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Contests are widely used as mechanisms to incentivize efforts in various contexts, from research innovation to athletic and employee performance. This paper builds an analytical model and provides empirical evidence to assess the effectiveness of a large-scale, real-world residential energy conservation contest in Vietnam. The model suggests that contests offering multiple prizes and requiring a minimum amount of effort can effectively promote conservation. It also identifies factors that influence the conservation effort, such as the cost of effort, size of prizes, and types of contestants. To empirically estimate the effect of the energy conservation contest, this paper uses a unique confidential dataset of monthly residential electricity usage with over 45 million observations. The results indicate that the contest significantly reduced electricity consumption among contestants, and the effect of the contest could persist for months after its conclusion, leading to an average abatement cost of $27 per ton of CO2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preregistration requires scientists to describe the planned research activities before their project begins. Preregistration improves transparency in empirical research and is an institutional response to scientific misconduct. This paper studies the impact of a preregistration requirement in a model in which a sender can generate information for a receiver by running private experiments. The sender can also engage in uninformative manipulation. This paper argues that a preregistration requirement can discourage p -hacking, but also result in even more detrimental faked studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing of climate adaptation decisions can have substantial consequences for the assessment of climate damages. Since weather variability can create risks for natural resource management that differ across adaptation choices, such variability has the potential to alter the speed of climate adaptation. This paper estimates the effect of weather variability on the timing of adaptation decisions of forest landowners in the Eastern United States. A discrete-choice econometric model of forest management is estimated and used in a bio-economic simulation that shows how variability in cold temperatures can significantly slow the rate of adapting from cold-tolerant natural hardwood forests to cold-sensitive, but highly valuable pine plantations. The range of weather variability in climate projections and across the landscape generates large differences in adaptation timing. Ignoring projected future decreases in weather variability results in a large downward bias in estimating future paths of climate adaptation. Since pine plantations produce fewer non-market ecosystem services than natural hardwood forests, an important source of future conservation uncertainty is the economic response of private forest landowners to changing weather variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates flexible demand systems for heterogeneous households in the United States and links the estimated parameters with an economy-wide model to assess their relative contributions to the social cost of regulation. We estimate elasticities for several final demand categories as well as labor-leisure elasticities that are important for calibrating the labor-leisure choice in the economy-wide model and find that estimated elasticities are relatively similar across regions but vary meaningfully by income. Using the estimated elasticities, we explore the implications of both the functional form and its parameterization in a simplified computable general equilibrium model for the social and distributional costs of illustrative policy scenarios. Model variants with less flexible consumer demand systems overestimate social costs across our entire range of scenarios. Furthermore, we find that parameterizing the model with elasticities that vary with household income is important for adequately characterizing the distributional implications of a policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many renewable natural resources have been extracted beyond sustainable levels. While some resource stocks have recovered, others are still over-extracted, causing substantial economic losses. This paper develops a model motivated by empirical facts about resource use and regulation to understand these patterns. The model is a dynamic model of a dual economy with technological progress, structural change, and costly resource regulation. Based on this model, we show that technological progress explains the initial increase in resource use. Technological progress also induces structural change and a decline in resource users. While the declining number of resource users does not directly lead to resource recovery, it does reduce regulatory costs, paving the way for resource regulation and recovery. Our results show that although technological progress can contribute to resource degradation, it also helps resource recovery through reduced regulatory costs. Our results suggest further that a temporal use beyond sustainable levels can be socially optimal until regulatory costs fall below the benefits of regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of early climate policy in emerging economies by causally evaluating the impact of China's Low-carbon City Pilot (LCCP) on city-level per-capita CO 2 emissions and CO 2 intensity of GDP over the period 2003–2017. The idiosyncrasies of the policy design pose significant challenges for causal identification, which we overcome within a synthetic control framework. Contrary to previous contributions, our results suggest that the LCCP had no significant impact on either carbon emissions or intensity. The main takeaway of our empirical investigation is that even in emerging economies, effective environmental policy requires transparent, quantifiable targets, and credible enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the literature on the potential negative