Seminars

Regulation and Environment Seminar

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• Monday 11 June 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  WAGNER Ulrich : THE CO-POLLUTION BENEFITS OF CLIMATE POLICY: EVIDENCE FROM THE EU EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME

  with Laure B. de Preux

  Abstract

  Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are known to cause global climate change but no damage to the local environment. However, because CO2 is often jointly produced with other substances that pollute the environment, CO2 abatement may generate ancillary benefits, especially for human health. Previous research suggests that these co-benefits can offset a substantial share of the economic costs of mitigation policies. This paper conducts the first empirical test of this hypothesis in the context of the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) for CO2. The econometric analysis exploits comprehensive microdata on discharges of more than 90 different pollutants into air, water and soil, at more than 28,000 commercial installations in 31 European countries. It is found that the EU ETS decreased air releases of some pollutants while increasing water releases of other pollutants. Moreover, in some cases the patterns of spatial redistribution are strongly correlated with income, population size or age. The implications for the efficiency and environmental justice of the EU ETS are discussed.

• Monday 4 June 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  JESSOE Katrina (UC Davis) : Gains from Water Markets: Micro-level Evidence on Agricultural Water Demand

  with Ellen Bruno

  Abstract

  This paper demonstrates that the establishment of well-functioning water markets may substantially mitigate the costs of drought. We develop a framework to model the costs of incomplete water regulation, and simulate the efficiency gains from water trading across the agricultural and urban sectors. Critical to this exercise are credible estimates of the price elasticity of demand for agricultural water. We use monthly panel data on well-level agricultural groundwater extraction in an area that charges volumetric rates for groundwater to estimate the elasticity. Demand is inelastic, with estimates ranging from -0.17 to -0.22. Our simulation suggests that in an agriculturally productive and dense urban area of California, a water market could have reduced the welfare impacts to residential users from the 2015 drought mandate by 60% from $83 million to $33.5 million. Water markets present a promising adaption strategy to climate change.

• Monday 28 May 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ELLISON Glenn (MIT) : A Model of Online Retail Recommendations

• Monday 16 April 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  TRAEGER Christian (University of Oslo) : ACE – Analytic Climate Economy

  Abstract

  The paper develops an analytic integrated assessment model of climate change. It enhances our current understanding of climate policy and explains crucial relations to the broader audience. The model offers a novel framework to address climate change uncertainties. The analytic solution overcomes Bellman’s curse of dimensionality for a wide range of stochastic processes. I analyze the policy implications of the main climate uncertainties and show the different welfare implications of “objective” uncertainty, epistemological uncertainty, and anticipated learning. In contrast to earlier suggestions in the literature, uncertainty is not more relevant to climate change evaluation than discounting, but uncertainty makes the policy recommendations even more sensitive to the calibration of the discount rates and its individual components than under certainty. The present Analytic Climate Economy (ACE) is the first analytic model comprising all the components considered essential for quantitative policy advising.

• Monday 9 April 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  GAGNEPAIN Philippe (Université Paris 1, PSE) : Market power and volatility in the airline industry

  With A. Belova, P. Gagnepain, et S. Gauthier

  Abstract

  In a strategic game where firms compete against each other, the set of rationalizable strategies for each player entails all the best responses to the other’s decisions. The theoretical litterature has suggested that the uniqueness of the rationalizable outcomes coincides with the Nash equilibrium of the game. This paper proposes an empirical test of the existence of the uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium in a Cournot oligopoly. We focus on the U.S. airline industry and develop a theoretical model of competition on each route. It is assumed that airlines are not always able to predict perfectly the behavior of the competitors which can result in multiplicity of rationalizable outcomes. Based on the supply and demand ingredients of our model, we construct a stability criterion which guarantees uniqueness. We conclude that more than 90% of the local markets observed in the U.S. airline industry have reached the unique possible Nash equilibrium. As a by-product, we also identify the main determinants which prevent firms from reaching an equilibrium. We show in particular that local markets which include a higher number of competitors are the ones where the quantity produced is more volatile.

