Sam Aflaki

The Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on the Tragedy of the Commons

We model a common pool resource game under environmental uncertainty, where individuals in a symmetric group face the dilemma of sharing a common resource. Each player chooses a consumption level and obtains a corresponding share of that resource, but if total consumption exceeds a sustainable level then the resource deteriorates and all players are worse-off. We consider the effect of uncertainty about the sustainable resource size on the outcome of this game. Assuming a general dynamic for resource deterioration, we study the effect of increased ambiguity (i.e., uncertain probabilities pertaining to the common resourceʼs sustainable size). We show that whereas increased risk may lead to more selfish behavior (i.e., to more consumption), increased ambiguity may have the opposite effect.

Does economic growth matter? Technology-push, demand-pull and endogenous drivers of innovation in the renewable energy industry

The paper aims to contribute to the longstanding technology-push vs. demand-pull debate and to the literature on renewable energy diffusion and renewable energy policy assessment. We argue that in addition to the traditional push-pull dichotomy, the drivers of technological change must be differentiated by whether they are exogenous or endogenous to the economic system. We maintain that a specific type of endogenous demand-pull mechanism (i.e. economic growth) is a major catalyst of environmental innovation. We apply this perspective to study the diffusion of renewable energy (RE) technologies in 15 European Union countries from 1990 to 2012. Applying different panel data estimators, we find that public R&D investments, policies supporting RE and per capita income all have a positive impact on RE diffusion, whereas the variability of policy support has a negative impact. However, we also find that economic growth is a stronger driver than either public R&D investments or policies supporting RE, and that models that do not take it explicitly into account tend to overestimate the importance of exogenous drivers. Most importantly, we note that the effect of economic growth on RE diffusion exhibits a nonlinear, U-shaped pattern that resonates with the well-known Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. RE penetration remains negligible at low levels of growth whereas it increases sharply only after income per capita has reached a given threshold and the demand for environmental quality rises. Our findings have implications for policy making. They suggest that for RE diffusion to increase, government action should be directed not only at shielding renewables from competition with fossil fuel technologies but also at stimulating aggregated demand and economic growth.

Is your valley as green as it should be? Incorporating economic development into environmental performance indicators

Sustainability rankings are receiving increasing attention by the academic and the policymaking communities because of their potential to influence environmental legislation and reshape competitive landscapes. Unfortunately, most of the indicators used to produce these rankings do not take into account economic development and tend to be biased in favor of richer countries. To circumvent this limitation, we develop a novel, rigorous and simple metric that ranks countries by their potential environmental performance relative to their wealth; in other words, by the degree of sustainability that a country should achieve, given its level of affluence. We apply our approach to measure the sustainability level of 15 developed economies with respect to the share of renewable energy sources in their electricity-generating portfolios. The resulting ranking produces changes in the perceived greenness of certain countries. If adopted, it would allow these countries to increase their bargaining power in international negotiations. It would also alter the pressure faced by their governments to implement or discontinue environmental policies such as feed-in tariffs. Although we applied it at the country level and in the context of renewable energy, the method has far-reaching implications and it can also be used to compare corporate sustainability levels.

Recovery Targets and Taxation/Subsidy Policies to Promote Product Reuse

This paper seeks to identify the optimal policies for promoting product recovery and remanufacturing. Using a stylized equilibrium model, the authors analyze the problem as a Stackelberg game between a regulator and a monopolistic firm. They compare three types of policies that legislated regulation could effect: (i) A recovery target policy that requires firms to recover no less than a specified fraction of their production for proper disposal or possible remanufacturing; (ii) a taxation policy that both taxes manufacturing and subsidizes remanufacturing; and (iii) a newly introduced mixed approach that incorporates a recovery target as well as taxes and subsidies. They study a firms behavior under the three policy types, including pricing decisions for new and remanufactured products as well as the strategic decision of whether to create a secondary channel for remanufactured products. They find that legislative intervention makes it more likely that firms will maintain a single-market strategy. The authors further demonstrate the mixed approachs superiority as measured by a comprehensive set of economic and environmental criteria, and show that this finding is robust under two different objective functions for the policy maker, one that does and one that does not entail a budget neutrality constraint.

Optimal Feed-In Tariff Policies: The Role of Technology Manufacturers

This paper models a multi-player environment comprising a grid operator responsible for meeting electricity demands, a photovoltaic (PV) manufacturer, customers who might install PV (solar) systems, and a regulator charged with setting an optimal feed-in tariff (FIT). The grid operator must meet exogenous electricity demand and also buy back all electricity (produced by PV systems) at the FIT set by a regulator, which seeks to minimize grid operator costs. Customers decide whether or not to invest in a PV system. Adoption rates affect the manufacturer and operator by (respectively) establishing the demand for PV and determining how much electricity is fed into the grid. The PV manufacturers decision variable is the sales price per PV unit. The decisions of all players in the model are intertwined in a way that clearly affects their respective welfare. We demonstrate in particular how technology and market characteristics -- including PV manufacturing cost and market competition -- change the optimal decisions of players and thereby influence the effectiveness of FITs, the number of PV adopters, and the cost to provide the social benefit of on-demand electricity. Our findings confirm the importance of considering technology manufacturers when devising schemes to incentivize adoption of PV systems.