A Stackelberg–Nash–Cournot Equilibrium in a Pollution Reduction Scheme

This paper presents a Stochastic Stackelberg–Nash–Cournot Equilibrium model with continuous market demand distribution to examine the effectiveness of ambient charges as an effective policy measure for reducing nonpoint source pollution in a hybrid scheme. To do so, we consider the supply side of an energy market with hybrid technology that competes in an oligopoly market setting. Within such a setting, each power plant or firm uses a mix of fossil fuels (F) and renewable energy sources (R) to generate power at any given time. The demand for electricity is not realized at the time when the firm (leader) makes the decision. The competition between the two energy sources available to leader is assumed to be of Nash–Cournot equilibria, implying that they use one energy source to generate electricity, whilst holding the other energy source as a constant when the followers reactions are known. Based on the assumption that the demand function is affine and power plants cost functions are quadratic, we obtain the Stackelberg–Nash–Cournot equilibrium. Hence, our analysis provides an interesting insight into the effectiveness of using ambient charges, within the context of a Stochastic Stackelberg–Nash–Cournot competition, as an environmental economic policy measure when included within a robust hybrid scheme. From an economical point of view, this allows pollutants to develop specific control technologies by undertaking research and development (R&D) measures or production processes to maintain emissions standards in a hybrid scheme. From a policy implementations point of view, the environmental authority can use the pollution abatement technology ratio to set ambient charges and industry specific pollutant quantitative limits subject to technological variations.

The Revolution Will Be Hard to Evaluate: How Co-Occurring Policy Changes Affect Research on the Health Effects of Social Policies

Extensive empirical health research leverages variation in the timing and location of policy changes as quasi-experiments. Multiple social policies may be adopted simultaneously in the same locations, creating co-occurrence which must be addressed analytically for valid inferences. The pervasiveness and consequences of co-occurring policies have received limited attention. We analyzed a systematic sample of 13 social policy databases covering diverse domains including poverty, paid family leave, and tobacco. We quantified policy co-occurrence in each database as the fraction of variation in each policy measure across different jurisdictions and times that could be explained by co-variation with other policies (R2). We used simulations to estimate the ratio of the variance of effect estimates under the observed policy co-occurrence to variance if policies were independent. Policy co-occurrence ranged from very high for state-level cannabis policies to low for country-level sexual minority rights policies. For 65% of policies, greater than 90% of the place-time variation was explained by other policies. Policy co-occurrence increased the variance of effect estimates by a median of 57-fold. Co-occurring policies are common and pose a major methodological challenge to rigorously evaluating health effects of individual social policies. When uncontrolled, co-occurring policies confound one another, and when controlled, resulting positivity violations may substantially inflate the variance of estimated effects. Tools to enhance validity and precision for evaluating co-occurring policies are needed.

Land as airspace: How rezoning privatizes public space (and why governments should not give it away for free)

A popular but contested view is that mass rezoning is an essential policy measure to address housing affordability. Often obscured in debates about this measure is that rezoning involves the privatization of public space. We clarify the nature of the policy by recognizing that property rights over land are, conceptually, a bundle of socially negotiated rights to parcels of airspace. This view shows that rezoning to provide rights to airspace for existing landowners is not costless. It involves transferring valuable property rights from the public to existing private landowners for free, creating a more unequal distribution of property rights ownership without necessarily generating faster housing development. We argue that giving away public rights to airspace should not be done for free and explore what policy measures retain value from residential rezoning for the public.

Learning by Doing: Co-Benefits Drive National Plans for Climate and Air Quality Governance

What drives countries to realize more integrated policymaking? The co-benefits concept highlights the win–win situations that can arise if one policy measure addresses two or more policy goals, e.g., air quality and health benefits resulting from a climate policy. Scholars have suggested that decision makers, if confronted with the evidence of co-benefits, would update their beliefs and adopt stronger or more ambitious climate policies. In other words, a learning process takes place. This paper looks at the policy processes in two countries, Mexico and Nigeria, as part of the Supporting National Action and Planning (SNAP) initiative under the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). The SNAP initiative supports governments with policymaking and implementation for a reduction in short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). This paper seeks to reveal how learning processes and their outcomes are influenced by co-benefits as a specific type of information. Looking at an example of how the co-benefits concept is applied in political practice offers valuable insights into how learning is part of the policymaking process and can shape its outcomes, such as national (climate) action plans.

