Does Environmental Economics lead to patentable research?

In this feasibility study, the impact of academic research from social sciences and humanities on technological innovation is explored through a study of citations patterns of journal articles in patents. Specifically we focus on citations of journals from the field of environmental economics in patents included in an American patent database (USPTO). Three decades of patents have led to a small set of journal articles (85) that are being cited from the field of environmental economics. While this route of measuring how academic research is validated through its role in stimulating technological progress may be rather limited (based on this first exploration), it may still point to a valuable and interesting topic for further research.Comment: 10 pages, 4 table

The use of warnings when intended and measured emissions differ

This article studies the effects of informal, non-monetary sanctions, such as warnings, which are often used as an enforcement instrument by environmental inspection agencies. In cases of uncertainty with respect to the measured emissions due to measurement errors or accidental violations, some firms are unjustly penalised. As warnings provide a buffer period in which the firm is informed about the violation without any monetary consequences, it will be theoretically shown that warnings can help to reduce the welfare cost of such type II-errors and reduce the overdeterrence of low-cost firms - albeit at the cost of underdeterring medium-cost firms.Enforcement; non-monetary sanctions; warnings; measurement errors

Using emission standards under incomplete compliance.

Using the case study of water pollution in the Flemish textile industry, we discuss three empirical questions concerning the use of emission standards. Firstly, given a particular emission standard and the willingness to pay (WTP) for an environmental improvement, which monitoring and enforcement policy provides us with the highest welfare? Secondly, given the WTP, which combination of an emission standard and a monitoring and enforcement strategy gives the highest welfare level? Thirdly, if one wants to attain a certain level of emissions, which combination of an emission standard and a monitoring and enforcement strategy maximises welfare?Experience; Economics; Policy; Reserves; Impact; Firms; Decisions; Decision;

Enforcement Aspects of Conservation Policies: Compensation Payments versus Reserves

This model explicitly incorporates the dynamic aspects of conservation programs with incomplete compliance and it allows landholders’ behavior to change over time. A distinction is made between initial and continuing compliance. We find that incomplete and instrument-specific enforcement can have a significant impact on the choice between subsidy schemes and reserves for conservation policies. The results suggest that it is useless to design a conservation scheme for landholders, if the regulator is not prepared to explicitly back the program with a monitoring and enforcement policy. In general, the regulator will prefer to use compensation payments, if the cost of using government revenues is sufficiently low, the environmental benefits are equal, and the cost efficiency benefits exceed the (possible) increase in inspection costs. If the use of government funds is too costly, the reserve-type instruments will be socially beneficial.Monitoring and enforcement; Policy instruments; Conservation policy

Journal Evaluation by Environmental and Resource Economists: A Survey

Using an online survey, we have asked the researchers in the field of environmental and resource economics how they themselves would rank a representative list of journals in their field. The results of this ranking are then compared to the ordering based on the journals’ impact factors as published by Thomson Scientific. The two sets of rankings seem to be positively correlated, but statistically the null hypothesis that the two rankings are uncorrelated cannot be rejected. This observation suggests that researchers interpret the current quality of journals based on other factors in addition to the impact factors.

Timing of environmental inspections: Survival of the compliant1

Environmental inspection agencies have limited resources. A natural response to this shortage of resources is targeting. The agency will inspect the firms it suspects to be noncompliant. This targeting policy leads to higher compliance than random inspections. This paper uses individual inspection data on the timing policy of the environmental agency. We focus on the probability that firms in the textile industry in Flanders (Belgium) will be inspected by the environmental inspection agency at a particular moment in time given that the firm was not inspected for t periods prior to that moment. We use a survival model to show that the environmental agency inspects firms in a nonrandom way and investigate the factors that influence the probability of inspection.Litigation process,Illegal behaviour and the Enforcement of Law Natural resource economics

Enforcement aspects of conservation policies: Compensation payments versus reserves.

Experience; Economics; Policy; Reserves;

Enforcement aspects of conservation policies: compensation payments versus reserves

This model explicitly incorporates the dynamic aspects of conservation programs with incomplete compliance and it allows landholders’ behavior to change over time. A distinction is made between initial and continuing compliance. We find that incomplete and instrument-specific enforcement can have a significant impact on the choice between subsidy schemes and reserves for conservation policies. The results suggest that it is useless to design a conservation scheme for landholders, if the regulator is not prepared to explicitly back the program with a monitoring and enforcement policy. In general, the regulator will prefer to use compensation payments, if the cost of using government revenues is sufficiently low, the environmental benefits are equal, and the cost efficiency benefits exceed the (possible) increase in inspection costs. If the use of government funds is too costly, the reserve-type instruments will be socially beneficial.monitoring and enforcement, policy instruments, conservation policy

Learning about compliance under asymmetric information

Over time, inspection agencies gather information about firms that cause harmful externalities. This information may allow agencies to differentiate their monitoring strategies in the future, since inspections can be influenced by firms' past performance relative to other competitors in the market. If a firm is less successful than it peers in reducing the externality, if faces the risk of being targeted for increased inspections in the next period This risk of stricter monitoring might induce high cost firms to mimic low cost firms, while the latter might try to avoid being mimicked We show that under certain circumstances, mimicking, or even the threat of mimicking, might reduce socially harmful activities and thus be welfare improving.monitoring and enforcement, externalities, learning, mimicking