Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Assessment Of The Impact That Participation In Local Climate Networks Has On Cities’ Implementation Of Climate, Energy, And Transportation Policies, Rachel Krause

Rachel M. Krause

Much of the attention surrounding local climate protection in the United States is associated with two networks: ICLEI’s Cities for Climate Protection and the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement (MCPA). However, the impact of these networks on member-city actions has not been clearly established. This paper examines whether, and to what extent, participation in climate networks leads to the implementation of GHG-reducing policies, above and beyond what would have been done in their absence. To account for the possibility that cities which join climate networks are systematically different from those that do not and control for self-selection induced …

The Impact Of Municipal Renewable Electricity Use On Greenhouse Gas Emissions In The United States, Rachel M. Krause

Rachel M. Krause

Local governments are increasingly taking initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, limited and inconsistent data makes evaluating the aggregate impact of relevant actions difficult. This paper focuses specifically on U.S. city governments’ use of renewable electricity to power their own operations. It develops a range of rough estimates for the cumulative nationwide impact of this activity and finds that it results in an annual abatement of between 5.8 and 29.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), with the best approximation being 6.2 million tons CO2e a year. This is about 20% of the estimated total that …

Transaction Costs And Environmental Policy: An Assessment Framework And Literature Review, Kerry Krutilla Rachel M. Krause

Rachel M. Krause

This article develops a “transaction cost” framework for the analysis of environmental policy, and uses it to organize a discussion of recent literature on policy design and evaluation. We also consider the implications of this framework for optimal environmental policy-making and benefit-cost analysis. The conceptual orientation motivating the work is influenced by the neoinstitutional economics perspective developed by Eggertsson (1990), and others, which itself is influenced by the fundamental work of Coase (1937, 1960).

This transaction cost framework will emphasize the costs of establishing the rights to use environmental resources and the costs of the ex post monitoring and enforcement …

Political Decision-Making And The Local Provision Of Public Goods: The Case Of Municipal Climate Protection, Rachel Krause

Rachel M. Krause

The municipal political decision-making dynamic has typically been studied in regard to the provision of locally public goods and services whose benefits, while diffuse, are tied to a particular geography. This research extends current knowledge by empirically examining the local production of a globally public good: climate protection. It utilizes an original nation-wide dataset on the greenhouse gas-reducing activities that have been implemented by city governments in the United States. This data enables the development of a more comprehensive measure of local climate protection than has been used in previous quantitative research. Several theories of local political decision-making are tested …

An Assessment Of The Greenhouse Gas Reducing Activities Being Implemented In Us Cities, Rachel Krause

Rachel M. Krause

Local climate protection initiatives are receiving increased attention and support. However, most of the current understanding about their content, motivation, and impact is based on qualitative studies, whose findings cannot be generalized, or quantitative studies, which consider superficial measures of policy adoption. There is a lack of information about the type and extent of GHG-reducing actions that “typical” cities have implemented, whether or not they are explicitly framed as part of a broader climate protection strategy. In an effort to address this gap, this paper examines original data collected from a nation-wide sample of U.S. cities on their implementation of …

Symbolic Or Substantive Policy? Measuring The Extent Of Local Commitment To Climate Protection, Rachel Krause

Rachel M. Krause

Over 1,000 U.S. municipalities have formally committed to reduce their local greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through participation in one of several climate protection networks. This has attracted the attention of researchers interested in theories of free-riding and local political decision making who question why municipalities become engaged in this global effort. However, whereas joining a climate protection network or adopting an emissions reduction goal are relatively low cost acts, the implementation of such policies entails higher costs. This raises legitimate questions about the extent and type of follow-through made on municipal climate protection commitments. This paper begins to fill-in the …