employment effects of environmental policy by bringing to the fore a key factor that directly regulates its magnitude: the elasticity of substitution between labor and energy. Using firm-level data from the French manufacturing sector and addressing endogeneity concerns, we provide empirical estimates that point to strong complementarity between labor and energy. We then investigate the empirical relevance of the elasticity of substitution in studying firms' response to changing energy prices. Our findings suggest that the negative employment effects of rising energy prices are largely driven by firms with limited substitution capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a weighted Kolmogorov–Smirnov type test for the two-sample problem for paired data. The asymptotic distribution of the test statistic under the null model is derived. The dependence of both the finite sample and the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic on the dependence structure of the data requires the use of the wild bootstrap technique for inference. The related wild bootstrap test turns out to be a consistent asymptotically level α test. With the finite sample correction applied, the test keeps the level well. An extensive simulation study demonstrates good finite sample behaviour of the test in comparison to the existing procedures. The main role in the proofs is played by tools from empirical processes. Additional simulation results, as well as an R code, which allow one to easily repeat the conducted numerical experiments, are attached as Supplementary Material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes and evaluate coupled structural acoustic simulation, SAS, as the preferred method to predict the added mass and moments of inertia of turbine runners in hydroelectric applications. The method is briefly described and focus is primarily on highlighting the effects and benefits of SAS in comparison with previously published work (Jasper, 1956; Benkö and Holmén, 1966; Hofstad, 2004). These traditional methods scale the mass and moments of inertia of the runner using rule-of-thumb guidelines with different scaling factors. SAS in comparison can directly be applied on the CAD geometry of the runner and calculate the mass and moments of inertia dependent on its direction of motion (or rotation). Added mass is highly dependent on the geometry of the runner and the enclosing waterway. This is apparent from the SAS calculations which shows that the added mass of a Kaplan runner changes due to runner geometry, runner blade angle, and shape of the enclosing waterway. All of which the traditional methods are incapable of. In addition to describe SAS and its benefits the numerically derived added mass and moments of inertia is included in a rotor dynamic analysis of two examples and the results are compared to those obtained using traditional methods. Parameters important for rotor dynamic analysis, such as the polar moment of inertia and the radial added mass, is in the present example increased with about 300% and 60% respectively, when a Kaplan runner is operated between speed-no-load to full load. This paper highlights the differences between SAS and the traditional empirical methods. It is shown that SAS gives more detailed results than the traditional methods while still being computationally effective. Consequently, SAS is the preferred method of choice for deriving the added properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge recombination has become a hot topic in green innovation adoption (GIA) research in recent years. However, previous studies have mainly discussed the knowledge recombination within a single enterprise but ignored inter-enterprise knowledge recombination (Inter-KR). In this paper, a theoretical framework of Inter-KR is developed, and the three features of Inter-KR are discussed: elements, characteristics, and performances. Multisource heterogeneous data combined with Natural language process, network analysis and econometric regression are used to analyze the above three features. Social network theory is introduced to elaborate on the influence mechanism of Inter-KR. The empirical results indicate that enterprises can effectively improve their environmental performance by participating in Inter-KR: 1) the participation of Inter-KR is significantly influenced by time and national policy; 2) further refinement and decomposition of the characteristics of inter-KR find that the comprehensiveness has a significant promoting effect on GIA. When issuing relevant policies, the government should consider the balanced development of environmental governance and enterprise innovation, and improve the GIA performance by enabling enterprises to acquire an in-depth and extensive knowledge base. In summary, this paper provides new insights for research on knowledge recombination, the literature on collaboration innovation, and green innovation adoption research. [Display omitted] • Theoretic framework of inter-enterprise knowledge recombination was investigated. • Features of elements, characteristics, and performances were analyzed. • Natural language process, social network, and econometric model were applied. • Collaborative enterprises are more willing to adopt green innovation. • Inter-enterprise knowledge recombination promotes enterprise's performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers nonparametric estimation of a parameter, which is a zero of a certain estimating equation, indexed by a class of functions and depending on an infinite-dimensional covariate. This problem is known in the literature as Z -estimation, where a rich theory, in the case of the finite-dimensional covariates, exists. However, in certain applications, covariates may belong to an infinite-dimensional space, which makes the estimation as well as the study of the asymptotic properties challenging topics. This paper aims to bring several contributions to the existing functional data analysis literature. First, we introduce nonparametric conditional Z -estimators whenever functional stationary