Measuring aggregate electricity savings from the diffusion of more efficient lighting technologies

Increasing concerns about sustainability and energy conservation, coupled with the proliferation of incentives in the EU to achieve energy savings, suggest that significant improvements in energy efficiency should be realized. A policy measure that should have a direct impact on energy savings is the replacement of incandescent and halogen light bulbs by more efficient lighting technologies, which was implemented in 2009. Due to the lack of detailed data, it is not feasible to measure the effect of energy-efficient improvements on electricity consumption at the aggregate level using a bottom-up approach. To overcome this limitation, this paper analyzes hourly electricity demand in a very specific period of the day: the transition from day to night. In this short period, it is plausible that lighting is the main driver of changes in electricity demand, thus making it possible to estimate the increase in electricity consumption when lights are switched on and to analyze the effects of higher energy efficiency in lighting, if any. The results of the analysis for Spain show that during the periods 2009–2011 and 2015–2016, an estimated energy savings of 251 GWh can be attributed to a reduction in the magnitude of the lighting effect, which accounts for 20.3% of the observed decrease in electricity consumption during these two periods.

Making Sense of Japan’s Export Restrictions against South Korea

Why did Japanese Prime Minister Abe impose controversial export restrictions after rulings by the South Korean Supreme Court on wartime forced laborers? This article answers this question through the lens of domestic symbolism in economic sanctions studies. We argue that domestic political calculations led the Japanese government to adopt hawkish measures against South Korea. Abe wanted to ensure continued support from his constituents and to win the upcoming election. A series of political reforms since the early 1990s have empowered the prime minister and made LDP politicians pay more attention to public opinion than to factional topography. Strong anti-Korean sentiment among the Japanese public reduced the leadership’s concerns about the audience costs of economic countermeasures. Through an examination of the interplay among various domestic actors over the policy measure, this study provides insights on how domestic symbolism can serve as an origin of foreign policy decision-making in democracies.

Economic and ecological rationalities: uses and abuses of the political exceptionality in the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction. This article discusses some anthropological and sociological slight reflections about the uses and the abuses of the political exceptionality in the Covid-19 pandemic. The relevance is connected with questions about the "New Norm", permeated with the daily destructiveness of antisocial metabolic practices of an even more predatory capitalism, whose social control cannot regulate violent neoliberal extraction in a mode of accumulation. Aim and tasks. The purpose of the article is to study the gradual resumption of interrupted social activities as a policy measure to combat the New Coronavirus Pandemic is placed from the perspective of its economic and ecologic rationalities as well as from the perspective of the new moral, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral demands directed to the common social actor and agent of big and small cities. Results. The article substantiates the context of the so-called "new norm", permeated by the daily destructiveness of antisocial metabolic practices of even more predatory capitalism in a violent neoliberal form. Therefore, due to this discrepancy between legality and legitimacy, the level of authoritarianism and further growth of inequality and indifference among people increases. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a mismatch between legality and legitimacy, as well as the legitimization of the interests of individual actors in the market as opposed to the adoption of legislation and for pro-capital interests. The principles of legitimacy were limited by bureaucratic rationality and the genocidal legalism of neoliberal politics. Conclusions. The pandemic has disrupted economies, has mainly punished the poorest and most underserved and has destabilized governments of various ideological nuances. Participants at all levels of the economy will suffer the most severe and immediate consequences of all losses. This is the controversial logic of capital and one of its main contradictions is revealed.

Covid-19: A Trade-off between Political Economy and Ethics

This paper investigates the trade-off between economics and ethics applying them to “lockdowns” as a policy measure to counter the Covid-19-pandemic. This is an academic research on the nature and mechanism of trade-offs in so far as they apply to decision making. In the course of the line of inquiry pursued here, several different ways of trading off are assessed. In applying them to the pandemics, each yield a different answer to the adequacy of lockdowns as measures against the pandemic. The economic trade-off found “optimalcy” conditions, the utilitarian-ethical trade-off failed to do so revealing that there is a problem using “scientific evidence” as basis for such a trade-off. The value-ethical trade-off found out that lockdowns do not pass the test of proportionality within the usual constitutional framework.