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Begin New Search Publishing Institution Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University Publication Year within 25 Years

41. An Overview of Climate Change: What does it mean for our way of life? What is the best future we can hope for?

Author:
Neva Goodwin
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
This paper starts with the question of whether climate change will require a significant reduction of consumption among the richer people in the world, and ends with the most optimistic picture the author can conjure up, of the world in the year 2075. That hopeful picture is of a world in which inequalities – among and within nations – have been substantially reduced. The challenges and adjustments confronting humanity in the coming decades provide an opportunity that could be used to mitigate climate change in ways that can improve the circumstances of the poor. Ecological reasons to reduce throughput of energy and materials in economic systems urge the abandonment of high-consumption life-styles. The 21st century will be an era of many losses, but it is conceivable that societies will successfully make the transition from goals of economic growth, as understood in the 20th century, to goals of maintaining and increasing sustainable well-being.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, and Economics

42. Living High on the Hog: Factory Farms, Federal Policy, and the Structural Transformation of Swine Production

Author:
Elanor Starmer and Timothy A. Wise
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
U.S. farm policy reforms in 1996 produced significant overproduction of supported crops, with prices falling to levels that were often below average farm production costs. Among the beneficiaries of the policy shift were the largest corporate purchasers of supported crops, as they saw a steady supply of low-priced inputs. Industrial livestock firms were among the most significant buyers of U.S. corn and soybeans, the main components of livestock feed. Filling an important gap in the literature, this paper estimates the savings to industrial hog operations between 1997 and 2005 from feed components priced at levels below their production costs. The savings are found to be significant. We also find that industrial hog companies benefited from weak federal regulation of environmental pollution from livestock operations. We estimate the costs to industrial hog firms of compliance with new environmental regulations regarding mitigation of surface-water contamination from excess manure concentrations. This cost is also found to be significant. We assess the implications of these findings for the continued consolidation and industrialization of the industry. We find that mid-sized diversified farms that grow their own feed may well be able to compete on cost with large-scale industrial operations if the latter pay full cost for their feed and have to pay for just one part of their externalized pollution costs.
Topic:
Agriculture, Environment, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
United States

43. Economists, Value Judgments, and Climate Change: A View From Feminist Economics

Author:
Julie A. Nelson
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
A number of recent discussions about ethical issues in climate change, as engaged in by economists, have focused on the value of the parameter representing the rate of time preference within models of optimal growth. This essay examines many economists' antipathy to serious discussion of ethical matters, and suggests that the avoidance of questions of intergenerational equity is related to another set of value judgments concerning the quality and objectivity of economic practice. Using insights from feminist philosophy of science and research on high reliability organizations, this essay argues that a more ethically transparent, real-world-oriented, and flexible economic practice would lead to more strongly objective, reliable, and useful knowledge.
Topic:
International Relations, Climate Change, Economics, and Environment

44. Declining Poverty in Latin America? A Critical Analysis of New Estimates by International Institutions

Author:
Ann Helwege and Melissa B.L. Birch
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Indicators of progress in overcoming poverty in Latin America have been heralded recently by international institutions. Yet a closer look at data from the World Bank and the United Nations reveals contradictions that are not easily resolved by reference to the underlying methodologies. This paper provides an introduction to how poverty is measured, what the data indicate about trends in poverty, and reasons to tread cautiously in interpreting it as evidence of progress or stagnation. While significant progress has been achieved in a few large countries, the poorest countries are still very poor, and some countries have even seen increases in their poverty rates despite economic growth.
Topic:
International Political Economy, Poverty, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Latin America

45. Policy Space for Mexican Maize: Protecting Agro-biodiversity by Promoting Rural Livelihoods

Author:
Timothy A. Wise
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Since the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, traditional maize farmers in Mexico have faced difficult economic conditions. In barely more than a decade, as many as one million farmers may have abandoned their land under economic pressure from rising imports, low prices for maize and other traditional crops, weak local and regional demand, and large reductions in public sector support for agriculture. The losses are environmental as well as economic. With the loss of traditional maize, there has been a documented loss of the agricultural biodiversity of which these farmers and their ancestors have been stewards for centuries. With maize trade scheduled to be fully liberalized under NAFTA in 2008, many farm groups are calling for a renegotiation of the treaty's agricultural provisions to prevent further damage. This policy analysis examines the room for alternative policies in Mexico under existing economic and environmental agreements, including NAFTA. It concludes that the Mexican government retains access to many useful policy instruments that could promote rural livelihoods while arresting the losses of important maize diversity. What is lacking is the political will to make use of them.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
North America and Mexico

