世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

Cause, conseguenze e strategie di mitigazione Proponiamo il primo di una serie di articoli in cui affronteremo l’attuale problema dei mutamenti climatici. Presentiamo il documento redatto, votato e pubblicato dall’Ipcc - Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - che illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.

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Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

Impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita Le cause e le responsabilita dei cambiamenti climatici sono state trattate sul numero di ottobre della rivista Cda. Approfondiamo l’argomento presentando il documento: “Cambiamenti climatici 2007: impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita” votato ad aprile 2007 dal secondo gruppo di lavoro del Comitato Intergovernativo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Si tratta del secondo di tre documenti che compongono il quarto rapporto sui cambiamenti climatici.

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Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

Efforts to anticipate how climate change will affect future food availability can benefit from understanding the impacts of changes to date. We found that in the cropping regions and growing seasons of most countries, with the important exception of the United States, temperature trends from 1980 to 2008 exceeded one standard deviation of historic year-to-year variability. Models that link yields of the four largest commodity crops to weather indicate that global maize and wheat production declined by 3.8 and 5.5%, respectively, relative to a counterfactual without climate trends. For soybeans and rice, winners and losers largely balanced out. Climate trends were large enough in some countries to offset a significant portion of the increases in average yields that arose from technology, carbon dioxide fertilization, and other factors.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2011/05/04/science.1204531.full.pdf

Climate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980

The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

Heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for the occupants of other vehicles. In this paper we estimate the increased probability of fatalities from being hit by a heavier vehicle in a collision. We show that, controlling for own-vehicle weight, being hit by a vehicle that is 1,000 pounds heavier results in a 49 percent increase in the baseline fatality probability. Estimation results further suggest that this risk is even higher if the striking vehicle is a light truck (SUV, pickup truck, or minivan). We calculate that a secondbest gasoline tax, which accounts for the external risk generated by the gain in fleet weight since 1989, is approximately 28 cents per gallon. We further calculate that the total fatality externality is roughly equivalent to a gas tax of $1.04 per gallon. We find that the difference between a gas tax and an optimal weight varying mileage tax is modest for most vehicles.

/pdf/vehicle-weight-highway-safety-and-energy-policy-1-1ifejghunv.pdf

Vehicle weight, highway safety, and energy policy 1

The Endangered Species Act requires the federal government to designate critical habitat for species listed as threatened or endangered. This provision has proven to be one of its most controversial, as it entails special management and potentially greater regulation. We measure the economic impact of critical-habitat designation by estimating its effect on the market value of vacant land. Using data from 13,000+ transactions that occurred within or near critical habitat for two species in California, we show that it resulted in a large and statistically significant decrease in land value, with the largest decreases occurring within urban growth boundaries.

The Economic Impact of Critical-Habitat Designation: Evidence from Vacant-Land Transactions

Impacts of Climate Change on Residential Electricity Consumption: Evidence from Billing Data

Until recently, ISI Thompson's Web of Science/Social Sciences Citation Index was the only rigorous tool for tracking citation counts of academic research papers. The recent emergence of Google Scholar provides an alternative measure for tracking citation counts for refereed journal articles, conference proceedings, working papers, and government reports. This article provides an overview of the state of environmental and resource economics using the Google Scholar measure of citations. It ranks and compares the major field journals, and the most cited papers in these journals, the most cited papers in the field that have been published in general economics journals, and the most cited technical books and textbooks, as well as the most cited researchers in the field.

The State of Environmental and Resource Economics: A Google Scholar Perspective

We exploit a spatial discontinuity in two natural gas utilities’ service territory—combined with variation in their block-rate pricing structure and a difference in how prima facie determined wholesale prices are deferentially passed though to consumers—to identify average, seasonal, and income-specific own-price elasticities of residential natural gas demand. We estimate an average elasticity ranging from 0.15–0.19 depending on the measure of price used. We further estimate that this elasticity varies substantially across seasons, income groups, and their interaction. We find no significant difference in consumers’ responses to average versus marginal prices. JEL Codes: Q41, Q48, D12, H23, Q31

Maximilian Auffhammer

Papers

Vehicle weight, highway safety, and energy policy 1

The Economic Impact of Critical-Habitat Designation: Evidence from Vacant-Land Transactions

Impacts of Climate Change on Residential Electricity Consumption: Evidence from Billing Data

The State of Environmental and Resource Economics: A Google Scholar Perspective

Quantifying Heterogeneity in the Price Elasticity of Residential Natural Gas