GOVINDA R. TIMILSINA, World Bank - Development Research Group
Email: gtimilsina@worldbank.org
ASHISH SHRESTHA, World Bank
Email: ashrestha1@worldbank.org

Rapidly increasing emissions of carbon dioxide from the transport sector, particularly in urban areas, is a major challenge to sustainable development in developing countries. This study analyzes the factors responsible for transport sector CO2 emissions growth in selected developing Asian countries during 1980-2005. The analysis splits the annual emissions growth into components representing economic development; population growth; shifts in transportation modes; and changes in fuel mix, emission coefficients, and transportation energy intensity. The study also reviews existing government policies to limit CO2 emissions growth, particularly various fiscal and regulatory policy instruments. The study finds that of the six factors considered, three - economic development, population growth, and transportation energy intensity - are responsible for driving up transport sector CO2 emissions in Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In contrast, only economic development and population growth are responsible in the case of China, India, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. CO2 emissions exhibit a downward trend in Mongolia due to decreasing transportation energy intensity. The study also finds that some existing policy instruments help reduce transport sector CO2 emissions, although they were not necessarily targeted for this purpose when introduced.

AADITYA MATTOO, World Bank - Development Research Group (DECRG)
Email: AMattoo@WorldBank.org
ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Center for Global Development
Email: asubramanian@imf.org
DOMINIQUE VAN DER MENSBRUGGHE, World Bank
Email: dvandermensbrugg@worldbank.org
JIANWU HE, affiliation not provided to SSRN

Most economic analyses of climate change have focused on the aggregate impact on countries of mitigation actions. The authors depart first in disaggregating the impact by sector, focusing particularly on manufacturing output and exports because of the potential growth consequences. Second, they decompose the impact of an agreement on emissions reductions into three components: the change in the price of carbon due to each country's emission cuts per se; the further change in this price due to emissions tradability; and the changes due to any international transfers (private and public). Manufacturing output and exports in low carbon intensity countries such as Brazil are not adversely affected. In contrast, in high carbon intensity countries, such as China and India, even a modest agreement depresses manufacturing output by 6-7 percent and manufacturing exports by 9-11 percent. The increase in the carbon price induced by emissions tradability hurts manufacturing output most while the Dutch disease effects of transfers hurt exports most. If the growth costs of these structural changes are judged to be substantial, the current policy consensus, which favors emissions tradability (on efficiency grounds) supplemented with financial transfers (on equity grounds), needs re-consideration.

YANN KERVINIO, affiliation not provided to SSRN
Email: yann.kervinio@polytechnique.edu

Non-financial disclosures are mainly discretionary and, consequently, environmental and social data about firms are incomplete and difficult to assess. In this report, we raise the issue of the quality of these data. A review of the literature first presents the broad range of conclusions reached and highlights the main results. This leads us to question the ability of current data to meet the goals which are expected from them, and to reconsider the relevance of somewhat regulating social and environmental disclosures.

Next, we turn to the case of the Carbon Disclosure Project, which frames and promotes voluntary disclosures concerning greenhouse gas emissions. We analyse the determinants of responses and their quality using a sample from the Fortune Global 500. Consistently with prior results, we find that the size of firms influences both participation and the quality of responses, and that firms with more dispersed ownership are more likely to participate. Our findings also point at the weak quality of responses from firms associated with the BRIC group of countries (Brasil, Russia, India and China). Finally, we introduce a model which aims at addressing the main econometric problems encountered and we outline an agenda for future research.

J. LAWRENCE BROZ, University of California, San Diego - Department of Political Science
Email: jlbroz@ucsd.edu
DANIEL MALINIAK, University of California, San Diego - Department of Political Science
Email: dmalinia@ucsd.edu

Gasoline taxes vary widely among industrialized countries, as does support for the United Nations’ effort to curtail the use of fossil fuels to address the climate change problem. We argue that malapportionment of the electoral system affects both the rate at which governments tax gasoline and the extent to which governments participate in global efforts to ameliorate climate change. Malapportionment results in a “rural bias� such that the political system disproportionately represents rural voters. Since rural voters in industrialized countries rely more heavily on fossil fuels than urban voters, our prediction is that malapportioned political systems will have lower gasoline taxes, and less commitment to climate change amelioration, than systems with equitable representation of constituents. We find that malapportionment is negatively related to both gasoline taxes and support for the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (where “support� is measured as the duration of the spell between the signing of the Protocol and ratification by the domestic legislature).

KOBI AKO ABAYOMI, Georgia Institute of Technology - School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Duke University - Department of Statistics
Email: kaa71@columbia.edu
VALERIE THOMAS, Georgia Institute of Technology - School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Email: valerie.thomas@isye.gatech.edu
DEXIN LUO, Georgia Institute of Technology - School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Email: dexin.luo@gatech.edu

We investigate the effect of biofuels on land use change through a case study of U.S. corn production. Currently, agricultural models are used to estimate the effect of biofuel production on crop production and, correspondingly, land use change. As biofuel production grows, the models can potentially be validated with statistical analysis of changes in crop production. Determination of the influence of biofuel production on other uses of the biofuel feedstock - such as for food or animal feed - cannot be evaluated with standard statistical methods because the uses of an agricultural crop are constrained: total crop use is always the sum of the constituents. We develop a general method for these compositional distributions, and apply this method to determine competition between biofuel feedstock production and other uses of the same feedstock. We find evidence of competition among corn yield constituents, particularly with respect to ethanol production.

DIPANKAR DEY, IBS
Email: dip_dey@hotmail.com

The paper argues that by selecting Barak Obama as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009, the Noble Committee has consciously tried to endorse the initiatives taken by him to save the US economy in particular and the global economy in general. Few global initiatives have been taken in the recent past to develop consensus to wage wars against various apprehensions about (i) climate change (ii) terrorism and (iii) deadly virus like AIDS. There are widespread apprehensions about the ‘possible rise in sea level’ and ‘drought like situations’ due to climate change, ‘possible loss of innocent lives’ due to terrorist attack, and ‘the possibility of getting infected with HIV viruses due to AIDS epidemic. Preventive measures against these apprehensions have created a huge new economy of its own and it is growing very fast. Though a global alliance against hunger is badly needed and various such initiatives have been taken over last few decades, no serious efforts have been made to make ‘hunger a history’. The decision of the Nobel Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama should be analyzed in the light of the Nobel Peace Prizes announced in recent past, particularly after 2005 when the Kyoto Protocol came into force. This Nobel Prize to the serving US President attains more significance in the light of the Copenhagen conference on climate change in December 2009 where USA, which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol (KP), are expected to make important announcements on emission reduction targets to make sure that the emission market and the associated economy that has been created to mitigate and adapt with the changing climatic condition, real and projected, thrive in future.

CAROLYN FISCHER, Resources for the Future
Email: fischer@rff.org
MICHAEL SPRINGBORN, affiliation not provided to SSRN
Email: mspringborn@bren.ucsb.edu

For reducing greenhouse gas emissions, intensity targets are attracting interest as a flexible mechanism that would better allow for economic growth than emissions caps. For the same expected emissions, however, the economic responses to unexpected productivity shocks differ. Using a real business cycle model, we find that a cap dampens the effects of productivity shocks in the economy. An emissions tax leads to the same expected outcomes as a cap but with greater volatility. Certainty-equivalent intensity targets maintain higher levels of labor, capital, and output than other policies, with lower expected costs and no more volatility than with no policy.