ergodic data are observed under right-censorship model. A sharp uniform-in-bandwidth limit law for the proposed estimator is presented. Such result allows the bandwidth to vary within a complete range for which the estimator is consistent. Consequently, it represents an interesting guideline in practice to select the optimal bandwidth in nonparametric functional data analysis. Moreover, a uniform consistency rate, over Vapnik–Chervonenkis classes of functions, is provided for the process of conditional Z -estimators. Finally, a uniform central limit theorem for the process indexed by functions is established. The last result is of particular interest since it is obtained for dependent functional data. The uniform limit theorems, discussed in this paper, are key tools for many further developments in functional data analysis involving empirical process techniques. These results are proved under some standard structural conditions on the Vapnik–Chervonenkis classes of functions and some mild conditions on the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restoration and preservation of freshwater ecosystems is one of the prerequisites for a sustainable and fair future for all and therefore part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6). However, countries worldwide are facing a challenge to achieve this ambition by 2030. This paper focuses on the legal and governance challenges faced in the European context with regard to achieving water quality ambitions, using experiences from the Netherlands as a case study. Although many EU Member States (MS) are facing a challenge to meet the ambitions set by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in 2027, literature on effectiveness of governance approaches in terms of actual water quality improvement, seems to be scarce. Based on interviews, a survey, expert panel discussions and literature we show that in the Netherlands, an important problem is that stakeholders, also within organisations, have different views on ambitions, achievements and necessary follow-up actions. This is problematic because for realising the water quality ambitions, cross-sectoral cooperation (e.g. from agriculture and spatial development) as well as strengthened interlinkages between these related policy fields is crucial. Moreover, there is a tendency to stick to the status quo. In order to increase effectiveness, a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms for this lock-in will be necessary. This will enable the development of practical tools and instruments to support cross-sectoral and multi-level collaboration. The sectoral implementation of the WFD in the Netherlands was chosen by many other MS, resulting in similar cross-sectoral challenges as we found in the Netherlands. Insight into how other MS deal with lock-in situations is needed to develop pathways to achieving WFD ambitions. [Display omitted] • All over the EU, Member States are facing a challenge to preserve and restore water resources. • To date, research on the effectiveness of governance towards water quality improvement seems to be scarce. • Empirical research from the Netherlands show a need for cross-sectoral approaches to improve water quality. • Cross-sectoral approaches are only limitedly supported by legislation. • Despite awareness of the limitations, there is a lock-in situation: a tendency to stick to current practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several risk measures have been proposed in the literature, among them the marginal mean excess, defined as M M E p = E [ { Y (1) − Q 1 (1 − p) } + | Y (2) > Q 2 (1 − p) ] , provided E | Y (1) | < ∞ , where (Y (1) , Y (2) ) denotes a pair of risk factors, y + ≔ max (0 , y) , Q j the quantile function of Y (j) , j ∈ { 1 , 2 } , and p ∈ (0 , 1). In this paper we consider a generalization of this measure, where the random variables of main interest (Y (1) , Y (2) ) are observed together with a random covariate X ∈ R d , and where the Y (1) excess is also power transformed. This leads to the concept of conditional marginal excess moment for which an estimator is proposed allowing extrapolation outside the data range. The main asymptotic properties of this estimator have been established, using empirical processes arguments combined with the multivariate extreme value theory. The finite sample behavior of the estimator is evaluated by a simulation experiment. We apply also our method on a vehicle insurance customer dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental conflicts frequently occur in grassland areas, which form the largest terrestrial ecosystem in China. Grassland conflict not only seriously affects environmental and public governance, but also threatens social stability and economic development. Based on a field study using surveys and interviews with 5,490 respondents and a case study of 30 cases in northern China, this paper explores the reasons for and resolution approaches to environmental conflict in grassland areas and identified three key findings. First, the reasons for conflict included economic, political and administrative, technological, social, cultural, and historical factors. Economic and political and administrative factors were confirmed as the most important causes of such conflict. Although economic reasons were often deemed more important than political and administrative ones, they always played a preconditioning role. Political and administrative causes often directly led to the outbreak and deterioration of conflict. Second, although multiple approaches have been used to resolve conflicts in grassland areas, governmental intervention and mediation remain the most strongly recognized and widely used approach. The importance of judicial settlement has increased significantly in contemporary practices. Third, both the reasons for and approaches adopted to mitigate conflict affected the effectiveness of the conflict resolution, and the reasons also influenced the selection of appropriate conflict resolution approaches. These findings provide a new theoretical direction for