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The EU sets ambitious climate and energy goals for 2030, or the socalled European Green Deal, in compliance with the new global framework for sustainable development adopted by the UN General Assembly on 25 September 2015. The Green Deal is accompanied by legislative acts ensuring that both public and private funding depend significantly on the sustainability of economic activity. The definition and classification of sustainable activities are embedded in the EU Taxonomy Regulation. The aim of the present study is to find out how the stakeholders of railway sector perceive, react to, and feel about the Green Deal policy measures and approaches. After investigation of the relevant literature and compiling a structured questionnaire, persons involved in the operation of the railway sector (railway transport policy makers; railway undertakers and railway infrastructure managers) were convened and a focus group was conducted. The article describes the results of the focus group and identifies future directions for design thinking research on market responses to government interventions in supply chain operations.

Environmental policies are characterized by salient short-term costs and long-term benefits that are difficult to observe and to attribute to the government's efforts. These characteristics imply that citizens' support for environmental policies is highly dependent on their trust in the government's capability to implement solutions and commitment to investments in those policies. Using novel survey data from Mexico City, we show that trust in the government is positively correlated with citizens' willingness to support an additional tax approximately equal to a day's minimum wage to improve air quality and greater preference for government retention of revenues from fees collected from polluting firms. We find similar correlations using the perceived quality of public goods as a measure of government competence. These results provide evidence that mistrust can be an obstacle to better environmental outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade changes incentives to protect an open-access natural resource independently of its effect on the resource price. General equilibrium linkages cause resource policy to affect the price of privately owned assets regardless of whether they are used in the resource sector. In the closed economy, the asset market in our overlapping generations setting creates incentives for currently living agents to protect the natural resource. The interplay of the asset market and general equilibrium effects causes trade to reverse these incentives. Trade liberalization and the establishment of formal property rights are policy complements: the former makes the latter more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a non-cooperative game with managerial quantity-setting firms in which owners choose whether to delegate output and abatement decisions to managers through a contract based on emissions (conventionally denoted as 'green' delegation, GD) instead of sales (sales delegation, SD), and the government levies an emissions tax to incentivise firms' emissions-reduction actions. First, it compares the Nash equilibrium outcomes between GD and SD and then contrasts them also with profit maximisation (PM). A plethora of Nash equilibria emerges, especially in the case GD versus PM (the 'green delegation game'), depending on the public awareness toward environmental quality, ranging from the coordination game to the 'green' prisoner's dilemma. Second, though the contract under GD incentivises managers for emissions, the environmental damage is lower than under SD. This is because the optimal tax more than compensates the incentive for emissions. These findings suggest that designing GD contracts paradoxically favours environmental quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the collaboration between an environmental group (EG) and polluting firms when they are asymmetric in their abatement costs. We find that, as firms become more asymmetric, the EG collaborates more with the firm suffering from an abatement cost disadvantage, but this additional collaboration does not overcome firms' cost asymmetry, producing an overall decrease in total abatement and an increase in total emissions. We also evaluate the welfare effects of introducing an EG and/or a regulator, finding that the latter generally yields larger welfare gains than the former when neither are present. Unlike previous studies, we show that the welfare benefit from a second agent is, under most settings, largest when firms are more asymmetric in their abatement costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many activities are subsidized despite generating negative externalities. Examples include needle exchanges and energy production subsidies. We explain this phenomenon by developing a model in which the policymaker faces constraints or costs. We highlight three examples. First, it may be optimal to subsidize a harmful activity if the policymaker cannot set the first-best tax on an externally harmful substitute. Second, it may be optimal to subsidize a harmful production process if the activity mix at lower levels of output uses more harmful activities than the activity mix at higher levels of output. Third, it may be optimal to subsidize a harmful activity if there is a large administrative cost associated with taxing a