Cross sectional estimation of convergence regressions is known to be hazardous if there is convergence towards heterogeneous steady state values. In this paper, Monte Carlo methods are used to investigate the implications of this parameter heterogeneity problem. The cross sectional and pooled OLS estimators are compared with a panel estimator which is unaffected by heterogeneity. If there is he...

Both climate change and technical change are uncertain. In this paper we combine economics and decision analysis to incorporate the uncertainty of technical change into climate change policy analysis. We present the results of an expert elicitation on the prospects for technological change in advanced solar photovoltaics. We then use the results of the expert elicitations as inputs to the MiniC...

Concerns for environmental quality and its impact on people’s welfare are fundamental arguments for the adoption of environmental legislation in most countries. In this paper, we analyse the relationship between air quality and subjective well-being in Europe. We use a unique dataset that merges three waves of the European Social Survey with a new dataset on environmental quality including SO2 ...

Water saving agricultural technologies are a potentially important but under utilized lever to conserve groundwater in India. Technologies like laser levelers have high private returns and lead to water savings, yet the adoption rates are not very high. In order to provide insight for the design of policies to promote adoption, we conducted a survey based study about factors that influence the ...

This paper studies policy instruments that correct insufficient learning-by-doing (LbD) and research and development (R&D) of renewable electricity technologies and insufficient investments in energy efficiency (EE) in the presence of carbon pricing. The theoretical model analysis shows how to re-adjust the first-best in second-best situations, in which one of the policy instruments is restrict...

This paper e.vatnines whether a severe flood causes homeowners to update their assessment of ßood risk as seen in a change in the price of fhodphtin property. I use data on all single-family. residential property sales in St, Louis County. Missouri, hetweeti 1979 and 2006 in a repeat-sales model and a property fixed-effects model. After the ¡993 ßood on the Mi.ssouri and Mississippi rivers, pro...

Understanding the potential impacts of climate change on economic outcomes requires knowing how agents might adapt to a changing climate. We exploit large variation in recent temperature and precipitation trends to identify adaptation to climate change in US agriculture, and use this information to generate new estimates of the potential impact of future climate change on agricultural outcomes....

Global climate change presents a classic problem of decision making under uncertainty with learning. We provide stochastic dominance theorems that provide new insights into when abatement and investment into low carbon technology should increase in risk. We show that R&D into low-carbon technologies and near-term abatement are in some sense opposites in terms of risk. Abatement provides insuran...