Francisco J. André

Performing an Environmental Tax Reform in a Regional Economy. A Computable General Equilibrium Approach

We use a Computable General Equilibrium model to simulate the effects of an Environmental Tax Reform in a regional economy (Andalusia, Spain). The reform involves imposing a tax on CO2 or SO2 emissions and reducing either the Income Tax or the payroll tax of employers to Social Security, and eventually keeping public deficit unchanged. This approach enables us to test the so-called double dividend hypothesis, which states that this kind of reform is likely to improve both environmental and non-environmental welfare. In the economy under analysis, an employment double dividend arises when the payroll tax is reduced and, if CO2 emissions are selected as environmental target, a (limited) strong double could also be obtained. No double dividend appears when Income Tax is reduced to compensate the environmental ta

A non-interactive elicitation method for non-linear multiattribute utility functions: Theory and application to agricultural economics

Practical implementation of Multiattribute Utility Theory is limited, partly for the lack of operative methods to elicit the parameters of the Multiattribute Utility Function, particularly when this function is not linear. As a consequence, most studies are restricted to linear specifications, which are easier to estimate and to interpret. We propose an indirect method to elicit the parameters of a non-linear utility function to be compatible with the observed behaviour of decision makers, rather than with their answers to direct surveys. The idea rests on approaching the parameter estimation problem as a dual of the decision problem by making the observed decisions to be compatible with a rational decision making process.

Computing compromise solutions : On the connections between compromise programming and composite programming

This paper analyzes the relationship between Compromise Programming and a close relative called Composite Programming that is based on the use of composite metrics. More specifically, it focuses on the possibility that the results of Compromise Programming are equivalent to those obtained with a particular case of Composite Programming in which a linear combination between the two bounds of the compromise set is established. Several situations, depending on the number of criteria involved and the mathematical structure of the efficient set, are studied. The most relevant result is obtained when two criteria are involved and the efficient boundary is defined by a continuously differentiable and strictly quasi-convex function. In this case, it is possible to find a unique equivalent value of the control parameter in Composite Programming for each metric in Compromise Programming. It is remarked that this particular case is very relevant in many economic scenarios. On the other hand, it turns out that the equivalence between both approaches cannot be extended to the case with more than two criteria.

Using compromise programming for macroeconomic policy making in a general equilibrium framework: theory and application to the Spanish economy

This paper aims to show how Compromise Programming, linked with some results connecting this approach with classic utility optimization, can become a useful analytical tool for designing and assessing macroeconomic policies. The functioning of the method is illustrated through an application to the Spanish economy. In this way, starting from a Computable General Equilibrium Model, a frontier of growth–inflation combinations is determined. After that, several Pareto-efficient policies that represent compromises between economic growth and inflation rate are established and interpreted in economic terms.

A Goal Programming Approach for a Joint Design of Macroeconomic and Environmental Policies: A Methodological Proposal and an Application to the Spanish Economy

The economic policy needs to pay increasingly more attention to the environmental issues, which requires the development of methodologies able to incorporate environmental, as well as macroeconomic, goals in the design of public policies. Starting from this observation, this article proposes a methodology based upon a Simonian satisficing logic made operational with the help of goal programming (GP) models, to address the joint design of macroeconomic and environmental policies. The methodology is applied to the Spanish economy, where a joint policy is elicited, taking into consideration macroeconomic goals (economic growth, inflation, unemployment, public deficit) and environmental goals (CO2, NOx and SOx emissions) within the context of a computable general equilibrium model. The results show how the government can “fine-tune” its policy according to different criteria using GP models. The resulting policies aggregate the environmental and the economic goals in different ways: maximum aggregate performance, maximum balance and a lexicographic hierarchy of the goals.