• Monday 26 March 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ELLISON Sara (MIT) : Regulatory Distortion: Evidence from Uber’s Entry Decisions in the US

  Abstract

  There is a large and long-standing literature on the distortionary effects of regulations on the functioning of markets. A newer strand of this literature focuses on licensing regulations, such as state-specific licensing of teachers and hairdressers. We seek to add to this literature with the specific case of ride-hailing services, such as Uber. We assemble a new and comprehensive data set of 250 US cities and their regulations regarding hackney services. We specify a stylized profit model for Uber, which is a function of these regulations, and estimate the parameters of the profit function using observed Uber entry decisions into these cities. Our data set and empirical strategy allow us to estimate the differential effects of particular types of regulations, separating out regulations governing safety, governing operations, and erecting entry barriers. We find that safety regulations do not have a distortionary effect on the functioning of the market for hackney services and evading them does not increase Uber’s profits. We find evidence that Uber’s profits are increased, however, by their ability to evade regulatory entry barriers and regulations governing operations. In other words, those regulations do have a significant distortionary effect on the market. To the extent that safety-related regulations are welfare-enhancing and those erecting entry barriers are welfare-decreasing, our results suggest a welfare-enhancing effect of Uber’s entry.

• Monday 19 March 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MILLOCK Katrin (CNRS) : Accelerating diffusion of climate-friendly technologies: a network perspective

  MAYOL Alexandre (PSE, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne ) : Providing public utilities in a common agency framework: making, buying and governance

  with Solmaria Halleck Vega and Antoine Mandel

  Abstract

  Abstract 1: We introduce a methodology to estimate the determinants of the formation of technology diffusion networks from the patterns of technology adoption. We apply this methodology to wind energy, which is one of the key technologies for climate change mitigation. Technology diffusion occurs at the firm level, but it is influenced by policy and we study how policy affects network formation at a country level. Our results emphasize that long-term economic and trade relationships, as measured in particular by economic integration, are key determinants of technological diffusion. Specific support measures seem less relevant for the diffusion per se, although they might play a crucial role from an industrial perspective. Abstract 2: This article analyzes how the local political organization (in France, the level of the single municipality, the union of communes (Syndicats) or supermunicipality (communaut de communes) and the management mode (public or private) can influence the performance of the public service. The impact of these organizational configurations on costs has never been studied simultaneously by the literature. We first propose a theoretical model based on a principal-agent problem to analyze them together. Then, from a panel of French water services, we observe empirically that these different organizational ombinations have an impact on the price.

• Monday 5 March 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  IOSSA Elisabetta (University of Rome Tor Vergata) : Project Choice and Innovation Policy: the case for Public Procurement

  with Alessandro De Chiara

  Abstract

  There is a long standing policy debate on the role and design of innovation policies. In this paper, we develop a model of project choice with competition for funding and compare: (i) A Demand-side approach, in which the public authority restricts the type of research project eligible for funding, with (ii) A Supply-side approach, in which the public authority chooses its preferred project among those submitted. The authority can verify the characteristics of the projects submitted by the firms, but does not know which other projects the firms have available. We compare the two approaches from the point of view of the authority and in terms of social welfare, considering both small projects which the firm could self-finance and larger projects which would not be implemented absent public funds. We identify under which conditions a Demand-side approach is preferable in terms of allocative efficiency and investment incentives.