future studies as well as practical implications for resolving conflicts in environmental and other types of public governance in contemporary China and elsewhere. • Economic and administrative reasons are most important for grassland conflicts. • Government intervention is the most widely used to resolve grassland conflict. • Decision on grassland conflict resolution approach is affected by conflict reasons. • Perception of each approach varies with shepherds' gender, ethnicity, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary environmental programs have proven to be a viable tool of pollution abatement, supplementing the command-and-control approach and market-based policies such as emissions trading and taxes. These voluntary initiatives aim to achieve pollution reduction through several channels, including procedural changes, raw material changes, product and packaging redesign, and innovation in pollution control technologies. The ISO 14001 standard is such a voluntary program; first introduced in 1996 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), it has steadily grown since and has been widely adopted by organizations around the world. In this paper, we empirically study the effects of the ISO 14001 standard on carbon emissions using a panel dataset of Korean manufacturing firms. As the largest contributor to the warming of the earth's atmosphere, carbon emissions are the focus of national and international efforts to curb climate change. The Korean manufacturing industry is responsible for about 40% of greenhouse gases in the country and has experienced rapid growth in ISO 14001 certified facilities. Our econometric results indicate that ISO 14001 certification spurs a significant reduction in carbon emissions among certified firms, after accounting for its potential endogeneity with an instrumental variable strategy. The empirical results suggest that wider ISO 14001 certification among carbon-intensive industries can be a credible pathway to help achieve the Korean government's goal of cutting domestic carbon emissions by 37% by 2030. • Impact of ISO 14001 certification on carbon emissions at the firm level. • Econometric analysis based on panel data of South Korean firms for the 2011–14 period. • The South Korean manufacturing industry is responsible for about 40% of greenhouse gases in the country. • The results show that ISO adoption spurs a 34% reduction in carbon emissions on average. • The reductions are larger in the first years after certification but linger for a number of years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We present an efficient reduced basis method for nonlinear and nonaffine steady state or transient PDEs. • A new and efficiently implementable error estimator based on residual hyper reductions drives a greedy algorithm. • The method is analyzed and tested for the viscous Burgers' equation and nonlinear reaction diffusion equations. • The approach can avoid the online efficiency degradation induced by the application of the Empirical Interpolation Method. The need for multiple interactive, real-time simulations using different parameter values has driven the design of fast numerical algorithms with certifiable accuracies. The reduced basis method (RBM) presents itself as such an option. RBM features a mathematically rigorous error estimator which drives the construction of a low-dimensional subspace. A surrogate solution is then sought in this low-dimensional space approximating the parameter-induced high fidelity solution manifold. However when the system is nonlinear or its parameter dependence nonaffine, this efficiency gain degrades tremendously, an inherent drawback of the application of the empirical interpolation method (EIM). In this paper, we augment and extend the EIM approach as a direct solver, as opposed to an assistant, for solving nonlinear partial differential equations on the reduced level. The resulting method, called Reduced Over-Collocation method (ROC), is stable and capable of avoiding the efficiency degradation. Two critical ingredients of the scheme are collocation at about twice as many locations as the number of basis elements for the reduced approximation space, and an efficient error indicator for the strategic building of the reduced solution space. The latter, the main contribution of this paper, results from an adaptive hyper reduction of the residuals for the reduced solution. Together, these two ingredients render the proposed R2-ROC scheme both offline- and online-efficient. A distinctive feature is that the efficiency degradation appearing in traditional RBM approaches that utilize EIM for nonlinear and nonaffine problems is circumvented, both in the offline and online stages. Numerical tests on different families of time-dependent and steady-state nonlinear problems demonstrate the high efficiency and accuracy of our R2-ROC and its superior stability performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2000s, China has enforced regional collaboration as a way of resolving cross-diffused air pollution and jurisdictional limitations. It is, however, a hotly debated issue as to whether authority-driven regional collaboration can be sustained and effective, and no consensus has been achieved by the theoretical discussion. Despite extensive empirical research on the topic, most studies judged the sustainability of collaborations by analyzing the environmental outcomes within a short period after their initiation. To provide more comprehensive empirical evidence to the open question, this paper introduces the criterion of adaptivity to determine whether collaboration is sustainable. Taking the changing collaboration in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and its surroundings as a quasi-natural experiment, Difference-in-Difference model and Triple Difference Model are used to verify the adaptivity from two aspects. Results show that authority-driven collaboration adjustment yields better environmental outcomes. Additionally, the better environmental outcome is observed in original collaborators, implying