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The elicitation format is a crucial aspect of Contingent Valuation (CV) surveys and can impact their reliability. This paper contributes to the extensive debate on WTP (Willingness To Pay) elicitation formats by assessing whether the Circular Payment Card (CPC) can reduce anchoring on respondents' previous answers under multiple elicitation questions. This new format uses a visual pie-chart representation without start or end points: respondents spin the circular card in any direction until they find the section that best matches their WTP. We used a CV survey based on two ways of reducing risks associated with flooding, each randomly presented first to half of the respondents, to test the absolute performance of CPC. We presented a second survey on two social insurance schemes for subjects currently uninsured to respondents randomly split into three subgroups. Each group's WTP was elicited using one of three formats: Open-Ended (OE), standard Payment Card (PC) and the new CPC. The two insurance schemes were always proposed in the same order, and we assessed the relative performance of CPC by comparing anchoring across respondents. Our results provide evidence that CPC is likely to reduce anchoring in multiple elicitation questions and that respondents may rely on different heuristic decisions when giving WTP in the OE and in the two PC formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a somewhat novel approach to explore the economic contribution of ecosystems. It develops linked models to capture connections between resource stocks and flows and the resulting microeconomic and macroeconomic impacts. A bioeconomic model is developed that is imbedded into a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Incorporating imperfect regulation, the bioeconomic model characterizes optimal policies, while the CGE model explores the economy-wide consequences of possible changes to the ecosystem. The model is parameterized and calibrated to the case of the Serengeti ecosystem which is perhaps the most intensively researched biome with a relative abundance of data. This ecosystem is also undergoing rapid change from a host of factors related to developments within and around the protected area system. The analysis identifies the contribution of the ecosystem to the economy and finds that changes in tourism and bushmeat hunting have surprisingly diffuse economy-wide impacts, that are especially large in the rural sector. To guard against overstatement, ecosystem impacts are under-stated relative to other effects. The results suggest that linkages to the natural resource sector (backward and forward multipliers) are important and neglecting these may lead to biased estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the acceleration of economic changes in Sub-Saharan Africa economies (SSA), a better understanding of the relationship between economic growth and pollution is essential for policy makers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of economic, financial and institutional developments on CO 2 emissions for 25 SSA countries over the period 1996–2010. We use the reduced form modeling to control unobserved heterogeneity specific to countries and the GMM dynamic panel method to control endogeneity. We found no -evidence in our investigation for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Indeed, a monotonically increasing relationship with GDP is found more appropriate for CO 2 emissions. The results confirm that political stability, government effectiveness, democracy, and control of corruption influence negatively CO 2 emissions. On the contrary, regulatory quality and rule of law have a positive effect on CO 2 emissions. The results confirm the importance of institutional frameworks in reducing carbon dioxide emissions since institutional quality not only affects carbon dioxide emissions directly, but also indirectly via economic growth and trade openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the dataset of Pollution Information Transparency Index covering 113 Chinese cities and the period of 2008–2011 to find out what contributes to different levels of environmental information disclosure across Chinese cities and the correlation between cities’ Pollution Information Transparency Indexes and local pollution. We find that cities whose mayors have longer tenures and PhD degrees are likely to release more environmental information. In addition, the higher the number of internet users and income per capita, the closer a city is to Hong Kong, and the lower a city’s unemployment rate, the greater the level of environmental disclosure is. An efficient local legal system is also found to facilitate information disclosure. We also find that in most cases, high Pollution Information Transparency Indexes are associated with lower pollutant levels and more pollution-control investment, suggesting the effectiveness of China’s environmental disclosure in pollution control. Community pressure for a better environment is shown to reinforce the role of environmental disclosure in pollution reduction. We find no evidence that environmental disclosure improves the efficacy of traditional environmental regulation in pollution control. Nevertheless, different aspects of environmental disclosure vary a lot in their effectiveness in pollution reduction and the results here indicate that inducing cities to respond to public information requests is perhaps the most effective method of pollution control in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of large corporations around the world engage in accounting for and reporting on their plans and measures towards climate change mitigation, as part of their environmental responsibility agenda. Using a disclosure index, this study contributes to the discussion of enhancing climate change corporate disclosures and informs the limited research assessing such information provision by companies operating in countries of the Southeastern European region. It explores the status of the disclosure practices of the largest 100 firms operating in Greece with respect to the pivotal issue of climate change mitigation and sheds light on determinants that drive domestic companies to publicly disclose such information. The analysis suggests that only a small group of leading Greek companies appears to endorse a climate change discourse as an instrument of empowering stakeholders’ decision-making. Relying on ordered logit regression specifications, we find that subscription to externally-developed voluntary initiatives, international presence well as operating in environmentally sensitive sectors, are significant variables that positively affect climate change disclosure. In contrast, size has a positive yet negligible effect while sector, profitability and type of ownership seem to have no significant influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of inequality in the global distribution of CO 2 emissions across the regions considered by the International Energy Agency during the period 1990–2010. The inequality analysis is carried out using a factorial decomposition of the second Theil index of inequality. Specifically, based on Kaya factors, CO 2 emissions by active population are decomposed into four factors: carbon intensity of electricity production, electricity intensity of GDP, economic growth in terms of labour productivity and employment rate. The results show that global inequality in CO 2 emissions by active population declined by 22 percent between 1990 and 2010, where the economic growth in terms of labour productivity is the main item responsible for the whole inequality value. Then, a second decomposition by multiplying factors for analyzing the within- and the between-group inequality components is described. In relation to the study of inequality by population groups, it was found that the within-group inequality component had been the main contributor to the whole inequality during all the period. Finally, some economic policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]