• Monday 19 February 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CREPIN Anne-Sophie : Inertia in risk; improving economic models of catastrophes

  Eric Nævdal

  Abstract

  We provide a new way to model endogenous catastrophic risk termed inertia risk, which accounts for dynamic lags between physical variables and the hazard rate—a characteristic which is often observed in real life problems. For example the stock of some particular species in an ecosystem might influence the level of stress (or resilience) in that system, which is a slowly changing variable compared to the species dynamics. When the level of stress passes a critical threshold the ecosystem undertakes a regime shift, a rapid, substantial and persistent change in the system. In such context the inertia hazard rate defines the risk that the system will shift in the next period of time, which depends on both variables. We show that the added realism in our risk model has intuitive appeal and significantly impacts optimal solutions. With inertia risk, the probability that a catastrophe will ever occur may span the entire interval [0, 1]. This as opposed to the standard approach where this probability is either zero or one. We also show how inertia risk may generate path dependency as the hazard rate depends on learning about how risk is distributed in state space. We illustrate the implications for policy in a simple model ­­of climate change. The optimal solution with inertia depends on parameters, such as damage and discount rates in a qualitatively different way compared to the standard approach. Hence for problems with lagged effects, where inertia risk is a more realistic way to represent risk, using the standard models of catastrophic risk that discard these lagged effects could generate substantially flawed policy recommendations.

• Monday 12 February 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  FODHA Mouez (Université Paris 1, PSE) : Environmental Tax Reform under debt constraint

  COLO Philippe (PSE) : Uncertainty in environmental agreements

  Abstract

  This article analyzes the impacts of Environmental Tax Reform (ETR) when the government is constrained not to increase the public debt-to-output ratio. We consider an overlapping generations model with pollution. Public spending for pollution abatement are …nanced by tax revenues and public debt. We show that keeping constant the public debt-output ratio is not an obstacle to attain a double dividend, i.e. an increase of both (i) environmental quality and (ii) aggregate consumption. First, if the capital stock is low and the pollution abatement is large enough, a successful ETR consists in a rise of the environmental tax, compensated by a decrease of the income tax. Secondly, we show that the environmental tax revenues may help reduce the public debt-output ratio. We give conditions (on the initial level of the environmental tax and the debt-output ratio) such that an increase of the environmental tax, budget-balanced by a decrease of the debt-output ratio may also achieve a double dividend. We conclude that public debt crisis should not compromise ETR, instead, environmental tax revenues could be part of the solution.

• Monday 5 February 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  BEZIN Emeline (PSE) : The Economics of Green Consumption, Cultural Transmission and Sustainable Technological Change.

  Abstract

  A model shows that systematic interactions between green consumer culture and sustainable technologies can give rise to path dependency in sustainable innovation processes. The theory includes (i) green preferences formed through cultural transmission which involves rational socialization actions, (ii) innovation endogenously directed to sustainable or unsustainable sectors depending on culture through market size effects. When interactions between green culture and technology are strong enough, the dynamics exhibits complementarities resulting in path dependency. Two long-term outcomes emerge. A green equilibrium (with strong green culture and an environmentally benign technology), a brown equilibrium (with weak green culture and a pollution-intensive technology). The model has important implications for the cost of environmental policies. Moreover, the theory enables the study of an important disregarded issue, i.e., the political sustainability of environmental taxes.

• Monday 22 January 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  LEGROS Patrick : Come Together Now — Firm Boundaries and Delegation

• Monday 15 January 2018 12:00-14:00

  DOUENNE THOMAS ( UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 1 PANTHÉON SORBONNE) ET Nunez Thais (Univ. d'Orléans) (PSE) : The vertical and horizontal distributive effects of energy taxes: A micro-simulation study of a French policy

• Monday 8 January 2018 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  COULOMB Renaud (University of Melbourne) : Rare Events and Risk Perception: Evidence from the Fukushima Accident

  Yanos Zylberberg

  Abstract

  We study changes in nuclear-risk perception following the Fukushima nuclear accident of March 2011. Using an exhaustive registry of individual housing transactions in England and Wales between 2007 and 2014, we implement a difference-in-difference strategy and compare housing prices in at-risk areas to areas further away from nuclear sites before and after the Fukushima incident. We find a persistent price decrease of about 3.5% in response to the accident for properties in the neighbourhood of nuclear plants. As the UK immediately extended the life duration of most nuclear plants, the price decrease is primarily driven by a change in nuclear-risk perception. However, we find large heterogeneity among at-risk neighbourhoods, and we explore how such heterogeneity can relate to existing productive and consumptive amenities.

