Three Essays on Natural Resources, Climate Change and Economic Growth

Three Essays on Natural Resources, Climate Change and Economic Growth PDF Author: Hongslip Sriket
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Three Essays on Natural Resources, Climate Change and Economic Growth

Three Essays on Natural Resources, Climate Change and Economic Growth PDF Author: Hongslip Sriket
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Three Essays on Theories of Economic Growth, Resource Development and Climate Change

Three Essays on Theories of Economic Growth, Resource Development and Climate Change PDF Author: Yiyong Cai
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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This thesis is a collection of essays on theories of economic growth, resource development and climate change. The first essay (Chapter 2) studies the fundamental dynamic properties of stochastic optimal growth models with capital and elastic labour supply. It provides conditions on the primitives of the model under which the optimal policy functions are existent, unique, continuous and monotone. Second, it provides conditions under which the distribution of income converges to a unique invariant probability measure independent of initial income. It also studies when the law of large numbers and central limit theorem hold for functions of income, investment and labour. The second essay (Chapter 3) develops a theoretical model to study the resource curse. In a general equilibrium framework, it relates poor economic performance to the existence of social fractionalisation, market frictions and resource-related conflicts. When resources are monopolised by the elite, exports lead to the under-provision of public resource goods for domestic production. This lowers the marginal return to productive activities, and consequently, insurgency emerges as the civilians' default activity. The resultant conflicts further displace resources and labour, and bring the economy into a vicious cycle. The third essay (Chapter 4) proposes a non-probabilistic approach to the analysis of international climate policies. It argues that issues associated with climate change are historically unprecedented, and thus policymakers do not have a prior distribution over possible outcomes. Therefore, the theoretical framework based on maximising expected utility is not well defined. Under the alternative assumption that policymakers act strategically, but choose the policy that allows the highest possible gain in the worst-case scenario, this essay shows how multilateralism can be inferior to unilateralism in both carbon mitigation and loss minimisation. Hence, it is not appropriate to judge the success of global climate talks in terms of country engagement and reduction commitment. -- provided by Candidate.

Three Essays in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Three Essays in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics PDF Author: Garth Heutel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The Global Environment, Natural Resources, and Economic Growth

The Global Environment, Natural Resources, and Economic Growth PDF Author: Alfred Greiner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199716536
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Recently, the public attention has turned toward the intricate interrelation between economic growth and global warming. This book focuses on this nexus but broadens the framework to study the issue. Growth is seen as global growth, which affects the global environment and climate change. Global growth, in particular high economic growth rates, imply a fast depletion of renewable and non-renewable resources. Thus this book deals with the impact of the environment and the effect of the exhaustive use of natural resources on economic growth and welfare of market economies as well as the reverse linkage. It is arranged in three parts: Part I of the book discusses the environment and growth. There, Greiner and Semmler incorporate the role of environmental pollution into modern endogenous growth models and use recently developed dynamic methods and techniques to derive appropriate abatement activities that policymakers can institute. Part II looks at global climate change using these same growth models. Here, too, the authors provide direct and transparent policy implications. More specifically, the authors favour tax measures, such as a carbon tax, over emission trading as instruments of mitigation policies. Part III evaluates the use and overuse of renewable and non-renewable resources in the context of a variety of dynamic models. They, in particular, consider the cases when resources interact as an ecological system and analyze issues of ownership of resources as well as policy measures to avoid the overuse of resources. In addition, not only intertemporal resource allocation but also the eminent issues relating to intertemporal inequities, as well as policy measures to overcome them, are discussed in each part of the book.

Three Essays on Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Three Essays on Environmental and Natural Resource Economics PDF Author: Qiong Juliana Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electric utilities
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Climate, Water, and Carbon

Climate, Water, and Carbon PDF Author: Francis Muamba Mulangu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Abstract: This dissertation is composed of three essays. The first essay seeks to estimate the impact of climate change on household's welfare on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Unlike previous studies, the approach used in this essay limits the bias from unobservables by applying the analysis in a relatively small geographical area composed of homogeneous farmers with similar cultures, agricultural systems, and market influence. However, these farmers inhabit places that have relatively large differences in rainfall. The data for the analysis were gathered from a random sample of over 200 households in 15 villages and observation posts to measure the precipitation from rainfall were placed in each of the surveyed villages. The results indicate that Mt. Kilimanjaro's agriculture is vulnerable to precipitation variation, especially November precipitations. Farm vulnerability is heterogeneous across space, crops, and monthly precipitation. The study finds some evidence about the ability of irrigation usage to reduce crop vulnerability to precipitation change. With regards to household's welfare, we simulated crop revenue response to a median of seven Global Climate Models (GCMs), and found evidence that climate change will negatively affect household's welfare on Mt. Kilimanjaro. The second essay analyzes the potential benefits of introducing improved irrigation schemes on Mt. Kilimanjaro to help rain-dependent farmers cope with the risks of climate change. The study uses the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) to elicit farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for eliminating the risks of crop loss by accessing improved irrigation schemes. The study makes important contributions to both policies in Africa and the applied welfare literature. The policy contribution consists of valuation of improved irrigation in the presence of climate change risks. The applied welfare contribution consists of empirical evidence about the impact of farmers' risk beliefs, and self-protective actions on welfare valuation. The study finds that farmers' expected increase in revenues associated with the improved irrigation scheme will equal the cost of building it within 8 to 10 years. The purpose of the third essay is twofold. First, the essay seeks to determine the potential for soil carbon sequestration on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Second, the essay aims at estimating the marginal cost of sequestering soil carbon on Mt. Kilimanjaro. To answer these questions, the essay develops a Markov decision model that maximizes the net present value (NPV) of farm profit by allowing the farmer to choose optimal farm management subject to crop yield, soil carbon stock, and exogenous carbon price. The essay concludes that there is potential for economically viable carbon sequestration contracts on Mt. Kilimanjaro. At $20 per metric ton of carbon or $8.62 per hectare, 0.085 million metric tons of carbon could be sequestered per year because farmers would find it optimal to practice no-tillage cultivation of grains and retain some crop residues.

