The Impact Of Environmental Emissions And Aggregate Economic Activity On Industry

By introducing emissions as an input in an aggregate production function, The Impact of Environmental Emissions and Aggregate Economic Activity on Industry: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives enhances an awareness of the trade-off between emissions and growth where the intersection between economy and environment needs it most.

The various sharing initiatives seen in the Nordic countries over the last years within transportation, housing/accommodation, sharing/renting of smaller capital goods and personal services could yield considerable benefits for consumers due to better quality and/or lower prices of the services. They also have a potential for emissions reductions of CO2 and local pollutants. However, savings from lower prices could lead to increased emissions from increased demand of the services (particularly transport) and increased spending on other goods and services. Depending on how consumers spend their savings, these changes could partly, wholly or more than offset the initial emission reductions. The impacts on overall CO2 emissions depend on whether the emissions are taxed, part of the emissions trading system EU ETS or not regulated at all.

On December 12th, 2015, at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change held in Paris, 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal and legally binding climate deal. They agreed to decarbonize the economy in order to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2oC relative to the preindustrial levels. Although each country is free to design its own strategy on mitigation and adaptation, it will be bound to such strategy and is supposed to implement the bulk of the adjustments by 2050. Many questions arise from the Paris Agreement that points to a second Industrial Revolution. What are the required changes in the structure of production and in the patterns of consumption? What will be their impacts on emissions, employment and international trade? This book answers these questions from a variety of input-output models able to compute the impacts on specific sectors and regions. This volume has 17 chapters written by 52 co-authors who are specialists in input-output analysis and environmental sustainability. They come from 24 universities, research centers and international agencies all over the world, sharing their commitments to explain important and complex ideas in a way that is understandable to the non-experts and experts alike. Environmental and Economic Impacts of Decarbonization is a very important read for those who study environmental economics, climate change and ecological economics.

This book presents a new perspective on the link between economic growth and environmental change. All the key issues in environmental economics are covered, including: * industry, creation and environmental change * air, water and toxic pollution * economic growth and the limits of environmental regulation * ethics and the limits of environmental economics. The central thesis is that whilst new industries are necessary for economic growth, their development creates new environmental problems which become difficult to reverse. An alternative approach, 'steady-state economics', based on the concept of ethical commitment, is put forward as a possible alternative to a high-growth, environmentally destructive economy. Providing a welcome alternative to conventional, neoclassical microeconomic thought on environmental issues, this will be vital reading for students of environmental economics and related subjects.

The employment impact of environmental policies is an important question for policy makers. We examine the effect of increasing the stringency of environmental policy across a broad set of policies on firms’ labor demand, in a novel identification approach using Worldscope data from 31 countries on firm-level CO2 emissions. Drawing on evidence from as many as 5300 firms over 15 years and the OECD environmental policy stringency (EPS) index, it finds that high emission-intensity firms reduce labor demand upon impact as EPS is tightened, whereas low emission-intensity firms increase labor demand, indicating a reallocation of employment. Moreover, tightening EPS during economic contractions appears to have a positive effect on employment, other things equal. Quantifications exercises show modest positive net changes in employment for market-based policies, and modest negative net changes for non-market policies (mainly emission quantity regulations) and for the combined aggregate EPS. Within market-based policies, the percent decline in employment in high-emission firms (correspondingly the increase in low-emission firms) for a unit change in a policy index is smallest (largest) for trading schemes (“green” certificates, and “white” certificates)—although stringency is not comparable across indices. Finally, the employment effects of EPS are not persistent.

This book applies rigorous economic analysis to the question of sustainable development. It considers the inter-relationship between growth and sustainability showing that one does not necessarily exist to the detriment of the other. Sustainability may be measured and defined in national accounting terms and the contributors explore a potentially powerful theoretical definition. Case studies on Morocco and China examine some of the domestic policy requirements of sustainability, revealing the desirability of quite complex combinations of policies. International policy aspects of sustainability are considered, such as technology transfers and the establishment of workable agreements to reduce global pollution. The volume demonstrates the need to build the sustainability debate on sound economic foundations, and the ability of economists to provide such foundations.

This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the economic consequences of outdoor air pollution in the coming decades, focusing on the impacts on mortality, morbidity, and changes in crop yields as caused by high concentrations of pollutants.

Industrialization to achieve economic development has resulted in global environmental degradation. This book identifies/quantifies environmental consequences of industrial growth, and provides policy advice, including the use of clean technologies, with reference to the developing world.