• Wednesday 13 December 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-21, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MA Albert (Boston University) : Uterus at a Price: Disability Insurance and Hysterectomy

  Abstract

  Taiwanese Labor, Government Employee, and Farmer Insurance programs provide 5-6 months of salary to enrollees who undergo hysterectomy or oophorectomy before their 45th birthday. These programs result in more and earlier treatments, referred as, respectively, inducement and timing effects. Difference-indifference and nonparametric methods are used to estimate these effects on surgery hazards between 1997 and 2011. For Government Employee and Labor Insurance, inducement is 11-12% of all hysterectomies, and timing 20% of inducement. For oophorectomy, both effects are insignificant. Induced hysterectomies increase benefit payments and surgical costs, at about the cost of a mammogram and 5 pap smears per enrollee.

• Monday 4 December 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SCHUMACHER Ingmar : Mitigation strategies when faced with the threat of solar radiation management

• Monday 27 November 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CASSI Lorenzo (Université Paris 1, PSE) : Mergers and inventive activities in the pharmaceutical sector

  with Carmine Ornaghi (University of Southampton)

• Monday 20 November 2017 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  DUSO Tomaso (DIW (Berlin) ) : The Effect of Retail Mergers on Prices and Variety: An Ex-post Evaluation

  Elena Argentesi, Paolo Buccirossi, Roberto Cervone, Alessia Marrazzo

  Abstract

  Astract We use an original dataset on Dutch supermarkets to assess the effect of a merger that was conditionally approved by the Dutch Competition Authority (ACM) on prices and on the depth of assortment. We adopt a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits local variation in the merger's effects and we further control for selection on observables when defining our control group. We find that the merger did not affect individual products' prices but it led the merging parties to reposition their assortment and increase average category prices. While the low-quality target stores reduced the depth of their assortment when in direct competition with the acquirer's stores, the latter increased their product variety. By analyzing the effect of the merger on category prices, we find that the target most likely dropped high price products, while the acquirer added more of them. These findings suggests that the merging firms reposition their product offerings in order to avoid cannibalization and lessen local competition. We further show that other dimensions of heterogeneity such as market concentration, whether a divestiture was imposed, and the re-branding strategy of the target stores are important to explain the post-merger dynamics. A simple theoretical model of local-market assortment competition explains most of our findings.

• Monday 13 November 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  DEMENTIEV Andrei (National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow)) : Contracting out public services to asymmetric partnerships

  Abstract

  ABSTRACT: The paper studies an organisational structure of contracting out public utilities to an asymmetric partnership between the local authorities and a vertically integrated firm. Being fiscally constrained and politically motivated the government delegates pricing decision in the downstream market to a partnership while the upstream market for essential input is not regulated directly. The accompanying regulatory instrument, namely the net budget transfer, is valued at the social cost of public funds and can be set ex post making the firm’s participation constraint non-binding. A negative budget transfer effectively extracts the firm’s rent in the non-regulated upstream market and depends on the corporate structure of the partnership. We build a formal model that predicts that local authorities with relatively high share in the partnership should decrease the net transfer when the profit margin in the downstream market falls. The empirical support for this finding is found in the panel data for 25 suburban passenger companies in Russia in 2011-2015. The effect of the share structure on the relationship between the compensation ratio and farebox ratio is captured by the interaction variable highlighting the nonlinear effect. The failure to fully compensate operational losses in the transportation market is interpreted as a system of pseudo-franchising contracts in the Russian suburban railway transport that, to some extent, reflects political preferences of the local authorities in the country.

• Monday 6 November 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-14, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  BOURGEON Jean-Marc : Green Technology Adoption and the Business Cycle

  Margot Hovsepian

  Abstract

  Abstract : We analyze the adoption of green technology in a dynamic economy affected by random shocks where demand spillovers are the main driver of technological improvements. Firms' beliefs and consumers' anticipations drive the path of the economy. We derive the optimal policy of investment subsidy and the expected time and likelihood of reaching a targeted level of environmental quality under economic uncertainty. This allows us to estimate the value that should be given to the environment in order to avoid an environmental catastrophe as a function of the strength of spillover effects.

