"The discussion needs to be balanced so those values are brought forward more clearly and brought into to the calculation, he says" Runar Brännlund makes a statement regarding the forestry debate in Skogsaktuellt.
At the 27th Ulvön Environmental Economics Conference August 2021 a best paper award was promised and the jury now announce the winner as: “Pigovian policies under behavioral motives” by Nathan W. Chan from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Prize motivation
A well-written paper that has sound theoretical underpinnings grounded in the welfare/public economics domain as well as in environmental economics. The subject at hand tackles an important problem in today’s society: how to design optimal policy when some consumers have social preferences and firms are to some extent self-regulating. The analysis brings novel insights for policy design in a wide range of settings, including markets for environmentally friendly and socially responsible products. More generally, the paper expose and scrutinize foundational assumptions in Pigouvian theory - assumptions that may or may not hold when agents’ behaviors diverge from standard neo-classical motives. Read more about Nathan.
The jury consisted of Tommy Lundgren, Lars Persson, Adan Martinez Cruz and Mattias Vesterberg.
Both Nathan and Keila are most welcome to Ulvön next year! (conference fee waived)
The organizing committee also wish to thank all particpants: “Your presentations, keynotes, panel discussions, and questions/interactions are gratefully appreciated; we believe it made the conference a success.”
The 27th Ulvön Conference on Environmental Economics was held August 24-25, 2021. Due to covid, the Ulvön Conference went digital, but as successful as previous ones. With 12 presentations in organized sessions, 3 keynote presentations, and one panel discussion on how to use our forest, the conference attracted more than 50 participants from different universities worldwide, and public and private institutions based in Sweden.
Keynote speakers, as in previous rounds of this conference, are top researchers in their field. This year Amy Ando discussed potential biases in the way environmental economists value ecosystem services. Amy is professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics. Cornelius Van Kooten discussed whether renewable energies are likely to penetrate the Canadian electricity market and the implications of it. Cornelius is professor in the Department of Economics and Senior Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria, Canada. Brent Sohngren discussed how much CO2 mitigation should we expect to get from forests in the near future. Brent is professor of environmental and resource economics in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at the Ohio State University. (click on headline to learn more)
The Journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling plan for a special issue on Digital technology and energy sustainability impacts and policy needs. CERE’s Tommy Lundgren amongst the guest editors.
“While digital technology may bring substantial positive benefits, it also poses potential challenges to energy sustainability. Despite increasing amount of work on the broad effect of digitalization, understanding the effects of digital technology on energy sustainability remains a challenging task. As digital technology increasing becomes an integral part of the energy system, systematically assessing these diverse, dynamic, and subtle effects in the context of sustainability is particularly important to add new knowledge to existing literature. Some intuitive questions include: what will be the impact of digital technology on the world’s energy system? What opportunities will the investment in digital technology and the induced increase in digitalization practice bring to the energy system? What are the overall structural changes the digital revolution would bring? Broader aspects may concern environmental, economic, and social changes. For example, will the development of digital technology hinder or offer an opportunity for the development of renewable energy? Will it increase or decrease carbon emissions? From the social perspective, how will the emerging digital technology transform societies in which they will be embedded and which they will connect? Examining the diverse and dynamic nexus between digital technology and energy sustainability can produce important policy insights for stakeholders worldwide. It is time for the academic society to pave the road toward a complete jigsaw puzzle. (Click on headline to learn more)
"All values must be made visible and incorporated into the market economy in line with ordinary forest products. This means that emissions of carbon dioxide from biomass must be assessed in the same way as emissions from fossil fuels, ie. either taxed or included in the European carbon trading system." Runar Brännlund in VK July 19, 2021
A well-written paper that has sound theoretical underpinnings grounded in the welfare/public economics domain as well as in environmental economics. The subject at hand tackles an important problem in today’s society: how to design optimal policy when some consumers have social preferences and firms are to some extent self-regulating. The analysis brings novel insights for policy design in a wide range of settings, including markets for environmentally friendly and socially responsible products. More generally, the paper expose and scrutinize foundational assumptions in Pigouvian theory - assumptions that may or may not hold when agents’ behaviors diverge from standard neo-classical motives.