy -- International Environmental Commodities and the Principal-Agent-Approach -- Holistic Environmental Policies -- PART IV THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE GLOBALIZED WORLD -- Trade and the Environment: The Legal Context -- Overfishing -- Integration of Trade and the Environment.

Diffusion du document : OCDE 2 rue André Pascal 75775 Paris Cedex 16 (FRA) ; Le choix de taxation des intrants polluants est remis en cause par un certain nombre d'auteurs sur la base d'estimations de leur élasticité-prix très faible. Ces résultats obtenus à partir de modèles d'optimisation font l'objet d'un premier point où la démarche et les résultats sont présentés. Dans un deuxième point, on discute de la portée de ces estimations en montrant comment il convient de les analyser. Enfin, le troisième point développe les effets d'une taxation de l'azote sur la branche céréalière française à la lumière d'un certain nombre de travaux conduits à l'Unité INRA-ESR de Rennes.