Fairness and Futurity

Fairness and Futurity PDF Author: Andrew Dobson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191522384
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice brings together leading international figures in political theory and sociology, as well as representatives from the political community, to consider the normative issues at stake in the relationship between environmental sustainability and social justice. It raises important questions and sets out to provide the answers. If future generations are owed justice, what should we bequeath them? Is `sustainability' an appropriate medium for environmentalists to express their demands? Is environmental protection compatible with intra-generational justice? Is environmental sustainability a luxury when social peace has broken down? These essays emerged from three intensive seminars that involved participants in constant re-evaluations of their work, and which bought three distinct groups—environmental theorists, `mainstream' political theorists, and policy community members—into fruitful contact. In particular, the attempt to involve `mainstream' theorists in environmental questions, and to encourage environmentalists to use intellectual resources of political theory, should be highlighted.

Running Dry

Running Dry PDF Author: Toby Craig Jones
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813569966
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
The world’s water is under siege. A combination of corporate greed, the elite pursuit of political power, and our unrelenting reliance on carbon-based energy is accerlating a broad range of environmental and political crises. Potentially catastrophic climate change, driven primarily by the consumption of oil and gas, threatens the environment in a variety of ways, including producing unprecedented patterns of heavy weather and superstorms in some places and droughts in others. Alongside intensifying environmental dangers posed by our reliance on carbon energy, the conditions of modern life, from happiness to the possibility of democratic politics, are also being undermined. In Running Dry, historian Toby Craig Jones explores how modern society’s unquenchable thirst for carbon-based energy is endangering the environment broadly, as well as the historical roots of this threat. This accessible book examines the history of the "energy-water nexus," the ways in which oil and gas extraction poison and dry up water resources, the role of corporate "science" in deflecting attention away from the emerging crises, and the ways in which the rush to capture more energy is also challenging America's democratic order.

Economics of Forestry

Economics of Forestry PDF Author: Roger A. Sedjo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351725920
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2003. The 'Economics of Forestry' is a specialized subset of resource economics addressing a specific natural resource - the forest - which is usually a relatively long time period. Hence, forest economics has characteristics similar to nonrenewable resources but also has those of a renewable resource, in some cases approaching those of agriculture. This volume comprises some of the most significant journal essays in forest economics and forest policy. The International Library of Environmental Economics and Policy explores the influence of economics on the development of environmental and natural resource policy. In a series of twenty five volumes, the most significant journal essays in key areas of contemporary environmental and resource policy are collected. Scholars who are recognized for their expertise and contribution to the literature in the various research areas serve as volume editors and write essays that provides the context for the collection. Volumes in the series reflect three broad strands of economic research including 1) Natural and Environmental Resources, 2) Policy Instruments and Institutions and 3) Methodology. The editors, in their introduction to each volume, provide a state-of-the-art overview of the topic and explain the influence and relevance of the collected papers on the development of policy. This reference series provides access to the economic literature that has shaped contemporary perspectives on land use analysis and policy.

Essays in Climate and Development

Essays in Climate and Development PDF Author: Roberto Guerrero Compeán
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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This dissertation is a collection of three essays on environmental policy and empirical development economics, unified in their underlying inquiry of the welfare effects of climate in Mexico. The first chapter presents evidence on the relationship between exposure to extreme temperatures and precipitation and mortality, as well as the relationship between severe weather and agricultural income and crop production in the country, using random year-to-year variation in temperature. Estimates suggest that exchanging one single day with an average temperature for one day with extreme temperature increases the crude mortality rate by 0.15%. The impact is spatially and temporally heterogeneous: the extreme heat effect on death is three times larger in rural areas than in urban areas, while its effect on agriculture is significantly larger if it takes place during the agricultural growing season. The second essay is an analysis of the impact of future climate change on death in Mexico. Estimates suggest that in the absence of any future effective mitigation or technology adaptation, climate change leads to a 4 to 9% increase in the annual mortality rate during the 21" century. I show that climate change disproportionately affects vulnerable groups, particularly children and rural households, whose mortality rates are estimated to increase by 19% and 40% respectively. Overall, by the end of the century climate change will lead to a loss of more than 3.1 million life-years per annum (equivalent to one life-year lost every ten seconds.) The third essay makes the case for the effectiveness of targeted government interventions to mitigate the negative impact of weather-induced income shocks. I show that El Nifno- and La Nifia-related severe meteorological conditions lead to sharp declines in consumption and welfare outcomes, particularly among the poor, and more specifically in female-headed and indigenous households. Estimates suggest that the provision of a safety net significantly raises expected utility by smoothing consumption and reducing inefficient behaviors ex post.