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This paper analyzes the effect of environmental policies on the direction of energy innovation across countries over the period 1990-2012. Our novelty is to use threshold regression models to allow for discontinuities in policy effectiveness depending on a country's relative competencies in renewable and fossil fuel technologies. We show that the dynamic incentives of environmental policies become effective just above the median level of relative competencies. In this critical second regime, market-based policies are moderately effective in promoting renewable innovation, while command-and-control policies depress fossil based innovation. Finally, market-based policies are more effective to consolidate a green comparative advantage in the last regime. We illustrate how our approach can be used for policy design in laggard countries.

This paper evaluates the historical influence of energy prices on a series of measures of environmental and economic performance for a panel of French manufacturing establishments over the period 1997-2010. The focus on energy prices is motivated by the fact that changes in environmental and energy policies have been dominated by substantial reductions in discounts for large consumers, making the evaluation of each policy in isolation exceedingly difficult. To identify price effects, we construct a shift-share instrument that captures only the exogenous variation in establishment-specific energy prices. Our results highlight a trade-off between environmental and economic goals: although a 10 percent increase in energy prices brings about a 6 percent reduction in energy consumption and an 11 percent reduction in CO2 emissions, such an increase also has a modestly negative impact on employment (-2.6 percent) and very small impact on wages and productivity. The negative employment effects are mostly concentrated in energy-intensive and trade-exposed sectors. Simulating the effect of a carbon tax, we show that job losses for the most exposed sectors can be quite large. However, these effects are upper bounds and we show that they are significantly mitigated in multi-establishment firms by labor reallocation across establishments.

Nuestro artículo contribuye a la línea emergente a nivel micro de la literatura sobre el vínculo entre las variaciones locales en los choques climáticos y los conflictos al centrarse en un análisis a nivel de píxeles para Sudán del Norte y Sudán del Sur entre 1997 y 2009. Se encuentra que las anomalías de temperatura afectan fuertemente el riesgo de conflicto, mientras que se espera que el riesgo aumente en un rango de 24–31% en el futuro bajo un escenario mediano. Nuestro análisis también arroja luz sobre la competencia por los recursos naturales, en particular el agua, como el principal impulsor de dicha relación en una región donde el pastoreo constituye el medio de vida dominante. Notre article contribue au volet micro-niveau émergent de la littérature sur le lien entre les variations locales des chocs météorologiques et les conflits en se concentrant sur une analyse au niveau des pixels pour le Soudan du Nord et du Sud entre 1997 et 2009. Les anomalies de température affectent fortement le risque de conflit, alors que le risque devrait augmenter dans une fourchette de 24 à 31 % à l'avenir selon un scénario médian. Notre analyse met également en lumière la concurrence sur les ressources naturelles, en particulier l'eau, en tant que principal moteur d'une telle relation dans une région où le pastoralisme constitue le moyen de subsistance dominant. Our article contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflicts by focusing on a pixel-level analysis for North and South Sudan between 1997 and 2009. Temperature anomalies are found to strongly affect the risk of conflict, whereas the risk is expected to magnify in a range of 24–31% in the future under a median scenario. Our analysis also sheds light on the competition over natural resources, in particular water, as the main driver of such relationship in a region where pastoralism constitutes the dominant livelihood. تساهم مقالتنا في سلسلة الأدبيات الناشئة على المستوى الجزئي حول العلاقة بين الاختلافات المحلية في صدمات الطقس والصراعات من خلال التركيز على تحليل على مستوى البكسل لشمال وجنوب السودان بين عامي 1997 و 2009. وجد أن الشذوذ في درجات الحرارة يؤثر بشدة على خطر التعارض، في حين من المتوقع أن يتضخم الخطر في نطاق 24-31 ٪ في المستقبل في ظل سيناريو متوسط. كما يلقي تحليلنا الضوء على التنافس على الموارد الطبيعية، ولا سيما المياه، باعتبارها المحرك الرئيسي لهذه العلاقة في منطقة يشكل فيها الرعي مصدر الرزق المهيمن.

Abstract This paper analyzes a game in which countries repeatedly make emission and technology investment decisions. We derive the best equilibrium, that is, the Pareto-optimal subgame-perfect equilibrium, when countries are insufficiently patient for folk theorems to be relevant. Relative to the first best, the best equilibrium requires countries to overinvest in technologies that are green, that is, strategic substitutes for polluting, but to underinvest in adaptation and brown technologies, that is, strategic complements to polluting. Technological transfers and spillovers might discourage investments but can be necessary to motivate compliance with emissions when countries are heterogeneous.

We provide a general condition under which consumption can be sustained indefinitely bounded away from zero in the continuous time Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz model, by letting augmentable capital substitute for a non-renewable resource. The assumptions made on the production function are mild, thus generalizing previous work. By showing that Hartwick's rule minimizes the required resource input per unit of capital accumulation, and integrating the required resource input with respect to capital, we obtain a complete technological characterization without reference to the time path. We also use the characterization result to establish general existence of a maximin path. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.

Whether consumers are fully informed and attentive when investing in energy efficiency is still hotly debated. We experimentally evaluate the role of imperfect information about or limited attention to energy costs in the demand for energy-consuming household durables in Switzerland. Using in-home visits, we collect unique data on the characteristics of participants’ current home appliances and light bulbs. Our intervention exploits this data to provide customized information about the potential of monetary savings from adopting new, comparable, and efficient durables. We find a substantial information treatment effect on the energy efficiency of the newly purchased durables. A larger potential of monetary savings induces larger durables choices responses. These findings provide suggestive evidence that the informational content of our intervention played a significant role in determining the observed durables choices responses. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 196 ISSN:0167-2681