Are NIMBY'S commuters?

This paper considers a metropolitan area where residents can commute between several jurisdictions. These residents show NIMBY behavior (Not-In-My-Backyard). They try to preserve their living quality by pushing their polluting economic activity to the neighboring jurisdictions, while keeping their labor income as commuters. This induces a race-to-the-top among jurisdictions. Fiercer competition due to a higher number of jurisdictions intensifies this race-to-the-top; commuting costs, pollution taxes, payroll taxes and bigger jurisdictions increase rather than decrease the incentive for more pollution.Commuting, NIMBY, inter-jurisdictional competition, environmental federalism

Environmental Tax Reform with Vertical Tax Externalities in a Federal State

The paper studies a regional environmental tax reform in a federal state. In a model with immobile labour, mobile capital and mobile polluting input in the production function, one region increases its pollution taxes and recycles the excess tax revenues by lowering either pre-existing distorting labour or capital taxes. This choice determines whether the non-environmental efficiency of the regional tax system improves or gets worse. Moreover, the regional tax reform changes the level of the federal budget through the vertical tax externality effect. We illustrate the magnitude of the different effects with simulations for a country with only 2 regions (Belgium) and a country with 50 regions (US).Tax Reform, Tax externality, Federalism, Tax Burden, Capital Mobility

Optimal Location of New Forests in a Suburban Area

In this paper we develop a methodology to select a combination of forest sites that maximizes net social benefits taking into account restrictions on the total surface/size of new forest land. We use GIS technology to estimate for each site the major cost and benefit elements including lost agricultural output, timber and hunting values, carbon sequestration, non-use and recreation benefits. Special emphasis is placed on the recreational value of a potential site as this raises two issues. First, the recreation benefits of a base site estimated via the travel cost method need to be transferred to all potential sites. Second, the recreation benefit of each potential site depends on the existing sites and on the other sites that are in the selection. We show that the same ‘amount’ of afforestation (i.e. the same total surface divided into multiple sites at varying locations) creates a wide range of potential net social benefits due to the role of a varying set of recreation substitutes.We show that the net social benefit of new forest combinations respecting the area constraints may differ up to a factor 21. The substitution effect between forests, both new and existing, turned out to be the dominant factor in the benefit estimation. Compared to the existing literature, our paper improves the methodology by working with realistically feasible sites rather than grid sites, by including the complex recreation substitution effects between potential sites and by including all costs and benefits of afforestation bringing the analysis closer to a real cost benefit analysis.

Optimal location of new forests in a suburban region.

This paper looks at the optimal location of new forests in a suburban region under area constraints. The GIS-based methodology takes into account use benefits such as timber, hunting, carbon sequestration and recreation, non-use benefits (both bequest and existence values), opportunity costs of converting agricultural land, as well as planting and management costs of the new forest. The recreation benefits of new forest sites are estimated using function transfer techniques. We show that the net social benefit of the total afforestation project may vary up to a factor 6, depending on the forest sites that are selected. We show that the recreation value of a forest site varies considerably with the available substitutes.Benefit transfer; Travel cost analysis; Cost-benefit analysis; Forest recreation; Geographical Information Systems (GIS);

Economic impacts of EU clean air policies assessed in a CGE framework

This paper assesses the macroeconomic and sectoral impacts of the “Clean Air Policy Package” proposed by the European Commission in December 2013. The analysis incorporates both the expenditures necessary to implement the policy by 2030 and the resulting positive feedback effects on human health and crop production. A decomposition analysis identifies the important drivers of the macroeconomic impacts. We show that while expenditure on pollution abatement is a cost for the abating sectors, it also generates an increased demand for the sectors that produce the goods required for pollution abatement. Moreover, we find that positive feedback effects, particularly those related to health can offset the resource costs associated to the clean air policy and result in positive macroeconomic impacts for the economy of the European Union

ANALYSIS OF THE IRAN OIL EMBARGO

This report analyses the macro-economic, sectoral, and energy effects of an Iranian oil embargo. Five scenarios are analysed reflecting various degrees of oil scarcity on the global market and different sizes of embargo coalitions. The report estimates the macro-economic impacts using the global general equilibrium model GEM-E3. The international oil and energy markets are assessed with the POLES model. This provides the impacts in prices and quantities in the international energy (oil) market. Impacts on trade flows regarding refined oil products are estimated with the OURSE model.JRC.J.1-Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transpor