• Monday 23 October 2017 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  WILLIAMS III Roberton (University of Maryland) : Unemployment and Environmental Regulation in General Equilibrium

  Abstract

  This presentation will cover two closely related papers. The first paper analyzes the effects of environmental policy on employment (and unemployment) using a new general-equilibrium two-sector search model. We find that imposing a pollution tax causes substantial reductions in employment in the regulated (polluting) industry, but this is offset by increased employment in the unregulated (nonpolluting) sector. Thus the policy causes a substantial shift in employment between industries, but the net effect on overall employment (and unemployment) is small, even in the short run. An environmental performance standard causes a substantially smaller sectoral shift in employment than the emissions tax, with roughly similar net effects. The effects on the unregulated industry suggest that empirical studies of environmental regulation that focus only on regulated firms can be misleading (and those that use nonregulated firms as controls for regulated firms will be even more misleading). This paper’s results also suggest that overall effects on employment are not a major issue for environmental policy, and that policymakers who want to minimize sectoral shifts in employment might prefer performance standards over environmental taxes.

• Monday 16 October 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CHEN Stéphanie (University of Chicago) : Competitive Personalized Pricing with Sophisticated Consumers

  Chongwoo Choe, Monash University

  Abstract

  Abstract Personalized pricing, a limiting case of price discrimination as the number of targeted consumer segments increases, becomes increasingly common due to the availability of vast amount of individual-level data. This paper studies personalized pricing in a Hotelling setting when each firm has a given target segment and consumers can be sophisticated. Sophisticated consumers can overcome the hurdles for price discrimination and have access to the price offered to non-targeted consumers, which naive consumers cannot. When all consumers are naive, personalized pricing leads to intense competition and total industry profit lower than that under the Hotelling equilibrium. But market is always fully covered. Sophisticated consumers raise the firm's cost of serving non-targeted consumers, hence discourage firms from poaching the rival's targeted customers. This softens competition. When firms have sufficiently large and non-overlapping target segments, consumer sophistication allows firms to extract full surplus from their targeted customers through perfect price discrimination. Consumers are strictly worse-off under competitive personalized pricing, a result in contrast to the common view in the literature. With sophisticated consumers, firms also choose not to serve the entire market when the commonly non-targeted market segment is small. Thus consumer sophistication can lead to lower consumer surplus and lower social welfare. We also discuss the implications for the regulation of the use of customer data by firms. Key words: Personalized pricing, consumer sophistication, customer targeting, privacy JEL Classification: D43, D8, L13, L5

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 2 October 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  FLECKINGER Pierre (Ecole des Mines - PSE) : The Incentive properties of collective reputation

  FABRE Adrien (PSE) : French favored redistribution derived from surveys: A political assessment of optimal tax theory

  Wanda Mimra, ETH Zürich, and Angelo Zago, University of Verona

• Monday 25 September 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  LISKI Matti (Aalto University) : Carbon leakage: a mechanism design approach

  co-author: Lassi Ahlvik (NHH, Bergen)

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 18 September 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-14, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  TOEWS Gerhard (Oxcarré, Oxford University) : Resource discoveries and FDI bonanzas: An illustration from Mozambique

  MAVI Can Askan (Univ. Paris I - PSE) : What can abrupt events tell us about sustainability ?

  Pierre-Louis Vézina, King's College London

  Full text [pdf]

• Tuesday 13 June 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-15, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  DAVIS Lucas (Haas Business School, UC Berkeley) : Do Energy Eciency Investments Deliver at the Right Time?

