Environmental policy as a multi-task principal-agent problem

We use a multi-task principal-agent model with moral hazard to study environmental regulation of a private agent by an EPA that can also allocate its budget to an alternative project with environmental benefits. In a first possible optimum, the EPA imposes a flat fine that exhausts the agent's participation constraint. In the second, the EPA provides the harshest possible punishment for a "poor" observed environmental performance and the highest possible reward for a "good" observed environmental performance. Increases in the available budget and in the maximally allowed penalty have then an ambiguous e_ect on total environmental quality.environmental regulation, multi-tasking

Is public procurement going green? experiences and open issues

Public purchasing authorities are in a leading position for the introduction, promotion and development of green procurement. Indeed, the public sector can influence green procurement both by designing suitable policies and by driving “green” markets through the significant share of public purchases on GDP. The European Commission (EC) has emphasized the importance of cost-efficient GPP and, in compliance with the EU’s Integrated Product Policy (IPC), Member States have been encouraged to devise national action plans. As a result, many countries have already adopted steps in the direction of greening public purchases. The aim of our paper is twofold: first, we focus on the state of the art in terms of the EU and Italian Legislation; then, we highlight open questions related to crucial issues in GPP implementation, with a particular attention to the design of green tenders and awarding criteria to account for environmental quality in public purchasing procedures.Green Public Procurement/Purchasing (GPP), Italy, EU, Legislation and Implementation

Technology choice and environmental regulation under asymmetric information

We focus on the incentives of an industry with a continuum of small firms to invest in a cleaner technology under two environmental policy instruments: tradable emission permits and emission taxation. We assume asymmetric information, in that the firms' abatement costs with the new technology are either high or low. Environmental policy is set either before the firms invest (commitment) or after (time consistency). Under commitment, the welfare comparison follows a modified Weitzman rule, featuring reverse probability weighting for the slope of the marginal abatement cost curve. Both instruments can lead to under- or overinvestment ex post. Tradable permits lead to less than optimal expected new technology adoption. Under time consistency, the regulator infers the cost realization and implements the full-information social optimum

Date Marks, Valuation, and Food Waste: Three In-Store ‘Eggsperiments’

We provide causal evidence on how date marking policies influence consumers' valuation of perishable food products through three consecutive research steps. In a preparatory in-store survey (n = 100), we identify perishable food items that can be experimentally manipulated to overcome core challenges for causal identification. A modified in-store multiple price list (MPL) experiment (n = 200) then tests consumers' valuation of perishable food of varying shelf-life (expiry date) in a two-by-two design that varies date mark type(use-by versus best-before) and information status while preventing free disposal censoring. We find that expiry dates affect consumer valuation, but not differences in date mark type. Educating consumers about date mark meaning turns out to be conducive to discarding potentially unsafe food, but not to preventing food waste. An attentiveness experiment (n = 160) tests whether these treatment effects plausibly result from the nature of consumers' knowledge and finds that the existing asymmetry in consumers' understanding of current date marks can explain the evidence from the modified MPL experiment

Is public procurement going green? experiences and open issues

Public purchasing authorities are in a leading position for the introduction, promotion and development of green procurement. Indeed, the public sector can influence green procurement both by designing suitable policies and by driving “green” markets through the significant share of public purchases on GDP. The European Commission (EC) has emphasized the importance of cost-efficient GPP and, in compliance with the EU’s Integrated Product Policy (IPC), Member States have been encouraged to devise national action plans. As a result, many countries have already adopted steps in the direction of greening public purchases. The aim of our paper is twofold: first, we focus on the state of the art in terms of the EU and Italian Legislation; then, we highlight open questions related to crucial issues in GPP implementation, with a particular attention to the design of green tenders and awarding criteria to account for environmental quality in public purchasing procedures

