Search

This report investigates how Swiss households contribute to concurrent greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions through their consumption and how the responsibility for these emissions is distributed across different parts of the population. By comparing these responsibilities across different population groups I observe trends that imply that costly emissions reduction will impact low-income households more than high-income ones. I discuss several options for policy making to counteract undesired distributional effects of climate policy. Findings: High-income households emit the most per capita, low-income ones emit the most per CHF spent. The latter means that we have to expect that the direct relative impact of climate policy on low-income households’ purchasing power is higher than for high-income ones. If climate policy were to focus on luxury goods alone, it could avoid this tendency but would not be able to come close to reaching a net-zero target. Private transport and residential heating cause large amounts of ghg emissions within Switzerland and are important to regulate from a Swiss climate policy perspective. I find that in private transport, high-income households are responsible for a larger share of the population’s emissions than for residential heating. Recommendations: Swiss climate policy has a clear focus on prescribing (e.g., by means of the MuKEn) and incentivizing (through the CO2-levy and subsidies for energyefficient renovations) emissions reduction in residential heating, but has little ambition for decarbonizing private transport beyond adopting eu emissions standards. Yet I find that, from a distributional perspective, it would make sense to emphasize emissions reduction in private transport where high-income households with their better ability to afford costly emissions reduction is responsible for a larger share of emissions than in residential heating. Thus, from a distributional perspective, expanding the Swiss CO2-levy to include motor fuels

We study how European climate and energy policy targets affect different member states and households of different income quintiles within the member states. We find that renewable energy targets in power generation, by reducing eu ets permit prices, may make net permit exporters worse off and net permit importers better off. This effect appears to dominate the efficiency cost of increasing the share of energy provided by renewable energy sources in the countries that adopt such targets. While an increase in prices for energy commodities, which is entailed by the policies in question, affects households in low income quintiles the most, recycling revenues from climate policy allows governments to compensate them for the losses. If renewable targets reduce the revenues from ets permit auctions, member states with large allocations of auctionable permits will lose some of the ability to do so.

Employing a numerical general equilibrium model with multiple fuels, end-use sectors, heterogeneous households, and transport externalities, this paper examines three motives for differentiated carbon pricing in the context of Swiss climate policy: fiscal interactions with the existing tax code, non-CO2 related transport externalities, and social equity concerns. Interaction effects with mineral oil taxes reduce carbon taxes on motor fuels and transport externalities increase them. We show that the cost-effective overall carbon tax on motor fuels should be lower than the one on thermal fuels. This is found in spite of the fact that pre-existing taxes on motor fuels are well below our estimate of the transport externality per unit of transport fuel consumption. Differentiating taxes in favor of motor fuels yields only slightly more equitable incidence effects among households, suggesting that equity considerations play a minor role when designing differentiated carbon pricing policies.

In January 2014 the European Commission proposed the introduction of a Market Stability Reserve (MSR) to improve the functioning of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). According to the European Commission, the MSR is designed to adjust the EU ETS to supply-demand imbalances and protect the system from unexpected and sudden demand shocks and by doing so, ensure an efficient abatement pathway for the long-term decarbonisation of the European economy (European Commission, 2014). We explore what market and regulatory failures could inhibit the functioning of the EU ETS and result in deviations from the efficient abatement pathway. Different research teams explore the implications of potential market and regulatory failures and/or inefficient responses to incomplete or complex information. Simulation models show that each of these factors can result in deviations from the efficient abatement pathway, and that an MSR can restore some of the lost efficiency. In considering MSR designs, an Early Start MSR (2017) with the back-loaded allowances placed directly into the reserve is shown to improve the performance compared to an MSR implemented in 2021. Laboratory experiments with human subjects show the importance of the quantity trigger levels and point to the importance of review provisions for adjustments in the early 2020ss to ensure private banking requirementscan be met.

We propose a Hebbian learning-based data clustering algorithm using spiking neurons. The algorithm is capable of distinguishing between clusters and noisy background data and finds an arbitrary number of clusters of arbitrary shape. These properties render the approach particularly useful for visual scene segmentation into arbitrarily shaped homogeneous regions. We present several application examples, and in order to highlight the advantages and the weaknesses of our method, we systematically compare the results with those from standard methods such as the k-means and Ward's linkage clustering. The analysis demonstrates that not only the clustering ability of the proposed algorithm is more powerful than those of the two concurrent methods, the time complexity of the method is also more modest than that of its generally used strongest competitor.

In most policy applications of general equilibrium modeling, cost functions are calibrated to benchmark data. Modelers often choose the functional form for cost functions based on suitability for numerical solution of the model. The data (including elasticities of substitution) determine first and second order derivatives (local behavior) of the cost functions at the benchmark. The functional form implicitly defines third and higher order derivatives (global behavior). In the absence of substantial analytic and computational effort, it is hard to assess the extent to which results of a particular model depend on third and higher order derivatives. Assuming that a modeler has no (or weak) empirical foundation for her choice of functional form in a model, it is therefore a priori unclear to what extent her results are driven by this choice. I present a method for performing second-order sensitivity analysis of modeling results with respect to functional form. As an illustration of this method I examine three general equilibrium models from the literature and demonstrate the extent to which results depend on functional form. The outcomes suggest that modeling results typically do not depend on the functional form for comparative static policy experiments in models with constant returns to scale. This is in contrast to an example with increasing returns to scale and an endogenous steady-state capital stock. Here results move far from benchmark equilibrium and significantly depend on the choice of functional form

mploying a numerical general equilibrium model with multiple fuels, end-use sectors, heterogeneous households, and transport externalities, this paper examines three motives for differentiated carbon pricing in the context of Swiss climate policy: fiscal interactions with the existing tax code, non-CO₂ related transport externalities, and social equity concerns. Interaction effects with mineral oil taxes reduce carbon taxes on motor fuels and transport externalities increase them. We show that the cost-effective overall carbon tax on motor fuels should be lower than the one on thermal fuels. This is found in spite of the fact that pre-existing taxes on motor fuels are well below our estimate of the transport externality per unit of transport fuel consumption. Differentiating taxes in favor of motor fuels yields only slightly more equitable incidence effects among households, suggesting that equity considerations play a minor role when designing differentiated carbon pricing policies.

In most policy applications of general equilibrium modeling, cost functions are calibrated to benchmark data. Modelers often choose the functional form for cost functions based on suitability for numerical solution of the model. The data (including elasticities of substitution) determine first and second order derivatives (local behavior) of the cost functions at the benchmark. The functional form implicitly defines third and higher order derivatives (global behavior). In the absence of substantial analytic and computational effort, it is hard to assess the extent to which results of a particular model depend on third and higher order derivatives. Assuming that a modeler has no (or weak) empirical foundation for her choice of functional form in a model, it is therefore a priori unclear to what extent her results are driven by this choice. I present a method for performing second-order sensitivity analysis of modeling results with respect to functional form. As an illustration of this method I examine three general equilibrium models from the literature and demonstrate the extent to which results depend on functional form. The outcomes suggest that modeling results typically do not depend on the functional form for comparative static policy experiments in models with constant returns to scale. This is in contrast to an example with increasing returns to scale and an endogenous steady-state capital stock. Here results move far from benchmark equilibrium and significantly depend on the choice of functional form