Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Multiple Pollutants, Co-Benefits, And Suboptimal Environmental Policies, Don Fullerton, Daniel Karney

Don Fullerton

Vehicle Choices, Miles Driven, And Pollution Policies, Ye Feng, Don Fullerton, Li Gan

Don Fullerton

Mobile sources contribute large percentages of each pollutant, but technology is not yet available to measure and tax emissions from each vehicle. We build a behavioral model of household choices about vehicles and miles traveled. The ideal-but-unavailable emissions tax would encourage drivers to abate emissions through many behaviors, some of which involve market transactions that can be observed for feasible market incentives (such as a gas tax, subsidy to new cars, or tax by vehicle type). Our model can calculate behavioral effects of each such price and thus calculate car choices, miles, and emissions. A nested logit structure is used …

The Hedonic Method Of Valuing Environmental Policies And Quality, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

Benefit-cost analysts attempt to compare two states of the world, the status quo and a state in which a policy having benefits and costs is being contemplated. For environmental policies, this comparison is greatly complicated by the difficulty in inferring the values that individuals place on an increment to environmental quality. Unlike ordinary private goods, environmental goods are not directly exchanged in markets with observable prices. In this chapter, the hedonic approach to inferring the benefits of an environmental policy is examined.

Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Enviromental Projects: A Plethora Of Biases Understating Net Benefits, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

There are many reasons to suspect that benefit-cost analysis applied to environmental policies will result in policy decisions that will reject those environmental policies. The important question, of course, is whether those rejections are based on proper science. The present paper explores sources of bias in the methods used to evaluate environmental policy in the United States, although most of the arguments translate immediately to decision-making in other countries. There are some “big picture” considerations that have gone unrecognized, and there are numerous more minor, yet cumulatively important, technical details that point to potentially large biases against acceptance on benefit-cost …

Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Environmental Projects: A Plethora Of Systematic Biases, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

There are many reasons to suspect that benefit-cost analysis applied to environmental policies will result in policy decisions that will reject those environmental policies. The important question, of course, is whether those rejections are based on proper science. The present paper explores sources of bias in the methods used to evaluate environmental policy in the United States, although most of the arguments translate immediately to decision-making in other countries. There are some “big picture” considerations that have gone unrecognized, and there are numerous more minor, yet cumulatively important, technical details that point to potentially large biases against acceptance on benefit-cost …

Payment For Environmental Services: A Comparison Of Us And Eu Agri-Environmental Policies, Kathy Baylis, Stephen Peplow, Gordon Rausser, Leo Simon

Kathy Baylis

Agri-environmental policies (AEPs) in the United States and the European Union are examples of payments for environmental services that pay farmers to reduce the negative externalities of agricultural production, while serving as a means to transfer public funds to farmers. We show that despite similar origins, AEPs in the two regions differ both in their specific objectives and in their implementation. For example, AEPs in most member states of the EU-15 have the additional objective of using agriculture as a driver for rural development. This objective is achieved by compensating farmers for the private delivery of positive public goods, such …

A General Multiproduct, Multipollutant Market Pollution Permit Model: A Variational Inequality Approach, Anna Nagurney, Kathy K. Dhanda, John Stranlund

Kathy K Dhanda

No abstract provided.

A Variational Inequality For Marketable Pollution Permits, Anna Nagurney, Kathy Dhanda

Kathy K Dhanda

No abstract provided.

On Mandatory Deposits, Fines, And The Control Of Litter, Dwight R. Lee, Philip E. Graves, Robert L. Sexton

PHILIP E GRAVES

Mandatory deposits on beverage containers have received enthusiastic support among environmentalists as a means of controlling litter. In modeling the fficts of a deposit on litter generation and recovery it is found that this enthusiasm is well iustified. Interestingly enough, few supporters of deposits seem to realize how justified their support is, as evidenced by their lack of enthusiasm for eliminating the littering fine which serves to dilute the effectiveness of the deposit. The most efficient solution possible when a fine is combined with a deposit is shown to require less littering, but more litter, than is an efficient solution …