Three Essays on Endogenous Growth and the Environment

Three Essays on Endogenous Growth and the Environment PDF Author: Elamin H. Elbasha
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Three Essays on Endogenous Growth and the Environment

Three Essays on Endogenous Growth and the Environment PDF Author: Elamin H. Elbasha
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Growth, Market Structure and the Environment

Growth, Market Structure and the Environment PDF Author: Sjak Smulders
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Growth, market structure and the environment : essays on the theory of endogenous economic growth

Growth, market structure and the environment : essays on the theory of endogenous economic growth PDF Author: Jacobus Antonius Smulders
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Three Essays on Environmental and Energy Economics

Three Essays on Environmental and Energy Economics PDF Author: Onur Sapci
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781303915987
Category : Energy conservation
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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As the economies develop and industrialize, the impact of economic activities on the environment increased, and modern environmental concerns arose. Today most of the countries regulate environmental degradation to some extent. The principal motivation for environmental regulation is the protection of human health. The importance of health and human capital as an engine for economic growth is well-known. Chapter 1 investigates the role of environmental conditions on the link between health and human capital. Factors that reduce the human capital investments distort the economy and impede growth. One key factor that has been under-explored is the interaction of environmental degradation with human capital investments. We know less about how human capital is linked with growth via environmental degradation. This linkage between economic growth and the interaction of environmental degradation with human capital investments matters because if environmental degradation reduces human capital investments, economic growth is slower. This study is among the first to explore the direct impact of pollution on human capital in an economic growth setting. The literature has not addressed how growth-driven environmental degradation has affected human capital--a critical component of economic growth. Chapter 1 presents a two-sector endogenous growth model (AK model) with an environmental externality on human capital. This chapter incorporates the health impacts from the environment on human capital investments and show that the interaction of pollution with human capital investments reduces the optimal growth rate. But when the household ignores the health impacts the resulting growth rate is suboptimal, it is faster than the optimal, and riskier to human health. To achieve efficiency, a Pigouvian tax is proposed. An optimal emissions tax on the firm`s production achieves the socially optimal growth rate. Chapter 2 considers an empirical examination of the proposition on the interaction between environmental degradation and human capital on growth. Using US state-level data, the empirical results support the model of Chapter 1--the interaction between the health impacts of environmental degradation and human capital significantly reduces the growth of real GDP. The results suggest that a 1.03% increase in average annual NOx emissions (1000 metric tons) or a 0.47% increase in average annual SO2 emissions (1000 metric tons) lowers the growth rate by 0.0012 through negative health impacts on human capital. This impact intensifies with a substantial increase in emissions or with pollution accumulation over a long time span. Chapter 3 explores the impact of energy conservation programs on the residential electricity use. Part A of chapter 3 examines the effectiveness of home energy audits conducted by Lower Valley Energy (LVE) in Teton County, Wyoming. These audits assess the energy efficiency of existing structures and propose modifications to reduce electricity consumption. This study examines the factors that influence households to adopt the modifications recommended by the audits and whether these audits lead to significant reductions in electricity use. Using data collected by LVE, household decisions after the audits are recorded along with the corresponding recommended modifications and the offers for co-funding from LVE. A discrete choice model of the household decision after the audit is estimated. The results indicate that the potential improvement in heating efficiency from the proposed modifications increase the probability of implementing an electricity conservation modification in the house. Co-funding offers also significantly raise the odds of accepting the modifications but are relatively less important than anticipated efficiency improvements. Electricity demand models are estimated using data two years before and after each household audit. For households who decide to modify their houses after the audit, monthly average electricity use per square foot decreases 6.6%. While there is an estimated 1.5% reduction in electricity use attributed to the audit by households who decided not to adopt the proposed modifications, this reduction is not statistically significant, casting doubt on the presence of modifications in behavior from the audit information itself. On balance for all households audited, the econometric results suggest that the LVE home energy audit program reduced household electricity use 4.1%. Part B of Chapter 3 presents findings from a large scale household survey. This section provides empirical support that clarifies the mixed results about the connection between household environmental attitudes and real energy consumption behavior. This study combines actual electricity use of 612 households and their opinions, perceptions and attitudes to several environmental issues. The results show that households reflect their stated preferences about environmental issues on their energy use. Environmental attitudes have a direct and observable effect on energy consumption behavior. Environmentally concerned households tend to be more conservative on energy use. These results suggest that the link between household environmental attitudes and patterns of energy consumption is strong.

Essays on Development and Growth

Essays on Development and Growth PDF Author: Leonardo Almeida Bursztyn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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This dissertation consists of three essays on development economics and economic growth. The first essay analyzes the schooling decisions of poor households with adolescent children in urban Brazil using a framed field experiment. It concludes that parent-child conflict plays a crucial role in these schooling decisions, with most parents being unable to control their child's school attendance behavior, in particular due to lack of observability of the child's actions. It also provides evidence that parental demand to control that behavior is not just to provide the child with skills but also to keep the child safe and off the streets. The second essay diverges from political economy models in which the rich do not want the poor to obtain education, using evidence from Brazil. Combining city-level evidence with a new survey, it argues that public education spending is low in countries like Brazil not because the rich oppose it, but because the poor prefer the governments to spend resources elsewhere. The third essay introduces endogenous and directed technical change in a growth model with environmental constraints and limited resources. It characterizes the structure of equilibria and the dynamic tax/subsidy policies that achieve sustainable growth or maximize intertemporal welfare. It generates new insights on the role and timing of optimal environmental policy.