  Judson Boomhower

  Abstract

  Abstract Electricity cannot be cost-eectively stored even for short periods of time. Consequently, wholesale electricity prices vary widely across hours of the day with peak prices frequently exceeding o-peak prices by a factor of ten or more. Most analyses of energy-eciency policies ignore this variation, focusing on total energy savings without regard to when those savings occur. In this paper we demonstrate the impor- tance of this distinction using novel evidence from a rebate program for air conditioners in Southern California. We estimate electricity savings using previously unavailable hourly \smart-meter data and show that savings tend to occur during hours when the value of electricity is high. This signicantly increases the overall value of the program, especially once we account for the large capacity payments received by generators to guarantee their availability in high-demand hours. We then com- pare this estimated savings prole with engineering-based estimates for this program as well as a variety of alternative energy-eciency invest- ments. The results illustrate a surprisingly large amount of variation in economic value across investments.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 29 May 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-15, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  GAVAZZA Alessandro (London School of Economics) : *

• Monday 22 May 2017 09:00-13:00

  Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 Boulevard Jourdan, 75014 paris

  Journée interne du groupe Régulation et Environnement

• Monday 15 May 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  BERTHOD Mathias (PSE, Paris I) : A bargaining agreement between non-renewable resource producers: stability versus asymmetry

  MAYOL Alexandre (PSE, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne ) : Tarifs discriminants et monopoles de l'eau potable: Analyse économique des tarifs progressifs dans l'eau potable française à partir d'une expérience naturelle

  Abstract

  Within a linear quadratic differential game framework with economic depletion inspired by Salo and Tahvonen (2001), we use recent results of Reddy and Engwerda (2013) to characterize a Pareto optimal bargaining agreement between two non-renewable resource producers. The main result is that incentive to cartelize will depend on the symmetry of the producers. In contrast to Salo and Tahvonen, we find that the concentration in supply could then increase over time while countries have more and more interest to bargain.

• Monday 24 April 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-15, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  TOEWS Gerhard (Oxcarré, Oxford University) : Creative Destruction vs Destructive Destruction: A Schumpeterian Approach for Environmental Policy

  ALTAGHLIBI Moutaz (PSE, Paris I, Dynamic Border Carbon Adjustment to Enhance Green Growth) : Dynamic Border Carbon Adjustment to Enhance Green Growth

  Abstract

  This article aims to show how a market exposed to catastrophic events finds the equilibrium level of adaptation and mitigation policies through R&D policy, with respect to different levels of Poisson probability of catastrophe. We study the effect of a pollution tax on the long-run growth rate and the implications of catastrophe probability on this effect. Our results suggest that the economy increases its R&D level with a higher catastrophe probability only if the penalty rate due to an abrupt event is sufficiently high. We also show that a pollution tax could increase the long-run growth. Besides, the catastrophe probability increases the amplitude of this positive effect if penalty rate is high enough. The market makes adaptation much more than mitigation with a higher catastrophe probability if total productivity of R&D is higher than cleanliness of innovations for intermediate goods. Lastly, we show that pollution growth could be higher with less polluting inputs, which we call a Jevons-type paradox. Abstract : This paper analyzes the growth and welfare impacts of Border Carbon Adjustments (BCA) across trading countries. I build a trade model with monopolistic competition and dynamic investment decisions using Ramsey growth model. The government in each country can invest either in green nonpolluting or in brown polluting capital. I solve numerically for an open loop Nash equilibrium to study different configurations of BCAs across countries. I find that a unilateral BCA is welfare enhancing for the country that applies it and an effective tool to shift the growth of the other country towards greener path even when countries are not concerned about the environment. In a case of a BCA war, results show that a bilateral BCA becomes welfare enhancing for both countries if governments care sufficiently about the environmental quality of their consumers. Moreover, the asymmetry in initial development levels across countries induces a slower growth for the initially poorer country only if the other country is richer in brown capital. Furthermore, the model shows that trade openness should be done gradually along the development path of countries.