46. The Politics of Patents and Drugs in Brazil and Mexico: The Industrial Bases of Health Activism

Author:
Ken Shadlen
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the politics of intellectual property (IP) and public health in Brazil and Mexico. Both countries introduced pharmaceutical patents in the 1990s, to comply with their international obligations. Indeed, both countries' IP systems were markedly similar in being favorable to the interests of the transnational, innovation-based pharmaceutical sector. Yet since the late 1990s the two countries have diverged in dramatic fashion. In Brazil the response to the high price of drugs and societal demands to reform the IP system has been to make obtaining private ownership over knowledge more difficult and to increase the rights of third parties to access and use knowledge. In Mexico, the response to similar demands has been to raise impediments to third parties' rights of access and use and effectively extend the periods of protection granted to patent-owners.
Topic:
Government, Health, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Brazil and Mexico

47. The Unbearable Lightness of Regulatory Costs

Author:
Frank Ackerman
Publication Date:
02-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Will unbearable regulatory costs ruin the US economy? This specter haunts official Washington, just as fears of communism once did. Once again, the prevailing rhetoric suggests, an implacable enemy of free enterprise puts our prosperity at risk. Like anti-communism in its heyday, anti-command-and-control-ism serves to narrow debate, promoting the unregulated laissez-faire economy as the sole acceptable goal and standard for public policy. Fears of the purported costs of regulation have been used to justify a sweeping reorganization of regulatory practice, in which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is empowered to, and often enough does, reject regulations from other agencies on the basis of intricate, conjectural, economic calculations.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Environment, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and North America

48. The Missing Links between Foreign Investment and Development: Lessons from Costa Rica and Mexico

Author:
Kevin Gallagher and Eva Paus
Publication Date:
02-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
A developing country will derive long-lasting development benefits from FDI only, if there is the right coincidence between its location-specific assets and TNCs\' global interests, and the right match between the country\'s national linkage capability and TNCs\' strategic interest in domestic sourcing. We argue that Costa Rica and Mexico have been very successful in attracting high-tech FDI due to the cumulative results of past development policies, proximity to the U.S., and trade arrangements. However, a combination of pervasive market failures, government inaction, and changes in TNC strategies explains why the two countries have not been able to reap lasting benefits from high-tech FDI. We conclude that pro-active government policies have to be an integral part of any FDI-linked development strategy. Pro-action is needed to attract FDI, to promote indigenous linkage capability, and to enhance key location-specific assets on an on-going basis in the context of a coordinated policy framework.
Topic:
Economics and Markets
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, and Mexico

49. The Economics of Inaction on Climate Change: A Sensitivity Analysis

Author:
Frank Ackerman and Ian J. Finlayson
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Economic models of climate change often take the problem seriously, but paradoxically conclude that the optimal policy is to do almost nothing about it. We explore this paradox as seen in the widely used DICE model. Three aspects of that model, involving the discount rate, the assumed benefits of moderate warming, and the treatment of the latest climate science, are sufficient to explain the timidity of the model's optimal policy recommendation. With modifications to those three points, DICE shows that the optimal policy is a much higher and rapidly rising marginal carbon price; that higher carbon price has a greater effect on physical measures of climate impacts. Our modifications exhibit nonlinear interactions; at least at low discount rates, there is synergy between individual changes to the model. At low discount rates, the inherent uncertainty about future damages looms larger in the analysis, rendering long-run economic modeling less useful.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, and Environment

50. European Chemical Policy and the United States: The Impacts of REACH

Author:
Rachel Massey, Frank Ackerman, and Liz Stanton
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
The European Union is moving toward adoption of its new Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) policy, an innovative system of chemicals regulation that will provide crucial information on the safety profile of chemicals used in industry. Chemicals produced elsewhere, such as in the United States, and exported to Europe will have to meet the same standards as chemicals produced within the European Union. What is at stake for the U.S. is substantial: we estimate that chemical exports to Europe that are subject to REACH amount to about $14 billion per year, and are directly and indirectly responsible for 54,000 jobs. Revenues and employment of this magnitude dwarf the costs of compliance with REACH, which will amount to no more than $14 million per year. Even if, as the U.S. chemicals industry has argued, REACH is a needless mistake, it will be far more profitable to pay the modest compliance costs than to lose access to the enormous European market.
Topic:
Government, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe