Suchergebnisse

Mit dem Klimaabkommen von Paris hat sich eine Situation der national differenzierten Klimapolitik entwickelt, die zu ungleichen CO2-Preisen in den einzelnen Ländern geführt hat. Internationaler Handel zwischen Ländern mit unterschiedlich strikter Klimaschutzpolitik kann zu Carbon Leakage führen. Dies reduziert die Effizienz einer Klimaschutzpolitik. Ein Grenzausgleich, im Sinne einer Harmonisierung unterschiedlicher CO2-Preise mit Hilfe von CO2-Zöllen, bietet sich als eine Maßnahme an, um Wettbewerbsverzerrung aufgrund von unilateraler Klimaschutzpolitik zu reduzieren und Carbon Leakage zu verhindern. Nicht nur in der Fachliteratur, sondern auch auf politischer Ebene findet die Idee eines Grenzausgleiches Zustimmung. Der jüngste Vorschlag einer solchen Maßnahme wurde im Zuge des von der Europäischen Kommission unter Ursula von der Leyen beschlossenen 'Green Deals' benannt und soll helfen die Europäische Union bis zum Jahr 2050 zur Klima-Neutralität zu führen. Obwohl die Grundidee von Grenzausgleichsmaßnahmen im Sinne einer Verlagerung zu einer konsumbasierten CO2-Bepreisung reizvoll und klar ist, ist dessen Ausgestaltung und Implementierung in der Praxis komplex. Dies führt zu einem hohen bürokratischen Mehraufwand und damit einhergehenden hohen administrativen Kosten. Darüber hinaus kann ein Grenzausgleich als Handelsbarriere gesehen werden, welche zu Vergeltungsmaßnahmen der vom Grenzausgleich betroffenen Länder im Ausland führen kann. Aus diesem Grund empfiehlt sich ein enger Fokus auf energieintensive und international exponierte Sektoren.

This article addresses the mediating effect of corruption on the influence of stringency of environmental regulation on firms' voluntary environmental performance. Using panel data from adoption of the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) across European Union countries from 1995 to 2011, we unveil a direct and an interacting effect of countries' corruption and regulatory stringency on the rate of adoption. First, stricter environmental regulation reduces the rate of EMAS certificates, thus supporting a crowding-out effect of mandatory regulation on voluntary action. Second, increased corruption reduces the rate of EMAS certificates. Third, the negative effect of stringency of regulation on EMAS certification rates is reinforced by corruption. In sum, these results suggest that previous studies address- ing the implications from stricter regulations on firms' voluntary action that abstract from corruption might underestimate the potential negative effect of stringency of regulation on firms' voluntary action.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the role of intergovernmental relations on a country's effort to enforce the objectives of an international environmental agreement on an open access resource. Intergovernmental interaction allows signatory countries to observe compliance behavior of other signees and to punish non-compliance by applying bi- and multilateral sanctions. We use a cross-sectional dataset that contains country level information about compliance with the 1995 UN Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Our identi cation strategy combines a spatial autoregressive model with spatial autoregressive disturbances and an instrumental variable approach. We find a strong positive effect of other countries' compliance on the individual country's compliance score. These results suggest that repeated interactions among participants might not only play a role in enforcing the obligations of an agreement at the community level but also have an impact at the international level.

SUMMARYThis paper estimates the individual willingness to pay (WTP) for the option to exercise risk‐taking. We use data of 69 Austrian Ski resorts and 3,637 reported ski accidents and apply the hedonic market method. Our results suggest that the individual WTP for a hypothetical increase in the possibility to undertake risk‐taking activities lies between 11% and 25% of the price of a ski‐lift‐ticket. Monetized values help design pricing schemes that set incentives to reduce risk‐taking behavior as well as to develop alternative instruments to reduce the adverse effects of risk‐taking activities (e.g. accidents).

Trade-related measures aim to regulate side-effects in international environmental agreements and are expected to positively influence the level of participation in the agreements as well as their degree of stability. In this paper we examine one side-effect of the 1994 International Tropical Timber Agreement - its impact on tropical timber trade. We use a cross-sectional dataset on bilateral trade flows of tropical timber that additionally contains information on trading partners' economic and geographical characteristics. Our empirical specification is based on a gravity equation, which is estimated using Heckman's selection model to address the potentially systematic selection of trading partners. We find significantly positive impacts of the 1994 ITTA on member countries' level of tropical timber trade. Furthermore, poor exporter countries benefit more from this trade enhancing effect than their richer counterparts.

AbstractInternational trade in wildlife is one contributing factor to zoonotic disease risk. Using descriptive statistics, this paper shows that in the last decades, the volume and pattern of internationally traded wildlife has changed considerably and, with it, the zoonotic pathogens that are traded. In an econometric analysis, we give evidence that an international environmental trade agreement could be used to limit the spread of zoonotic pathogens and disease. More specifically, combining zoonotic disease data with wildlife trade data from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife and Fauna (CITES), we show that making trade requirements more stringent leads to a decrease in the number of animals traded and, incidentally, also the number of zoonotic diseases that are traded. Our results contribute to the discussion of policy measures that manage the spread of zoonotic diseases.