• Monday 27 March 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-15, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  PLANTINGA Andrew (Bren School of Environmental Science and Management - UC Santa Barbara) : Salience and the Government Provision of Public Goods

  Matthew Wibbenmeyer et Sarah Anderson

  Abstract

  This paper examines the consequences of salience for the government provision of public goods. Salience is a common behavioral bias whereby people's attention is drawn to salient features of a decision problem, leading them to overweight prominent information in subsequent judgments. We analyze the case in which the public's demand for the good is distorted by salient events, and explore how salience influences public good allocation and efficiency. Theoretical predictions regarding public good allocation are ambiguous and depend on the magnitude of the change in payoffs and the extent of salience effects. We test whether salience increases or decreases allocation of government projects to reduce wildfire severity near wildland-adjacent communities. Even though the occurrence of a wildfire likely reduces the severity of future fires in the same area, it may increase the likelihood that fuels management projects are placed nearby if wildfire events strongly increase the salience of losses under future fires. We find strong evidence that the salience eects increase the likelihood of fuels management projects, and use robustness checks to eliminate competing explanations for our results. Our salience framework may also offer insights into government responses to terrorism, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and environmental catastrophes.

• Tuesday 21 March 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1-15, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ITO Koichiro (University of Chicago) : Information Frictions, Inertia, and Selection on Elasticity: A Field Experiment on Electricity Tariff Choice

• Monday 13 March 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  GAUTHIER Stéphane : Profit taxation and production efficiency

  BEZIN Emeline (PSE)

  Guy Laroque (Sciences-Po, University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies)

  Abstract

  Stéphane Gauthier: Profit taxation and production efficiency. Ecrit avec Guy Laroque (Sciences-Po, University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies). Emeline Bezin: An economic theory of green consumer culture and sustainable technological change

• Monday 6 March 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ARMSTRONG Mark (University of Oxford) : Ordered Consumer Search

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 27 February 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  JULLIEN Bruno (Toulouse School of Economics) : Privacy Protection

  Yassine Lefouili et Michael Riordan

  Abstract

  We study the incentives of a website to sell its customers? personal information. Third parties buying that information can either benefi?t or harm consumers, who learn about their vulnerability to unwanted intrusions through experience. The cost to the website of selling the information is the risk that bad experience may cause consumers to end their relationship with the website. The measures adopted by the website to mitigate that cost are neither contractible nor discernible by consumers. Nevertheless, in equilibrium, the website has incentives to be cautious about selling information or spend resources to screen third parties. We characterize the equilibrium privacy policy of the website and its welfare properties, and discuss the difficulty of welfare-improving regulations.

• Monday 20 February 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SECCHI Angelo (PSE - Université Paris 1) : Volatility of growth: size matters

  CHABROST Marion

  Abstract

  SECCHI Angelo: Volatility of growth: size matters. CHABROST Marion: “Get what you pay for” - The story underneath remunicipalization in the water sector. Co-écrit avec Stéphane Saussier et Simon Porcher.

• Monday 30 January 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  PITTEL Karen (IFO, Münich) : Thinking Local but Acting Global? The Interplay Between Local and Global Internalization of Externalities

  Abstract

  The paper analyzes the long-run development of local and global pollution when two types of abatement activities can be undertaken. One type reduces solely local pollution (e.g., use of particulate matter filters) while the other mitigates global pollution as well (e.g., application of fuel saving technologies). In the framework of a 2-country endogenous growth model, the implications of different degrees to which global externality is internalized are analyzed. We focus especially on local and global pollution levels and the effects on growth in both countries. Furthermore we derive implications for optimal policies in the different scenarios.

• Monday 23 January 2017 12:00-14:00

  Salle 10, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CANTILLON Estelle (Université de Bruxelles) : Price formation in the European carbon market: The role of firm participation and risk management practices

  Aurélie Slechten, Lancaster Business School

  Abstract

  A key argument in favor of emissions markets (relative to command-and-control types of regulation) is their ability to aggregate dispersed information about abatement costs and emissions and generate price signals to guide firms' trading and abatement decisions. We exploit trading data from the first phase of the EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) to assess the extent to which this market was indeed able to deliver such price signals. We know who traded, when, with whom, on which platform if any, and at what price. Participation was partial, trading patterns differed across categories of market participants and the market was fragmented. We build a model of trading and information aggregation that integrates the salient features of the market and use it to explore their impact on the price formation process. Risk management practices and partial participation help account for some of the price anomalies that have been identified in the past on the basis of the analysis of price time series only.

