Distributional impacts of carbon taxation and revenue recycling: a behavioural microsimulation. ESRI WP626, June 2019

Carbon taxation is a regressive policy which contributes to public opposition towards same. We employ the Exact Affine Stone Index demand system to examine the extent to which carbon taxation in Ireland reduces emissions, as well as its distributional impacts. The Engel curves for various commodity groupings are found to be non-linear, which renders the particular demand system we have chosen more suitable than other methods found in the extant literature. We find that a carbon tax increase can decrease emissions, but is indeed regressive. Recycling the revenues to households mitigates these regressive effects. A targeted allocation that directs the revenues towards less affluent households is found to reduce inequality more than flat allocation that divides the revenues equally amongst all households; however both methods are capable of mitigating the regressive effects of the tax increase

Car ownership and the distributional and environmental policies to reduce driving behavior. ESRI Working Paper 673 July 2020.

Using the EASI demand system and Irish data, it is found that additional carbon taxation is not as regressive as previously found, when the externality cost associated with driving is included in the metric of the tax incidence. This result is in contrast with the existing literature. Affluent households are found to have the largest externality costs and the largest average emissions per kilometer. Based on estimated cross price elasticities between public and private transportation it is found that for low income households, these commodities are complementary and substitutes for high-income levels. While subsidies for public transit can reduce emissions and the demand for private transportation, they are found to be regressive. A lump-sum transfer is found to perform better at compensating households after the carbon tax. However, it reduces the carbon savings by 1%

Linking sustainable energy consumption and adaptation policies against floods. ESRI Research Bulletin 202032 December 2020.

This paper evaluates the distributional effects of floods across different household types and income levels. Using German data, it analyses the distributional effects of providing relief and funding it through taxes on energy consumption. Finally, it analyses the distributional effects of households covering the cost of a flood by themselves and getting government transfers that reward investments in risk reduction

Initial incidence of carbon taxes and environmental liability: A vehicle ownership approach. ESRI Research Bulletin 202013 June 2020.

Decarbonizing the transport sector is key to reducing the general level of CO2 emissions. At a European level, emissions from this sector accounted for 29% of total CO2 emissions in 2012. In Ireland, transportation accounted for 40% of total CO2 emissions in 2018. Increasing carbon taxes has emerged as a key policy instrument to reduce emissions in this sector. Existing literature shows that carbon taxes on road transport fuels can encourage drivers to take fewer car trips and encourage them to buy more efficient vehicles. However, most of the existing literature finds that low income households are disproportionately affected by carbon taxation. Commonly used metrics for tax burden omit the fact that households’ incomes measured at one point in time may not reflect their average lifetime income. Taking this into account can reduce the tax burden. In addition, it is argued that current carbon taxes do not charge drivers according to their level of attributed pollution. At present, carbon taxes do not account for all the externalities (e.g. local pollution, congestion, accidents, etc.) caused by vehicle use. This paper considers the tax burden across household types, incorporating a measure of lifetime income, and also investigates the level at which carbon taxes should be set to reflect environmental damage

Evolución de los spreads por préstamos del exterior a las empresas: El caso peruano: 1992 - 1997

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A monstrous appendage : British Library MS Harley 2799, f. 243 and the illustrated De portentis

O presente artigo pretende analisar e contextualizar a galeria de espécimes monstruosos que preenche o fólio 243 do segundo volume do códice vulgarmente denominado Bíblia de Arnstein. Este manuscrito (Londres, Biblioteca Britânica, MS Harley 2799) foi produzido na Renânia durante a década de 1170 e enquadra o material que nos concerne no âmbito de uma série de apêndices 'marginais' de temática geográfica, cosmológica e computística congregados no início e no fim do volume. Através de uma comparação entre este reportório e os programas iconográficos que acompanham o tratado De portentis na tradição Isidoro-Rabaniana -nomeadamente nos códices Casiniensis 132 da Biblioteca Abacial de Montecassino e Pal. lat. 291 da Biblioteca Apostólica Vaticana- procurar-se-á demonstrar que o material isolado no último fólio da Bíblia de Arnstein não configura uma criação ad hoc, e muito menos uma curiosidade ociosa, mas enquadra-se numa velha e venerável genealogia textual e pictórica com firmes raízes no imaginário medieval. Concomitantemente, procurar-se-á explorar as condições e motivações que explicam o reenquadramento deste corpus na periferia de um texto alógeno, e esboçar algumas das razões que podem ter atendido à sua 'reinvenção'neste contexto específico.This paper seeks to explore and contextualise the gallery of monstrous peoples occurring in f. 243 of London, British Library MS Harley 2799 (the second volume of the so-called Arnstein Bible, produced in the Rhineland around 1170 and comprising several addenda of geographical, cosmological and computistical interest). A comparison between these drawings and the pictorial programmes accompanying section VII.7 of Hrabanus Maurus' De universo (the tract independently known as De portentis) reveals that the material isolated in the Harley manuscript is not an ad hoc creation, but part of a far-reaching and deeply-rooted genealogy of texts and images. Careful analysis of this material in light of the pictorial evidence afforded by the two extant examples of Hrabanus' De universo -Montecassino Abbey Library Cod. Casiniensis 132 and Rome, Biblioteca Vaticana Cod. Pal. lat. 291- can thus shed new light on both the Harley composition and the illustration of the corresponding Isidorian-Hrabanian tract. Concomitantly, it will be argued, its re-contextualisation on the 'outer edges' of a Bible manuscript is in itself a significant testimony to the versatility of this legendary, and to its enduring grasp on the medieval imagination