Robust Stylized Facts on Comovement for the Spanish Economy

The suggestion of obtaining stylized facts on comovement on the basis of prewhitened time series proposed in André et al. (2002) is further developed. First, some examples are shown on the robustness of the method. Second, the relevance of such a proposal is tested by revisiting some of the existing stylized facts on comovement for the Spanish economy in Dolado et al. (1993).

Auctioning vs. Grandfathering in Cap-and-Trade Systems with Market Power and Incomplete Information

We compare auctioning and grandfathering as allocation mechanisms of emission permits when there is a secondary market with market power and the firms have private information. Based on real-life cases such as the EU ETS, we consider a multi-unit, multi-bid uniform auction, modelled as a Bayesian game of incomplete information. At the auction each firm anticipates his role in the secondary market, which affects the firms’ valuation of the permits (that are not common across firms) as well as their bidding strategies and it precludes the auction from generating a cost-effective allocation of permits, as it would occur in simpler auction models. Auctioning tends to be more cost-effective than grandfathering when the firms’ costs are asymmetric enough, especially if the follower has lower abatement costs than the leader and uncertainty about the marginal costs is large enough. If market power spills over the auction, the latter is always less cost-effective than grandfathering. One central policy implication is that the specific design of the auction turns out to be crucial for cost-effectiveness. The chances of the auction to outperform grandfathering require that the former is capable of diluting the market power that is present in the secondary market.

Landfill Construction and Capacity Expansion

We study the optimal capacity and lifetime of landfills taking into account their sequential nature. Such an optimal capacity is characterized by the so-called Optimal Capacity Condition. Particular versions of this condition are obtained for two alternative settings: first, if all the landfills are to have the same capacity, and second, if each of them is allowed to have a different capacity. In the second case we obtain an optimal control problem, with mixed elements of both continuous and discrete time. The resulting optimization problems involve dividing a time horizon of planning into several subintervals of endogenously decided length. The results obtained may be useful to address other economic problems such as private and public investments, consumption decisions on durable goods, etc.

Public Disclosure Programs vs. traditional approaches for environmental regulation: Green goodwill and the policies of the firm

A Public Disclosure Program (PDP) is compared to a traditional environmental regulation (exemplified by a tax/subsidy) in a simple dynamic framework. A PDP aims at revealing the environmental record of firms to the public. This information affects its image (goodwill or brand equity), and ultimately its profit. A firm polluting less than its prescribed target would win consumers sympathy and raise its goodwill, whereas it is the other way around when the firm exceeds its emissions quota. The evolution of this goodwill is assumed to depend also on green activities or advertising expenditures. Within this framework, we analyze how a PDP affects the firms optimal policies regarding emissions, pricing and advertising as compared to a traditional regulation. We show that advertising acts as a complementary device to pricing and that emissions are increasing in goodwill. The role of a standard or target level for emissions turns out to be totally different under both policy regimes. In the case of a tax/subsidy approach, this target level only acts as constant who increases or decreases profit by a fixed amount, but it does not affect the policy of the firm. On the contrary, if a PDP is implemented, the target value for emissions enters in an important way in the goodwill accumulation mechanism and determines how the firm reacts to the regulation and what is the time path for the economic and environmental variables. Moreover, this value is also crucial to determine the possibility that a PDP is profit improving. A policy implication of this fact is that regulators should be particularly careful in fixing the emission standard when a PDP is applied. The theoretical results are complemented with a numerical illustration.

Computing white stylized facts on comovement

Abstract Stylized facts concerning the comovements between two economic variables, as measured by the cross-correlation function of the two filtered variables, reflect a mixture of both the existing cross-correlation between the variables and the autocorrelation structure of each of them. The autocorrelation structure, in turn, crucially depends on the filtering procedure. We propose an alternative method of obtaining stylized facts based on the cross-correlation function of the prewhitened time series, which only depends on the purely stochastic components of the series and the cross effects between them. The relevance of such an approach is tested by revisiting some of the facts reported by Kydland and Prescott [Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Quarterly Review (1990) 3].