Voici les éléments 1 - 10 sur 59
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    The expansion of modern agriculture and global biodiversity decline: An integrated assessment
    (IRENE Institute of Economic Research Working Paper, 2017) ;
    Dietz, Simon
    ;
    Swanson, Tim
    The world is banking on a major increase in food production, if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing, and increasingly rich, population are to be met. This requires the further expansion of modern agriculture, but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity. Ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity, while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields, and sometimes lower mean yields. In this paper we consider the macro-economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive, modern agriculture, with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production. We employ a quantitative, structurally estimated model of the global economy, which jointly determines economic growth, population and food demand, agricultural innovations and land conversion. We show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion.
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Global economic growth and agricultural land conversion under uncertain productivity improvements in agriculture
    (IRENE Institute of Economic Research Working Paper, 2017) ;
    Dietz, Simon
    ;
    Swanson, Tim
    We study how stochasticity in the evolution of agricultural productivity interacts with economic and population growth at the global level. We use a two-sector Schumpeterian model of growth, in which a manufacturing sector produces the traditional consumption good and an agricultural sector produces food to sustain contemporaneous population. Agriculture demands land as an input, itself treated as a scarce form of capital. In our model both population and sectoral technological progress are endogenously determined, and key technological parameters of the model are structurally estimated using 1960-2010 data on world GDP, population, cropland and technological progress. Introducing random shocks to the evolution of total factor productivity in agriculture, we show that uncertainty optimally requires more land to be converted into agricultural use as a hedge against production shortages, and that it significantly affects both optimal consumption and population trajectories.
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Global population growth, technology and Malthusian constraints: A quantitative growth theoretic perspective
    (IRENE Institute of Economic Research Working Paper, 2016) ;
    Dietz, Simon
    ;
    Swanson, Tim
    How much will the global population expand, can all these extra mouths be fed, and what is the role in this story of economic growth? We structurally estimate a two-sector Schumpeterian growth model with endogenous population and finite land reserves to study the long-run evolution of global population, technological progress and the demand for food. The estimated model closely replicates trajectories for world population, GDP, sectoral productivity growth and crop land area from 1960 to 2010. Projections from 2010 onwards show a slowdown of technological progress, and, because it is a key determinant of fertility costs, significant population growth. By 2100 global population reaches 12.4 billion and agricultural production doubles, but the land constraint does not bind because of capital investment and technological progress.
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Energy efficiency, information, and theacceptability of rent increases: A multipleprice list experiment with tenants
    (SCCER CREST Working paper 2018/02 Work Package 2: Change of Behavior, 2018) ;
    This paper studies split incentives associated with energy efficiency investments in rentedproperties. We design a multiple price list experiment representing owners’ decisions to re-place the central heating appliance, and elicit tenants’ willingness to pay (WTP) for an optionthat is 30% more energy efficient. We then quantify how tenants’ WTP varies with a set ofinformational interventions. Our results show that tenants’ baseline WTP is around CHF 450per year on average (about USD 470), and that information on expected financial savingsincreases mean WTP by up to 70%. A set of quantile regressions further suggest that infor-mation on financial gains induces around 30% of tenants to adjust baseline WTP accordingly,while 20% oppose rent increases and do not respond to information and tenants in the uppertail of the distribution increase their WTP substantially. By contrast, informing tenants aboutCO2tax payments has no incremental impact on WTP.
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Empirical Identification of Time Preferences: Theory and An Illustration Using Convex Time Budgets
    (IRENE Institute of Economic Research Working Paper, 2017)
    Bommier, Antoine
    ;
    We develop a simple theoretical framework that identifies time preferences without relying on a particular utility function. Our empirical strategy requires observations about intertemporal consumption allocation decisions made under varying relative prices, and seeks to approximate the marginal rate of substitution of consumption at different dates along a constant consumption path. Doing so, we emphasize the importance of measuring the curvature of the intertemporal utility function (or willingness to substitute consumption across time). We illustrate our approach with data derived from the convex time budget procedure of Andreoni and Sprenger (AER, 2012).
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Politische Massnahmen zur Reduzierung der Energieeeffzienzluecke
    (Basel: SCCER-CREST White paper 8, 2019-2)
    Burger, Paul
    ;
    Cerruti, Davide
    ;
    Filippini, Massimo
    ;
    Gamma, Karoline
    ;
    Haufler, Fabio
    ;
    ;
    Patel, Martin
    ;
    Schubert, Iljana
    ;
    Sohre, Annika
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Energy efficiency, information, and the acceptability of rent increases: A multiple price list experiment with tenants
    (IRENE Working Papers 18-04, 2018) ;
    This paper studies the role of imperfect information and attentional biases in the context of energy efficiency investments in rented properties and associated split incentives. We design a multiple price list experiment representing owners' decision to replace the central heating appliance, and employ both within-subject information disclosure and betweensubject variation in information provision to quantify how tenants trade-off energy efficiency and rent increases. A set of quantile regressions suggests that information on expected energy bills reduction induces around 30% of tenants to equate financial savings and acceptable rent increase. Around 20% of tenants oppose rent increase and do not respond to information, whereas tenants' valuation in the upper tail of the distribution exceeds financial savings, presumably on account of pro-environmental motives. By contrast, information on energy bills variability dampens acceptable rent increase. Our results highlight the importance of realistic ex-ante estimates of financial savings associated with energy efficiency investments.