Are energy poverty metrics fit for purpose? An assessment using behavioural microsimulation. ESRI Working Paper 665 May 2020.

We assess the existing battery of metrics for measuring energy affordability. We analyse expenditure-based metrics and recently-developed metrics for multidimensional poverty under simulated scenarios which allow for the introduction of carbon taxation, increased housing costs, revenue re-allocation and increases in energy efficiency. We deploy the Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) implicit Marshallian demand system to parameterise a microsimulation model. Expenditure-based metrics used by official bodies in Europe perform very poorly in capturing the impacts of both carbon taxation and policy responses. Multidimensional poverty metrics provide more intuitive results. Evidence from these metrics show that revenue recycling can mitigate the impacts of increased energy and housing costs in the extensive and intensive margins of energy poverty, while energy efficiency can exacerbate the intensity of those already classified as “energy poor”

Access to and consumption of natural gas: spatial and sociodemographic drivers. ESRI WP639, November 2019

In the context of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector, fuel switching from coal and oil to natural gas is considered as a policy option. The paper considers fuel choice decisions among households within 30 metres of the Irish natural gas network. Consistent with earlier research a range of building attributes and household characteristics are associated with fuel choice for household space heating. Additionally, there are substantial distance decay effcts with respect to gas network connection within relatively close proximity to the network, meaning that properties further distant from the gas network are less likely to be gas customers. The distance decay effects are likely attributed to network connection fees, which are proportional to the connection distance. The paper simulates the impact of eliminating distance decay effects, i.e. the marginal connection cost associated with distance is set to zero, and examines emission and expenditure impacts across socioeconomic groups. The analysis finds that up to 13% of unconnected properties are likely to respond to such an incentive, yielding a 3.9% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 1.5% reduction in fuel expenditure relative to pre-policy levels of unconnected households within the study. Expenditure and emission impacts differ across socio-economic groups with the largest reductions expected to occur among semi-skilled/unskilled households, which are frequently among the least affluent households. Though counter-intuitive, greenhouse gas emissions from the residential sector could be reduced by incentivising connections to the natural gas network

Position paper on time and event-triggered communication services in the context of e-manufacturing

Modern factories are complex systems where advances in networking and information technologies are opening new ways towards higher efficiency. Such move is being driven by market rules with ever-increasing competition levels, in search for faster time-to-market, improved process yield, non-stop operations, flexible manufacturing and tighter supply-chain coupling. All these aims present a common requirement, i.e. a realtime flow of information, from the plant-floor up to the management, maintenance, suppliers and clients, to support accurate monitoring and control of the factory. This stresses the importance achieved by the communication infrastructure in modern manufacturing industry. This paper presents the authors view concerning the current trends in modern factory communication systems. It addresses the problems of seamlessly integrating different information flows with diverse requirements, mainly in terms of timeliness. In this aspect, the debate between event-triggered and time-triggered communication is revisited as well as the joint support for both types of traffic. Finally, a view of where factory communication systems are moving to is also presented, showing the impact of open and widely available technologies.FCT. Comissão Europeia(ARTIST,IST-2001-34820

From simulation to statistical analysis: timeliness assessment of ethernet/IP-based distributed systems

A number of characteristics are boosting the eagerness of extending Ethernet to also cover factory-floor distributed real-time applications. Full-duplex links, non-blocking and priority-based switching, bandwidth availability, just to mention a few, are characteristics upon which that eagerness is building up. But, will Ethernet technologies really manage to replace traditional Fieldbus networks? Ethernet technology, by itself, does not include features above the lower layers of the OSI communication model. In the past few years, it is particularly significant the considerable amount of work that has been devoted to the timing analysis of Ethernet-based technologies. It happens, however, that the majority of those works are restricted to the analysis of sub-sets of the overall computing and communication system, thus without addressing timeliness at a holistic level. To this end, we are addressing a few inter-linked research topics with the purpose of setting a framework for the development of tools suitable to extract temporal properties of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Ethernet-based factory-floor distributed systems. This framework is being applied to a specific COTS technology, Ethernet/IP. In this paper, we reason about the modelling and simulation of Ethernet/IP-based systems, and on the use of statistical analysis techniques to provide usable results. Discrete event simulation models of a distributed system can be a powerful tool for the timeliness evaluation of the overall system, but particular care must be taken with the results provided by traditional statistical analysis techniques