harmful substitute. We also show how the functional form of the cost of administering a Pigouvian tax affects the optimal tax. When administrative cost is a function of only tax rates, the policymaker should tax each activity. However, an increase in the tax presents a trade-off: lower externality but higher administrative cost. A subsidy may be optimal for some externally harmful activities. When administrative cost is a function of only activity levels, it may not be optimal to tax every activity. If it is optimal to tax each activity, the policymaker should set the tax equal to the externality plus the marginal administrative cost. If it is not optimal to tax every activity, the complementarity between activities comes into play, and it may be optimal to subsidize externally harmful activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of nonzero conjectural variations in pollution abatement and output make emission taxes less effective with respect to reducing emissions. This has implications for the characterization of the optimal emission tax, particularly in an international context where there are large asymmetries in pollution intensities. A higher degree of collusion in output between polluting firms results in higher emissions taxes in the non-cooperative equilibrium. In contrast, a higher degree of collusion in abatement between polluting firms results in lower emissions taxes in the non-cooperative equilibrium. These results rely on the presence of nonzero conjectural variations and large asymmetries in pollution intensities across countries. The analysis is relevant to the design of international environmental policy, including cases where countries face increasing global competition and damages from rising global emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outdoor air pollution continues to be a challenging health issue, even as countries experience economic growth. By exploiting a unique transboundary setting in East Asia, we study the impact of an increase in particulate matter (PM) concentrations on fetal deaths. Due to the westerlies in the mid-latitudes, residents in South Korea at times experience intermittent exposure to high levels of air pollution. Using such atmospheric setting, we estimate a reduced-form impact of high PM events on fetal deaths, which captures in utero exposure to pollution. Controlling for local weather and pollution trends, regression results indicate that high PM events in Beijing lead to a significant increase in daily fetal mortality rates in Korea, by approximately 7.4 per cent. This research finding provides lower-bound estimates of not only negative spillovers manifested in fetal health but also the impact of pollution on the health of the Chinese population and calls for a need to tackle transboundary air pollution via international cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment periods and other career breaks have long-term scarring effects on future labour market possibilities, permanently affecting workers' retirement income and standard of living as pensioners. Previous literature has focused on the impact of job loss on working careers with little attention to its impact on pension wealth, particularly the extent to which longevity heterogeneity amplifies unemployment scars. This paper investigates the effect of single and multiple unemployment spells on the lifetime pension entitlements of earnings-related contributory pension schemes, considering the timing and duration of breaks, alternative lifecycle labour earnings profiles, scarring and restoration effects on labour market re-entry, the existence of pension credits and pension accruals for periods spent outside the labour market, longevity heterogeneity, and the accumulation and decumulation redistributive features of the pension scheme. Pension entitlements are estimated using a backward-looking simulation approach based on the actual Portuguese public pension system rules and stylized labour market profiles identified in the SHARE Job Episodes Panel data using a sequence analysis. Longevity heterogeneity is modelled using a stochastic mortality model with a frailty model. Our results show that the timing and duration of unemployment periods is critical, that scarring effects amplify pension wealth losses, that minimum pension provisions, pension credits and pension scheme redistributive features can partially mitigate the impact of unemployment periods on future entitlements, and that the presence of positive correlation between lifetime income and longevity career breaks can amplify the asymmetry in the distribution of pension entitlements across income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines green alliances between environmental groups (EGs) and polluting firms, which have become more common in the last decades, and analyzes how they affect policy design. We first show that the activities of regulators and EGs are strategic substitutes, giving rise to free-riding incentives on both agents. Nonetheless, the presence of the EG yields smaller welfare benefits when firms are subject to regulation than when they are not. In addition, the introduction of environmental policy yields large welfare gains when the EG is absent but small benefits when the EG is already present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La estructura y la tendencia del sistema fiscal reflejan la orientación del modelo de desarrollo que ha seguido México y determinan su