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Begin New Search Publishing Institution Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID) Publication Year within 10 Years

1. Does environmental policy uncertainty hinder investments towards a low-carbon economy?

Author:
Joëlle Noailly, Laura Nowzohour, and Matthias Van Den Heuvel
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
We use machine learning algorithms to construct a novel news-based index of US environmental and climate policy uncertainty (EnvPU) available on a monthly basis over the 1990-2019 period. We find that the EnvPU index spikes during the environmental spending disputes of the 1995-1996 government shutdown, in the early 2010s due the failure of the national cap-and-trade climate bill and during the Trump presidency. We examine how elevated levels of environmental policy uncertainty relate to investments in the low-carbon economy. In firm-level estimations, we find that a rise in the EnvPU index is associated with a reduced probability for cleantech startups to receive venture capital (VC) funding. In financial markets, a rise in our EnvPU index is associated with higher stock volatility for firms with above-average green revenue shares. At the macro level, shocks in our index lead to declines in the number of cleantech VC deals and higher volatility of the main benchmark clean energy exchange-traded fund. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that policy uncertainty has adverse effects on investments for the low-carbon economy hindering progress to address the urgency of climate action.
Topic:
Environment, Finance, Economy, Investment, Institutions, and Decarbonization
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Cumulative Climate Shocks and Migratory Flows: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Author:
Salvatore Di Falco, Anna B. Kis, and Martina Viarengo
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
We re-examine the effects of negative weather anomalies during the growing season on the decision to migrate in rural households in five sub-Saharan African countries. To this end we combine a multi-country household panel dataset with high-resolution gridded precipitation data. We find that while the effect of recent adverse weather shocks is on average modest, the cumulative effect of a persistent exposure to droughts over several years leads to a significant increase in the probability to migrate. The results show that more frequent adverse shocks can have more significant and long-lasting consequences in challenging economic environments.
Topic:
Climate Change, Migration, Urban, Rural, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Sub-Saharan Africa

3. School feeding programmes, education and food security in rural Malawi

Author:
Roxana Elena Manea
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Existing investigations of the impact of school feeding programmes on educational out- comes have provided mixed evidence of success. In this chapter, I investigate a potential explanation for this lack of consensus in the literature. I argue that the prevailing food security situation at the time and place of the programme's evaluation plays a major role. I study the case of rural Malawi. I use an instrumental variable approach and propensity score matching to estimate the impact of school feeding on primary school enrolment and retention rates. I focus on villages with overlapping characteristics. I estimate that school feeding has increased enrolments by 7 percentage points on average, but the im- pact on retention rates has been relatively limited. However, when I distinguish between food-secure and food-insecure areas, not only do I finnd a larger impact on enrolments in food-insecure areas, but I also uncover a significant increase of around 2 percentage points in the retention rate of students in these same areas. Across the board, impacts are not significant in food-secure areas. I conclude that school feeding programmes bear an impact on education as long as they also intervene to relax a binding food constraint.
Topic:
Development, Education, Government, Food, Food Security, and Nutrition
Political Geography:
Malawi

4. Heterogeneous impacts of school fee elimination in Tanzania: gender and colonial infrastructure

Author:
Roxana Elena Manea and Pedro Naso
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
In this study, we investigate the impacts of the 2002 elimination of primary school fees in Mainland Tanzania. We explore how the magnitude of these effects depends on gender and the size of early investments in the educational infrastructure of Tanganyika. We use the 2002 and 2012 census waves as well as historical information on the location of schools in the late 1940s, and conduct a difference-in-differences analysis. We find that exposure to an average of 1.7 years of free primary education has reduced the proportion of people who have never attended primary education by 6.8 percentage points. The benefits of fee removal have been significantly larger for females compared to males, and females from districts where the size of investments in education was relatively larger during colonial rule have been the greatest beneficiaries.
Topic:
Education, Gender Issues, Post Colonialism, Infrastructure, Women, and Colonialism
Political Geography:
Africa and Tanzania

5. Crime, inequality and subsidized housing: evidence from South Africa

Author:
Roxana Elena Manea, Patrizio Piraino, and Martina Viarengo
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
We study the relationship between housing inequality and crime in South Africa. We create a novel panel dataset combining information on crimes at the police station level with census data. We find that housing inequality explains a significant share of the variation in both property and violent crimes, net of spillover effects, time and district fixed effects. An increase of one standard deviation in housing inequality explains between 9 and 13 percent of crime increases. Additionally, we suggest that a prominent post-apartheid housing program for low-income South Africans helped to reduce inequality and violent crimes. Together, these findings suggest the important role that equality in housing conditions can play in the reduction of crime in an emerging economy context.
Topic:
Apartheid, Crime, Economics, Law, Inequality, Violence, and Legal Sector
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

6. Can adjustment costs in research derail the transition to green growth?

Author:
Laura Nowzohour
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Adjustment costs are a central bottleneck of the real-world economic transition essential for achieving the sizeable reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions set out by policy makers. Could these costs derail the transition process to green growth, and if so, how should policy makers take this into account? I study this issue using the model of directed technical change in Acemoglu, Aghion, Bursztyn, and Hemous (2012), AABH, augmented by a friction on the choice of scientists developing better technologies. My results show that such frictions, even minor, materially affect the outcome. In particular, the risk of reaching an environmental disaster is higher than in the baseline AABH model. Fortunately, policy can address the problem. Specifically, a higher carbon tax ensures a disaster-free transition. In this case, the re-allocation of research activity to the clean sector happens over a longer but more realistic time horizon, namely around 15 instead of 5 years. An important policy implication is that optimal policies do not act over a substantially longer time horizon but must be more aggressive today in order to be effective. In turn, this implies that what may appear as a policy failure in the short-run | a slow transition albeit aggressive policy | actually re ects the efficient policy response to existing frictions in the economy. Furthermore, the risk of getting environmental policy wrong is highly asymmetric and `robust policy' implies erring on the side of stringency.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Economic Growth, Green Technology, Economic Policy, Renewable Energy, and Sustainability
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. What do investors in electric vehicles technologies want?

Author:
Bettina Kast, Eva Bortolotti, and Joëlle Noailly
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
With 25% of worldwide emissions due to road transport, the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs), full battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles – presents many promises to mitigate climate change. Despite its rapid growth, the market share of EVs vehicle remains low in Europe. Norway leads the EV market with 10% of total vehicle stock, followed by Iceland (3.3%), the Netherlands (1.9%) and Sweden (1.6%) (IEA, 2019). This Policy Brief presents the results of a survey among European clean tech investors examining which policy instruments and design can best mobilize private investments to advance e-mobility technologies.
Topic:
Environment, Science and Technology, Green Technology, Private Sector, Transportation, and Ecology
Political Geography:
Europe, Norway, and Netherlands

8. What drives them to invest in the sustainable mobility transition ? Evidence from a conjoint experiment on European investors' policy preferences

Author:
Eva Bortolotti
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Substantial private investment is required if public policy objectives aim to increase the market share of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and prevent locking-in emissions-intensive development pathways. To maximize the effectiveness of future policies and successfully attract private capital, policy makers need to gain a better understanding of how investors behave, and of how policy design can drive investments decisions. This paper leverages an adaptive conjoint analysis (ACA) method to investigate the policy preferences of 41 European investors affiliated with different investment institutions. Findings reveal that investors' characteristics as institution type and size of assets under management affect investors' preferences over different e-mobility policy attributes. Furthermore, this study shows that behavioral factors, namely investors' a-priori beliefs on the impacts of climate change and the COVID-19 crisis, play a role in determining investors' policy preferences. By providing an analysis of investors' behavior, this research can support policymakers to design more effective policy instruments to attract investments in electric mobility during and after the COVID-19 crisis.
Topic:
Environment, Green Technology, Investment, Private Sector, COVID-19, Ecology, Motor Vehicles, and Cars
Political Geography:
Europe

9. The heterogeneous impact of coal prices on the location of cleaner and dirtier steel plants

Author:
François Cohen and Giulia Valacchi
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Climate policy will predominantly affect industries that primarily rely on fossil fuels, such as steelmaking. Within these industries, exposure may be different by country according to the energy-intensity of national plants. We estimate the effect of coal prices on steel plant location worldwide and production preferences for BOF, a polluting technology, and EAF, a greener one. A 1% increase in national coal prices reduces BOF installed capacity by around 0.37%, while it has no statistically significant impact on EAF capacity. We simulate the implementation of a stringent European carbon market with no border adjustment and find a non-negligible shift in steel production outside Europe, with a concomitant impact on the technologies employed to produce steel. If applied worldwide, the same policy would primarily affect production in Asia, which relies on BOF and currently benefits from lower coal prices than those expected to emerge in the future.
Topic:
Climate Change, Natural Resources, Green Technology, Fossil Fuels, Coal, and Price
Political Geography:
Europe

10. Policy uncertainty and renewable energy investments in Romania

Author:
Mihnea-George Filip
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Mobilizing private investments for the renewable energy transition requires credible policy support over the long-term. This Policy Brief discusses how Romania’s abrupt policy changes and inconsistent policy signals over the last decade have deterred private investments in the renewable energy sector. The example of Romania provides key policy lessons for other countries engaged in the energy transition. Romania has one of the highest renewable energy potentials in Europe (up to 71 GW), which is approximately six times higher than the country’s current renewable deployment (IRENA 2017). As shown in Figure 1, wind and solar PV energy experienced a significant boom between 2009 and 2013 followed by a more or less complete stagnation since 2014.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Green Technology, Investment, Economic Policy, Renewable Energy, and Fossil Fuels
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Romania

11. Darkness at noon: deforestation in the new authoritarian era

Author:
Susanna B. Hecht
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
The dramatic Amazon fires images of Au-gust 2019 triggered a geopolitical outcry. Brazilian President Bolsonaro, however, unflinchingly continues to support his destructive model of Amazonian development. This article recalls the extent of the disaster and delves into the reasons behind such disdain for environmental concerns.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, and Environment
Political Geography:
Brazil and Latin America

12. Environmental regulation in a transitional political system: delegation of regulation and perceived corruption in South Africa

Author:
Pedro Naso
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
I study the economic motivations behind a reduction in the discretionary power of environmental regulators, and the impact that such reduction has on perceived corruption in South Africa. I examine the transition from the Air Pollution Protection Act of 1965 to the Air Quality Act of 2005, a change from full to partial delegation of regulation. By constructing a principal-agent model, I argue that this transition might have occurred because of an increase in the dispersion of rent-seeking motivations of public agents. This happens because, from the principal’s perspective, the possible harm— loose pollution control and misappropriation of environmental fines— generated by corrupt agents is greater than the potential benefits brought by diligent agents. In my empirical analysis, I use diff-indiffs models for a two-period panel with 191 South African firms to show that the regulatory change decreased treated firms’ perceived corruption, but did not improve other institutional quality measures.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Regulation, and Pollution
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

13. Food security and land use in the 21st century: the return of Malthusianism

Author:
Timothy M. Swanson
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
The coming century is set to pose many important problems regarding population, food requirements and land use. In many ways, the problem facing us is a stark reminder of Malthus’ predictions regarding the importance of resource constraints in the face of population growth. Despite questions concerning the core of the problems to be solved, there is little issue concerning the manifestations of these problems. First, we are seeing the culmination of a long-term process of human population growth, which commenced in earnest about 250 years previously (about the time of Malthus) and escalated thereafter, continuing to this day. A global population that was only about a million individuals in 1750, escalated to about two billion individuals in 1950, and has since increased to approximately seven billion.
Topic:
Agriculture, Food, Population, Food Security, Land Rights, and Population Growth
Political Geography:
United Nations and Global Focus

14. Impacts of legal and regulatory institutions on economic development

Author:
Pedro Naso
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
Since the second half of the 20th century, with the contributions of Coase, Williamson and North, the economic literature has emphasised the role of institutions in explaining differences in economic performance. According to the most diffused view, countries with good institutions will invest more in physical and human capital, will use productive factors in a more efficient way, and will achieve greater income level. But what are good institutions? And how should governments implement them? Answers to these questions have proven to be difficult mainly because of two characteristics of institutions: (i) institutional functioning is complex: the way institutions affect economic agents’ incentives is dependent on these agents’ individual preferences and the way they interact, which are difficult to predict; and (ii) they are context specific – the same institution in different contexts might result in a different economic outcome.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Regulation, and Economic Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, South Africa, and Sierra Leone

15. Land grabs, big business and large-scale damages

Author:
Christophe Gironde
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
The history of the world is a story of lands conquered by violence. Today, money has replaced weapons. Lands are bought. In very large quantities. The current wave of land grabbing is a phenomenon of hard conquest and a dramatic one for local populations and the environment.
Topic:
Environment, Land Law, Violence, Money, Land Rights, and Land
Political Geography:
South Asia

