tidbits #36

In the news / New articles / Conference and seminar annoucements / Open positions

In the news:

• The Tyler Prize Executive Committee is pleased to recognize Sir Partha S. Dasgupta as the recipient of the 2016 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement for his scientific contributions to the field of environmental economics. My sincere congratulations to Partha!
• Science and democracy: a peculiarly British disease? Andy Stirling
  I really enjoyed this last paragraph:

  In the end, authoritarian dragooning of “science as doctrine”, seriously undermines the aspirations of “science as process”. In reality, the robustness equally of research, innovation and democracy rest on similar foundations of openness, scepticism, challenge and egalitarianism. It is the intensity and frequency with which these qualities are compromised in current UK debates on science and technology that deserves to be identified as sinister.

New articles:

• Special issue on climate change on the environment in the Journal of Political Economy, Volume 124, Number 1 | February 2016
• SECOND-BEST CARBON TAXATION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY The Green Paradox and Carbon Leakage Revisited, by Rick van der Ploeg, forthcoming in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
  

  Acceleration of global warming resulting from a future carbon tax is large if the price elasticities of oil demand are large and that of oil supply is small. The fall in the world interest rate weakens this weak Green Paradox effect, especially if intertemporal substitution is weak. Still, social damages from greenhouse gases drop if the fall in oil supply and cumulative emissions is strong enough. If the current carbon tax is set too low, the second-best future carbon tax is set below the first best too to mitigate adverse Green Paradox effects. Unilateral second-best optimal carbon taxes exceed the first-best taxes due to an import tariff component. The intertemporal terms of trade effects of the future carbon tax increase current and future tariffs and those of the current tax lower the current tariff. Finally, carbon leakage and globally altruistic and unilateral second-best optimal carbon taxes if non-Kyoto oil importers price carbon too low are analysed in a three-country model of the global economy.

• It took 18 years for Russia to admit Kyshtym disaster, one of the biggest nuclear incidents up to now. It seems governments tend to be a bit shy and downplay bigger nuclear incidents often. A recent example is e.g. the French government when it comes to Fessenheim, France’s most troublesome nuclear power plant (for now…).
• To beat the `throwaway’ culture we need to design things that last

Conference and seminar annoucements:

• Special Session on Environment and Economic Growth, 11-12 July 2016, Nice, France. More information HERE.
• The External Cost of Meat; an Interdisciplinary Exploration, 17th and 18th of November in Ghent, Belgium.
  
• World Conference on Climate Change, October 24-26, 2016, which is going to be held at Valencia, Spain. For details please click here: http://climatechange.conferenceseries.com/