WATZON: the Italian network of ecohydrology and critical zone observatories

The Italian initiative WATZON (WATer mixing in the critical ZONe) is a network of instrumented sites, bringing together six pre-existing long-term research observatories monitoring different compartments of the Critical Zone - the Earth's permeable near-surface layer from the tops of the trees to the bottom of the groundwater. These observatories cover different climatic and physiographic characteristics over the country, providing information over a climate and eco-hydrologic transect connecting the Mediterranean to the Alps. With specific initial scientific questions, monitoring strategies, databases, and modeling activities, the WATZON observatories and sites is well representative of the heterogeneity of the critical zone and of the scientific communities studying it. Despite this diversity, all WATZON sites share a common eco-hydrologic monitoring and modelling program with three main objectives: 1) assessing the description of water mixing process across the critical zone by using integrated high-resolution isotopic, geophysical and hydrometeorological measurements from point to catchment scale, under different physiographic conditions and climate forcing; 2) testing water exchange mechanisms between subsurface reservoirs and vegetation, and assessing ecohydrological dynamics in different environments by coupling the high-resolution data set from different critical zone study sites of the initiative with advanced ecohydrological models at multiple spatial scales; 3) developing a process-based conceptual framework of ecohydrological processes in the critical zone to translate scientific knowledge into evidence to support policy and management decisions concerning water and land use in forested and agricultural ecosystems. This work provides an overview of the WATZON network, its objectives, scientific questions, and data management, with a specific focus on existing initiatives for linking data and models based on WATZON data

Assessing root water uptake transit time by simulating isotope transport in Hydrus-1D

Stable isotopes (2H and 18O) are common natural tracers for the investigation of water transport in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Isotopic data can be coupled with soil water content data to inversely estimate soil hydraulic and transport parameters. The calibration of a hydrological model by inverse modelling is a prerequisite to determine the temporal origin of xylem water taken by roots. In this study, we used isotopic data to calibrate Hydrus-1D via inverse modelling to simulate one-dimensional water flow and isotope transport in a controlled soil-plant-atmosphere system. We propose the following protocol i) to estimate root water uptake transit time of irrigation water, and ii) to assess the sensitivity of the transit time distribution to the variation in the water available for root uptake. The dataset was obtained from an isotope-tracing experiment carried out between May and July 2018 on an olive tree placed in a pot inside a glasshouse. Meteorological variables and sap flow were monitored at 5-minute intervals, whereas shallow soil moisture (0-6 cm depth) was measured manually with an impedance probe at the daily timescale. The olive tree was irrigated with water of known isotopic composition. The pot surface was covered by a plastic sheet to avoid evaporation. Soil at different depths, twigs, wood cores and root samples were collected weekly for isotopic analyses. Water from soil and the xylem tissues was extracted by cryogenic vacuum distillation. Based on the results of a previous study carried out on the same dataset, we considered that no isotopic fractionation occurred during the water uptake and the transport within the olive tree. We used soil water content and δ18O data at different soil depths to optimize flow (soil hydraulic and root water uptake parameters) and transport (longitudinal dispersivity) parameters. Numerical simulations of isotope transport were validated with sap flow data (compared to actual transpiration) and δ18O in xylem water. Given that the timing of irrigation water for plant transpiration is fundamental for assessing the vulnerability of olive trees to drought, we will be proposing various scenarios based on different irrigation events to mimic drought periods. Based on these scenarios, we will be evaluating the sensitivity of the root water uptake transit time to the different water availability in the soil profile. Afterwards, the same protocol will be exploited to determine the root water uptake transit time for different tree species under various environmental conditions

Last results of technological developments for ultra-lightweight, large aperture, deployable mirror for space telescopes

The aim of this work is to describe the latest results of new technological concepts for Large Aperture Telescopes Technology (LATT) using thin deployable lightweight active mirrors. This technology is developed under the European Space Agency (ESA) Technology Research Program and can be exploited in all the applications based on the use of primary mirrors of space telescopes with large aperture, segmented lightweight telescopes with wide Field of View (FOV) and low f/#, and LIDAR telescopes. The reference mission application is a potential future ESA mission, related to a space borne DIAL (Differential Absorption Lidar) instrument operating around 935.5 nm with the goal to measure water vapor profiles in atmosphere. An Optical BreadBoard (OBB) for LATT has been designed for investigating and testing two critical aspects of the technology: 1) control accuracy in the mirror surface shaping. 2) mirror survivability to launch. The aim is to evaluate the effective performances of the long stroke smart-actuators used for the mirror control and to demonstrate the effectiveness and the reliability of the electrostatic locking (EL) system to restraint the thin shell on the mirror backup structure during launch. The paper presents a comprehensive vision of the breadboard focusing on how the requirements have driven the design of the whole system and of the various subsystems. The manufacturing process of the thin shell is also presented