Wolfgang Buchholz - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Wolfgang Buchholz

Social Science Research Network, 2018

In this study, the real demand for global and local environmental protection in Beijing, China, i... more In this study, the real demand for global and local environmental protection in Beijing, China, is elicited and investigated. Participants from Beijing were offered the opportunity to contribute to voluntary climate change mitigation by purchasing permits from two Chinese CO 2 emissions trading schemes (ETS). Purchased permits were withdrawn from the ETS. Since CO 2 emissions mitigation is inevitably linked to other local benefits like the reduction in emissions of air pollutants, the aim of our study is to establish the demand for local and global environmental protection. To this end, Beijing and Shenzhen ETS permits were offered. The result is that at low prices the demand for Beijing ETS permits is significantly higher than for Shenzhen ETS permits indicating that a substantial part of the revealed demand for voluntary climate change mitigation in Beijing is driven by concerns for local co-benefits of CO 2 emissions reduction. Our research identifies the important role of private benefits in the voluntary provision of the global public good climate change mitigation and provides first experimental evidence for China.

Journal of Public Economic Theory, Apr 1, 2020

Funding information Liu gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Australian Research Co... more Funding information Liu gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Australian Research Council Grants DP1092801 and DP150103821. We are grateful for valuable comments from Richard Cornes and two anonymous referees. All errors are our own. While conventional agreements on international public goods require bilateral or multilateral cooperation, we show that unilateral action through matching mechanisms with a selfcommitment device can possibly generate Pareto-improving outcomes. Even without commitment, unilateral matching may also benefit both players at corner situations. We further characterize the conditions under which this desirable outcome is achieved, particularly highlighting the role of the income distribution and its interplay with the preferences. Moreover, we propose a variant of unilateral matching that can generate Pareto-improving outcomes regardless of the preferences and the income distribution, indicating that income inequality may not be an obstacle for improving public good provision through unilateral matching.

Climate Finance

In a world where the public good “climate protection” is provided via voluntary contributions, a ... more In a world where the public good “climate protection” is provided via voluntary contributions, a country may introduce international transfers unilaterally in order to induce other countries to raise their contributions to this public good. With it underprovision of climate protection and inefficiency may be reduced. However, it is not obvious whether both donor and recipient are better off with funding. As in its pure form, funding climate protection only favors the donor (cf. Bergstrom, 1989), an additional instrument needs to restrict donor’s advantages. Such a modified mechanism can be understood as a compromise between two bargaining partners searching for a solution which splits their gains in a fair way.

SSRN Electronic Journal

This paper considers endogenous coalition formations and endogenous technology choices in a model... more This paper considers endogenous coalition formations and endogenous technology choices in a model of private provision of global public goods. We show that the possibility of future interstate (partial) coordination may hinder the current adoption of better technology by a country outside the cooperation, which may exacerbate an existing underprovision problem. In particular, in the subgame perfect equilibrium of a three-stage game, we find two paradoxical results: prohibition of the formation of future partial coalitions encourages the country outside the cooperation to adopt better technology, which could lead to an increase in the total public good supply and an improvement of global welfare. The results have an important policy implication: in the context of the Paris Agreement, for example, a large country announces lower nationally determined contributions by a strategic incentive to adopt lower technology to motivate coalition building by other nations, which in the end may lead to lower aggregate public-good supply and global welfare.

Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 1980

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016

Since Olson's (1965) The Logic of Collective Action, the exploitation hypothesis, in which the ri... more Since Olson's (1965) The Logic of Collective Action, the exploitation hypothesis, in which the rich shoulders the provision burden of public goods for the poor, has held sway despite empirical exceptions. To address such exceptions, we establish two alternative exploitation hypotheses based on asymmetric preferences or on productivity differences regarding the public good. The classic hypothesis and its two variants are proven in a novel fashion. Our theoretical insights are then illustrated by some empirical examples from the field of international public goods, such as military defence and cross-border pollution.

DGOR, 1986

Es wird untersucht, in welchem Sinne eine Steuer T2 (·) progressiver als eine Steuer T1(·) sein m... more Es wird untersucht, in welchem Sinne eine Steuer T2 (·) progressiver als eine Steuer T1(·) sein mus, damit es beim Ubergang von T1 (·) nach T2 (·) zu einer Bewahrung aller stochastischer Dominanzen 2. Grades zwischen zufallsabhangigen Nettogewinnfunktionen kommt. Hierbei erweist sich \({T''_2}(z)/(1 - {T'_2}(z)) \geqslant {T''_1}(z)/(1 - {T'_2}(z))\) als die entscheidende Bedingung. Den mitt diesem Mas fur direkte Progression verbundenen Risikoeffekten wurden die zur “residual progression” gehorigen gegenubergestellt.

Social Science Research Network, 2012

The Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz model of capital accumulation and resource depletion poses the f... more The Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz model of capital accumulation and resource depletion poses the following sustainability problem: is it feasible to sustain indefinitely a level of consumption that is bounded away from zero? We provide a complete technological characterization of the sustainability problem in this model without reference to the time path. As a byproduct we show general existence of a maximin optimal path under weaker conditions that those employed in previous work. Our proofs yield new insights into the meaning and significance of Hartwick's reinvestment rule. JEL-Code: O100, Q320.