Three Essays in Macroeconomics

Three Essays in Macroeconomics PDF Author: Lenno Uusküla
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Macroeconomics
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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This thesis comprises three thorough investigations into different important economic issues. The common nexus between them is the long-horizon nature of the subjects covered, in which economic growth plays a central role. Specifically, the contents of the thesis address questions such as the extent to which financial integration is favorable for economic development, the implications that population growth has for the natural environment and the design of optimal policy when considering the latest insights on individuals' consumption behavior. The study of the specific topics addressed throughout each chapter of this thesis delivers a number of important results that are summarized subsequently. The first chapter provides an analysis of the relationship between aggregate economic uncertainty, growth and welfare. The model generates two main predictions. First, consumption growth is, ceteris paribus, higher on average in a country that participates in the international financial markets compared to one that is financially autarkic. Second, the sign of the net effect of financial integration on overall social welfare is ambiguous. In the second chapter, an inquiry is made into the implications of population growth for an optimal management problem with pollution externalities. The presence of a potential irreversibility in the dynamics for the stock of pollution is responsible for an outcome overlooked by the previous literature. In line with the available empirical evidence, the model implies that a growing population leads to a deteriorated state of environmental quality. Finally, the third chapter explores an optimal taxation problem in the presence of both congestion and habituation effects in consumption in an economy featuring endogenous growth. The results show that the second-best solution entails a constant consumption tax rate in the long-run and a counter-cyclical consumption tax growth rate in the short-run whose level hinges on the importance of both congestion and habit effects in preferences.

Three Essays in Public Finance and Environmental Economics

Three Essays in Public Finance and Environmental Economics PDF Author: Sanghyun Hwang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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The first essay studies the Marginal Cost of Funds in the existence of tax evasion. We develop a general equilibrium model of tax evasion, including the expected utility of taxpayers and three different revenue-raising government policies. In this rich model environment, we analytically derive the marginal cost of funds (MCF) for the alternative policy instruments. We consider two main fiscal reforms: the revision in the nonlinear tax scheme and the changes in enforcement mechanism (the audit and penalty rates). First, we derive the MCF for the tax reform and find its key determinants. The derived MCF is greater than the previous ones since it includes a "risk-bearing cost" as well as tax distortion. The reform in enforcement mechanism generates MCFs in different forms. Two more MCFs with respect to audit and penalty rates are presented. Finally, we compare these three different MCFs in numerical example and provide some policy implications. The second essay explores optimal tax structure in the presence of status effect. When the consumption of certain goods affects one's social status, this externality creates two opposite effects in a society. Seeking higher status through "positional goods" gives individuals much incentive to supply labor but still allocates income for less "nonpositional goods" as well. In this case, differential taxes on positional goods work as corrective instruments to internalize the social cost stemming from status seeking. Furthermore, the differential taxes generate revenue that can be used to alleviate preexisting income tax distortion. Thus, the differential taxes on positional goods could give so called "double dividend." I develop a game-theoretic model in which each individual with a different labor productivity unknown to the others engages in a status-seeking game, and the government has a revenue requirement. Then I show that, under a condition in which utility is separable between positional goods and leisure, a revenue-neutral shift in the tax mix away from nonlinear income taxes towards positional-good taxes enhances welfare. Hence, the differential taxes on positional goods are necessary together with the nonlinear income taxes for an optimal tax structure. The third essay explores the impact of increasing capital mobility on regional growth and environment. I develop an endogenous growth model in which each local government competes against the others, to induce imperfectly mobile stock of capital into its region. Then I show that an increase in capital mobility generates "tax importing" due to which each locality experiences a higher growth rate and more degraded environment. That is, the increasing mobility dampens the capital tax and transfers the burden of pollution abatement to the locality. This finding supports the hypothesis of "race to the bottom" in environmental standards. Identifying a reduction in overall welfare of residents, I consider two alternative federal interventions in the model: uniform environmental standard and requirement of lump sum transfer or tax. Both of these federal instruments enhance the residents' welfare.

Three Essays on Trade and the Environment

Three Essays on Trade and the Environment PDF Author: Carol A. McAusland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Health and Economic Growth

Health and Economic Growth PDF Author: Guillem López i Casasnovas
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262122764
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Leading international researchers offer theoretical and empirical microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives on the ways a population's health status affects a country's economic growth.

Three Essays on the Dynamics of Soil Conservation, Land Markets and Asymmetric Information

Three Essays on the Dynamics of Soil Conservation, Land Markets and Asymmetric Information PDF Author: Kwansoo Kim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Land use, Rural
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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