• Monday 16 January 2017 12:30-14:00

  MARTIMORT David (PSE) : *

  TOULEMON Léa

  Abstract

  David MARTIMORT: Towards a Theory of the Precautionary Principle, joint with Louise Guillouet (Columbia) -- Lea TOULEMON: Regional Purchasing Groups and Hospital Medicine Prices: Evidence from Group Creations

• Monday 5 December 2016 12:30-14:00

  DI FALCO Salvatore (Université de Genève) : Mother of Invention: the Emergence of the Reluctant Entrepreneur in Rural Ethiopia

• Monday 28 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  VARIAN Hal (Google, Berkeley) : Use and Abuse of Network Effects

  Abstract

  The term ``network effects'' has a clear meaning in the context of economic models, but it is sometimes confused with other concepts like increasing returns to scale and learning-by-doing. This essay is an attempt to clear up some of this confusion.

• Monday 21 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  HERRERA ARAUJO Daniel (PSE) : Multiproduct retailing and buyer power: The effects of product delisting on consumer shopping behavior

  HENRIET Fanny (PSE) : A Decomposition of Fuel Taxes

  Jorge Florez, Universidad del Rosario / Stéphane Gauthier

  Abstract

  Daniel Herrera Araujo : Multiproduct retailing and buyer power: The effects of product delisting on consumer shopping behavior (joint with Jorge Florez, Universidad del Rosario) Fanny Henriet: A Decomposition of Fuel Taxes (joint with Stéphane Gauthier)

• Monday 14 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  LAURENT-LUCCHETTI Jérémy (Université de Genève) : Property Rights and Land Disputes: Theory and Evidence from Ethiopia

  Salvatore Di Falco, Marcella Veronesi et Gunnar Kohlin

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 7 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  LINNEMER Laurent (CREST) : Partial Exclusivity

  Philippe Choné et Thibaud Vergé

• Monday 17 October 2016 12:30-14:00

  CHIROLEU-ASSOULINE Mireille (Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics) : *

  MARCHI-ADANI Riccardo (University of Verona) :

  Paola Valbonesi

  Abstract

  Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline: Merchants of Doubt: Corporate Political Influence when Expert Credibility is Uncertain
  Riccardo Marchi-Adani: Favoritism in scoring rule auctions:an empirical investigation on Italian public procurement for canteens

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 10 October 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10

  DECHEZLEPRETRE Antoine (Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics) : Do Pollution Offsets Offset Pollution? Evidence from the Clean Development Mechanism in India

  Abstract

  We provide the first large-scale empirical evaluation of the additionality of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, the largest carbon emissions offset mechanism in the world, based on the universe of wind power projects implemented in India during the period 1993-2013. We deal with the self-selection of project developers into the CDM by comparing CDM projects with non-CDM projects, which are by definition not additional. We find strong evidence that the majority of CDM projects are not additional, suggesting that a large share of CDM carbon credits does not represent real emission reductions. Furthermore, the more profitable projects are, the more likely they are to receive carbon credits. Hence, the CDM is doing the opposite of its objective function, i.e. supporting projects that would have existed anyway rather than inframarginal projects.

• Monday 3 October 2016 12:30-14:00

  BELLEFLAMME Paul (Université catholique de Louvain) : Tax Incidence on Competing Two-Sided Platforms: Lucky Break or Double Jeopardy

  Eric Toulemonde

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 19 September 2016 12:00-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10

  NUNEZ ROCHA Thais (Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics) : Legislation versus Treaties: the effect on environmental outcomes in an open economy and On the Pro-Competitive Effects of Vertical Mergers in Two-Sided Markets

  POUYET Jérôme (CNRS – PSE)

  Inmaculada Martinez-Zarzoso