that local governments can learn by doing and form interdependence through repeated collaborative actions. The adaptive collaboration, however, has two limitations. First, the collaboration mechanism is formed primarily based on performance evaluation and target assessment instruments, without showing adaptivity in reducing soft control indicators of air pollution. Second, the different regulation pressure between non-collaborating and collaboration cities results in undesirable spillover effects within a range of 40–100 km. This study not only contributes to empirical and theoretical studies on regional collaboration but also provides support to the improvement of the collaboration system in practice. • Process-adaptivity is introduced as the criterion to evaluate collaboration. • Authority-driven collaboration generates positive environmental outcomes. • Authority-driven collaboration is adaptive but limited to mandatory indicators. • Regional collaboration brings out negative spillovers within 40–100 km. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the environmentally induced behavioral biases in the land market and shows how buyers correct their biases by learning from repeated transactions. Using a sample of government land sales along two sides of the heating service line in China, we first show land parcels transacted in the south in the winter are associated with an average price discount of 7.1%, compared to transactions in the north where heating service is provided. We discuss three possible explanations, including projection bias, incorrect belief, and salience bias. We find adverse weather such as low temperature and extreme weather may trigger the mispricing in the absence of the heating service, lending support to the projection bias. Moreover, our empirical investigations suggest the local government, as the only land seller, responds weakly to such biases. We also provide suggestive evidence that individual buyers in the south can learn from prior experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation spending aimed at helping threatened species lacks information on the marginal benefits of increases in the abundance of threatened species that occur at different points in time. This paper develops an empirical approach combining a choice experiment and a structural model to estimate two key parameters in a dynamic willingness-to-pay function: the current marginal benefit of increases in threatened species abundance and the rate implicitly used to discount future marginal benefits. An application to a threatened Coho salmon along the Oregon coast illustrates the method. We find that the public values a one-year marginal increase in Coho abundance of 1000 fish from $0.08 to $0.19 per household with a discount rate for future increments in salmon abundance of 2.1%. We apply these results to an instantaneous and permanent marginal increase in salmon abundance of 0.79% resulting from a policy change in one watershed and show this marginal change can generate over $63 million in present value of social marginal benefits to the greater Pacific Northwest region. Results provide direct evidence that conservation activities that achieve immediate abundance gains for a threatened species (or prevent immediate losses) produce significantly higher benefits than activities that gradually achieve the same abundance gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will impact its target asteroid, Dimorphos, at an oblique angle that will not be known prior to the impact. We computed iSALE-3D simulations of DART-like impacts on asteroid surfaces at different impact angles and found that the vertical momentum transfer efficiency, β , is similar for different impact angles, however, the imparted momentum is reduced as the impact angle decreases. It is expected that the momentum imparted from a 45 ∘ impact is reduced by up to 50% compared to a vertical impact. The direction of the ejected momentum is not normal to the surface, however it is observed to 'straighten up' with crater growth. iSALE-2D simulations of vertical impacts provide context for the iSALE-3D simulation results and show that the ejection angle varies with both target properties and with crater growth. While the ejection angle is relatively insensitive to the target porosity, it varies by up to 30 ∘ with target coefficient of internal friction. The simulation results presented in this paper can help constrain target properties from the DART crater ejecta cone, which will be imaged by the LICIACube. The results presented here represent the basis for an empirical scaling relationship for oblique impacts and can be used as a framework to determine an analytical approximation of the vertical component of the ejecta momentum, β − 1 , given known target properties. • Ejection angle is sensitive to target properties and impact angle. • In vertical impacts the ejection angle can vary by up to 30 ∘ depending on target. • Different impact angles do not influence the vertical momentum transfer efficiency. • The imparted momentum is reduced with decreasing impact angle. • The direction of the total momentum vector 'straightens up' with crater growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food desire is an intense motivational state a consumer experiences toward food that accounts for much of consumption. While extant research has shown that experiencing desire elicits consumption imagery, it remains unclear whether consumption imagery alone instigates desire. Even though this directional relationship has been often speculated upon, little empirical study has considered it. This paper empirically identifies imagined consumption as an antecedent of food desire. Six studies show that consumption imagery increases food desire and suggest that this impact is due to induced feelings of deprivation. Our findings also show that increased desire explains previously researched outcomes of imagery, such as a higher willingness to pay for and consumption volumes of the imagined food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]