This paper provides new evidence on the role of non-market based (“command-and-control”) regulations in relation to innovations in environmental technologies. While pricing is generally considered the first-best policy instrument, non-market regulations, such as technology standards and...

This paper studies the effect of a CDM tree-planting project on carbon sequestration and urban and rural income distribution, taking economy-wide impacts into account. Carbon sequestration in agricultural soil is considered in addition to the carbon in the tree farm itself. The study points to...

Authorities often lack information for efficient regulation of the commons. This paper derives a criterion comparing prices versus tradable quantities in terms of expected welfare, given uncertainty, optimal policy and endogenous cost structure. I show that one cannot determine which regulatory...

This paper conducts Granger-causality tests on real per capita GDP and four types of air emissions (CO2, CO, SO2 and NOx) by using Norwegian data covering the period 1973-2003. The test results indicate that only unidirectional causal relationships exist between GDP and air emissions. For CO2...

A disaggregated intertemporal CGE model is used to simulate the welfare effects in Norway of the recently implemented trade reforms including the WTO agreement, the EEA treaty, the EFTA fishery agreement and an anticipated EEA resolution on shipbuilding. These reforms affect the Norwegian...

In most applied cost-benefit analyses, individual willingness to pay is aggregated without using explicit welfare weights. This can be justified by postulating a utilitarian social welfare function, along with the assumption of equal marginal utility of income for all individuals. However, since...

In traditional cost-benefit analyses of public projects, every citizen’s willingness to pay for a project is given an equal weight. This is sometimes taken to imply that cost-benefit analysis is a democratic method for making public decisions, as opposed to, for example, political processes...

The effects on the degree of equality of reforms in indirect taxation are analysed by using a microsimulation model of the Norwegian economy subsequent to a CGE model. The two main reforms studied are substitution of a uniform VAT rate on all goods and services and substitution of the...

In this paper we introduce the notion of random expenditure function and derive the distribution of the expenditure function and corresponding compensated choice probabilities in the general case when the (random) utilities are nonlinear in income. We also derive formulae for expenditure and...

Cost-benefit analysis have been attacked by many critics because of its implicit ethical assumptions. The normative content of the method is at odds with the common attitude that economists should analyze how to reach given goals, while determination of the goals should be left to the...