Springer eBooks, 2007

and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requi... more and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

Social Science Research Network, 2000

We shed light on the Hartwick rule for capital accumulation and resource depletion by providing s... more We shed light on the Hartwick rule for capital accumulation and resource depletion by providing semantic clarifications and investigating the implications and relevance of this rule. We extend earlier results by establishing that the Hartwick rule does not indicate sustainability and does not require substitutability between man-made and natural capital. We use a new class of simple counterexamples (i) to obtain the novel finding that a negative value of net investments need not entail that utility is unsustainable, and (ii) to point out deficiencies in the literature.

... by matching. Unfortunately, under any given matching scheme, such interior matching equili-br... more ... by matching. Unfortunately, under any given matching scheme, such interior matching equili-bria only emerge for specific initial income distributions. ... Andreoni and Bergstrom (1996), Falkinger (1996), Kirchsteiger and Puppe (1997), Falkinger and Brunner ...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020

Expectations concerning international climate finance have increased considerably. In particular,... more Expectations concerning international climate finance have increased considerably. In particular, provisions for international transfer schemes are an important element in the Paris Agreement. Yet, climate finance is not only seen as a tool to efficiently combat global warming, but also to solve development problems in the recipient countries. Thereby, conflicts between distributive and allocative objectives arise, which threaten overall performance of such transfer schemes. Given the severity of the climate change problem, we raise concerns whether the world can afford climate transfer schemes that do not focus on prevention of (and adaptation to) climate change, but are considered as a vehicle of rentseeking by many agents. In line with the famous Tinbergen rule we argue that other sustainability problems and issues of global fairness should not be primarily addressed by climate finance but should be mainly tackled by other means. Future designs of international transfer schemes within the framework of the Paris Agreement are to be based on experience gained from existing mechanisms. Therefore, we consider different existing schemes using a graphical technique first proposed by David Pearce and describe the conflicts between allocative and distributional goals that arise.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwe... more Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Matching mechanisms are regarded as an important instrument to bring about Pareto optimal allocations in a public good economy and to cure the underprovision problem associated with private provision of public goods. The desired Pareto optimal interior matching equilibrium, however, emerges only under very special conditions. But we show in this note that corner solutions, in which some agents choose zero flat contribution...

Social Science Research Network, Oct 26, 2017

In this paper, we show that progressivity (regressivity) of burden sharing in a Lindahl equilibri... more In this paper, we show that progressivity (regressivity) of burden sharing in a Lindahl equilibrium is a direct consequence of gross complementarity (substitutability) between the private and the public good when the public good is taken as the numéraire. We, moreover, link the respective conditions for gross complementarity to the more familiar ones in which the private good serves as the numéraire.

knowledged. We also want to thank the German Research Foundation (DFG) for financial

Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schu... more Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar. Dis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW. Download this ZEW Discussion Paper from our ftp server:

Key words: Sustainability, Ethical Preferences, Suppes-Sen Grading principle JEL classification: ... more Key words: Sustainability, Ethical Preferences, Suppes-Sen Grading principle JEL classification: D63, Q32 In the framework of ethical social choice theory, sustainability is justified by Efficiency and Equity as ethical axioms. These axioms correspond to the Suppes-Sen Grading principle. In technologies that are productive in a certain sense, the set of Suppes-Sen maximal utility paths is shown to equal the set of non-decreasing and efficient paths. Since any such path is sustainable, Efficiency and Equity can thus be used to deem any unsustainable path as ethically unacceptable. This finding is contrasted with results that seem to indicate that an infinite number of generations cannot be treated equally. 3 1. Introduction Motivated by a concern about environmental deterioration and natural resource depletion, sustainability is by now one of the key concepts in environmental discussion and, at least partly, in environmental policy. It was a major topic in the Brundtland-re...

Springer Texts in Business and Economics, 2019

This introductory chapter explains why economics has to play a central role in dealing with envir... more This introductory chapter explains why economics has to play a central role in dealing with environmental problems and how environmental economics may serve as a valuable complement to natural sciences in finding solutions to environmental challenges. In particular, it is expounded how economic processes are generically embedded in ecological cycles and how pollution has serious effects on ecosystems and human well-being. This chapter then describes that the market system usually fails to address environmental problems in an adequate way so that environmental policy is needed to internalize the external effects caused by pollution.

International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, 2021

Purpose Climate finance is regularly not only seen as a tool to efficiently combat global warming... more Purpose Climate finance is regularly not only seen as a tool to efficiently combat global warming but also to solve development problems in the recipient countries and to support the attainment of sustainable development goals. Thereby, conflicts between distributive and allocative objectives arise, which threaten the overall performance of such transfer schemes. Given the severity of the climate change problem, this study aims to raise concerns about whether the world can afford climate transfer schemes that do not focus on prevention of (and adaptation to) climate change but might be considered as a vehicle of rent-seeking by many agents. Design/methodology/approach Future designs of international transfer schemes within the framework of the Paris Agreement are to be based on experience gained from existing mechanisms. Therefore, the authors examine different existing schemes using a graphical technique first proposed by David Pearce and describe the conflicts between allocative a...