modelo futuro y su capacidad para hacer frente a los retos de la sociedad (desarrollo, equidad, bienestar, sostenibilidad ambiental, etc.). El objetivo de este trabajo es conocer la dimensión relativa, la estructura por impuestos y las tendencias de la recaudación tributaria, así como la naturaleza y los objetivos de los incentivos y los beneficios fiscales en vigor en México en los últimos años. Este ejercicio permite evaluar la reforma hacendaria de 2014 con la perspectiva de los seis años transcurridos y formula los retos futuros. Se utilizó un enfoque descriptivo y cualitativo con base en los datos obtenidos del Centro Interamericano de Administraciones Tributarias (CIAT), la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE) y la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP). Se analizan la estructura de la recaudación tributaria centrada en los principales impuestos federales, así como el volumen y la composición del gasto fiscal, al desglosar los incentivos y los beneficios fiscales existentes sobre cada uno de los impuestos. Los principales resultados indican una evolución pasiva en el poder de recaudo de 12.5% del producto interno bruto (PIB) en 1990 a 15.6% en 2019, apoyado principalmente en los impuestos al consumo, el impuesto sobre la renta salarial y una fuerte dependencia del sector de hidrocarburos. Se muestra que algunos de los objetivos declarados de la reforma -aumentar de forma significativa la capacidad recaudatoria y reducir la multitud de incentivos y beneficios fiscales- apenas se han cumplido. Para concluir, se formulan algunos retos que debería afrontar una reforma fiscal para la inclusión, la equidad y la sostenibilidad.

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—animal feeding operations with over 1,000 animal units in confined spaces—have proliferated over the past thirty years in the United States. CAFOs provide operational cost savings, but higher animal concentrations in confined spaces can generate external costs, for example, non‐point source water pollution. In this study, we improve on previous research designs to estimate the relationship between the growth in CAFOs and surface water quality using longitudinal data on a large spatial scale. We use a panel dataset from 1995–2017 that links CAFO intensity with nearby surface water quality readings in Wisconsin to perform our analysis. Leveraging variation in CAFO intensity within hydrological regions over time, we find that increasing CAFO intensity increases the levels of nutrients, specifically total phosphorus and ammonia, in surface water; adding one CAFO to a Hydrologic Unit Code‐8 (HUC8) region leads to a 1.7% increase in total phosphorus levels and a 2.7% increase in ammonia levels, relative to sample mean levels. As an important contribution of our work, we use these results to calculate the external costs of surface water quality damages from CAFOs in Wisconsin. Our results imply that the marginal CAFO in Wisconsin produces non‐market surface water quality damages of at least $203,541 per year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates the effect of informal sector tax proceeds on capital development in Lagos Metropolis. The study adopted Ex-post facto design to obtain secondary data, covering 20 years (2000–2019) from the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service and the Ministry of Budget and Planning. All the series were tested for normalities to determine the appropriateness of Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression. The results of the study revealed that tax collected from the association, petty traders, and market men and women had a significant effect on capital development in Lagos Metropolis. It is evident from the monumental capital projects being executed by the government in the Metropolis. The study recommends that the government should not only create an enabling environment for the informal sector to thrive but also give all necessary support for its survival because the sector has contributed to the capital development of the Metropolis through tax revenue.

The study examined the influence of skill mapping and talent pool management on organisational development in Nigeria. The study adopted a survey research and the study population comprised three thousand (3000) active members of Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) in Nigeria as at 2019. A research instrument, well structured, titled “Skill mapping, talent pool management and organisational development” was used to collect data from a sample size of 353 members randomly selected from the population. Descriptive and inferential statistics were adopted to analyse the formulated hypotheses. The result of the study showed a positive effect of employee engagement on organisational development (R2 = 0.664, P = 0.000); and a significant effect of succession planning on organisational development (R2 = 0.781, P = 0.000). There was also a significant effect of job rotation on organisational development (R2 = 0.392, P = 0.000). The study concluded that skill mapping and talent pool management (in terms of properly matching tasks with personnel) played a significant role in the development of an organisation. Therefore, the study recommended that human resource managers at every organisation should strive to keenly match employee with tasks where they were more skilful and talented, as failure to do this, might result in employees’ inefficiency and turnover.