16. Do financing constraints matter for the direction of technical change in energy R&D?

Author:
Joëlle Noailly and Roger Smeets
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
The objective of this study is to examine the impact of firms' financing constraints on innovation activities in renewable (REN) versus fossil-fuel (FF) technologies. Our empirical methodology relies on the construction of a firm-level dataset for 1,300 European firms over the 1995-2009 period combining balance-sheet information linked with patenting activities in REN and FF technologies. We estimate the importance of the different types of financing (e.g. cash flow, long-term debt, and stock issues) on firms' patenting activities for the different samples of firms. We use count estimation techniques commonly used for models with patent data and control for a large set of firm-specific controls and market developments in REN and FF technologies. We find evidence for a positive impact of internal finance on patenting activities for the sample of firms specialized in REN innovation, while we find no evidence of this link for other firms, such as firms conducting FF innovation or large mixed firms conducting both REN and FF innovation. Hence, financing constraints matter for firms specialized in REN innovation but not for other firms. Our results have important implications for policymaking as the results emphasize that small innovative newcomers in the field of renewable energy are particularly vulnerable to financing constraints.
Topic:
Environment, Sustainable Development Goals, Green Technology, Renewable Energy, and R&D
Political Geography:
Global Focus

17. Taking stock of international law responses to resource wars

Author:
Lys Kulamadayil
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
In the last 20 years, a significant body of literature has evolved around the phenomenon of resource wars. The term “resource war” is used to describe different linkages between natural resources and conflict. It refers to: (1) conflicts that are fought over access and control of scare, or valuable resources; (2) conflicts sustained through the trade with resources; (3) conflicts that involve the looting of the natural resources by an occupying power, and finally; (4) conflicts where the destruction of the environment or of industrial facilities serving resource exploitation is used as a strategy of warfare. Resource wars certainly have diverse legal implications, yet international law norms have primarily developed in response to the following sets of issues.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, War, Natural Resources, Conflict, and Law of Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
United States and Sierra Leone

18. The new US tax credits and carbon negative technologies

Author:
Tim Flannery
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
It is no longer possible to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement – of keeping average global temperatures to ‘well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C1 - without removing large volumes of CO2 from the atmosphere.2 This will involve the development and deployment of carbon negative technologies at the gigatonne scale. Because developmental pathways for such technologies are likely to be decades-long, it is necessary that largescale investment begin now, if we hope to have mature technologies operating at the appropriate scale by 2050.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Industrial Policy, Capitalism, Economic Growth, and Global Warming
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. The perils of development aid in resource-rich countries

Author:
Chiara Ravetti
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
The emergence of China and other new donors offering foreign assistance to mineraland land-rich African countries has spurred a renewed interest in the relationship between international aid and natural resources (Dreher and Fuchs, 2015; Dreher et al., 2018). Many low-income countries with valuable natural resources have historically received large amounts of aid from OECD donors (Fig. 1). Poor countries endowed with abundant fossil fuels or mineral reserves can have difficulties in converting their resource wealth into other forms of physical or human capital, because these subsoil assets take time to be managed, extracted and traded. Foreign aid can thus provide a complementary source of immediate liquidity for development. On the other hand, the provision of external finances has the potential to hinder political accountability, and ultimately economic development especially in countries with weak institutions.h countries
Topic:
Development, Humanitarian Aid, Foreign Aid, and Development Aid
Political Geography:
Global Focus

20. Can there be benefits from competing legal regimes?: the impact of legal pluralism in post-conflict Sierra Leone

Author:
Pedro Naso, Erwin Bulte, and Tim Swanson
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
We investigate the impact of competition between legal regimes on the number of authoritative acts and amount of fines occurring in rural Sierra Leone. We model state and traditional legal systems as competing authorities with a potential for overlap in their jurisdictions. We are interested in the sign and magnitude of the legal pluralism externality in this region of overlapping authority. We then test the model and estimate the size of the externality coefficient in the context of post-conflict Sierra Leone. Our results show a negative externality between regimes for civil disputes—that is, an increase in the cost of apprehending a person. We also show that there is a reduction in the amount of fines per dispute collected in this shared space. Overall, this indicates that a potential benefit to the local people from multiple competing regimes is a reduction in expected authoritative expropriation.
Topic:
Civil War, Post-Conflict, and Legal Dualism
Political Geography:
Africa and Sierra Leone