Latin America in the Anthropocene: development under planetary constraints

This research is a qualitative study based on systematic analysis of the articles on environmental economics via the bibliometric analysis using the R programming language. Thus, this study analyzed articles using environmental economics in journals in scopus database. 384 articles, which was published in 1972 – 2022 and included ‘environmental economics research’ in the article title were analyzed as a whole. This analysis was the bibliometric analysis using the R programming language. At the same time, content analysis was used to show the relationships between the subdomains of the studies using environmental economics and the development of network, author collaboration. The study results in a discussion about the use of environmental economics on the part of future studies.

First published in 1997, this volume addressed the growing preoccupation of scientists at the time had in environmental phenomena, such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, acid rains, fresh water and ocean pollution, desertification, deforestation and the loss of bio-diversity. The crucial and pressing nature of these issues spawned says the author a new wave of research in environmental economics. The volume provides broad surveys of the developments in the economics of the environment and reports on the developing set of environmental problems, analytical tools and economic policies. The importance of the developing approach was that environmental problems are no longer isolated from all other economic dimensions. Throughout the volume they are analysed in an open, generally non-competitive economy with transnational or global externalities. The first part deals with the relationship between the environment, economic growth and technological innovation. The second part analyses the optimal design of environmental taxation, while the third part considers the international dimension of environmental policy.

Environmental economics is increasingly pivotal in addressing global environmental challenges. This study aims to elucidate the research landscape in this field, focusing on prevalent themes such as climate change, carbon emissions, sustainable development, and environmental policy. Employing a bibliometric analysis, we analyzed a substantial corpus of literature from Scopus. We applied Lotka's Law to assess author productivity and distribution and conducted institutional and country-level analyses to map the geographical spread and institutional affiliations in environmental economics research. Our analysis highlights a significant growth in the environmental economics literature, with a notable focus on climate change and sustainability. A concentration of publications among a few authors was observed, indicating influential researchers and potential for increased collaboration. The rise in publications, particularly in China and leading journals like 'The Journal of Cleaner Production,' reflects a global upsurge in environmental economics research. Distinct clusters were identified, covering diverse topics from climate change economics to environmental policy. The study acknowledges limitations due to exclusive reliance on Scopus data, suggesting future research to include other databases like the Web of Science for a more comprehensive analysis. Considering the evolving nature of environmental challenges, we advocate for interdisciplinary approaches and continual updates in research to address emergent trends in this critical field.

Environmental economists using contingent valuation (CV) surveys are often interested in estimating the population willingness to pay (WTP) for some intervention from a sample of individuals randomly drawn from some population of interest. These surveys collect information on bids or WTP amounts and various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics about the respondents that is used to estimate descriptive statistics (such as mean or median WTP) or regression equations (such as bid or WTP functions). Statistical errors can occur when either the framework from which the sample was drawn is ignored or when the sampled elements are used to incorrectly infer relationships for a target. These errors will often cause biased WTP estimates, although the magnitude and direction of the bias are often difficult to identify. In this paper, standard methods for testing and addressing these potential sources of error are presented and alternative, and often less restrictive, methods are presented and applied to a contingent valuation study of environmentally friendly changes in the Glen Canyon Dam's operations (Welsh, et al, 1995). Great strides have been made to reduce the potential biases in CV surveys. For the better part of the last 20 years, research in environmental economics has focused on reducing potential sources of biases such as embedding, information and scope effects. But research on who and what the respondents and nonrespondents represent has often taken a back seat and in practice is either assumed away or simply overlooked (e.g., nonrespondents are assumed to either (i) behave like respondents or (ii) behave in a particular way). Two types of statistical errors associated with this final stage include sampling error and response error (a combination of nonresponse and selection errors). Sampling errors can arise when the sample drawn does not directly reflect the population of interest, most commonly occurring when incorrect sampling and survey methods are used, most notably ignoring sample weights when complex samples are drawn. Sample weights effectively represent the number of individuals in the population that each sampled individual represents. Moreover, sample weights can be used to test for non-ignorable sampling designs that might cause selection errors and can be used to protect against model misspecification. The role of sample weights in the statistical analysis of survey data, however, is subject to considerable debate among theoretical statisticians despite its widespread use by applied statisticians. Response errors occur when sampled elements are used to infer relationships for a population where the sampled elements do not represent the target population. Regardless of the sampling structure, systematic differences between respondents and nonrespondents will usually invalidate population inferences based solely on survey data from respondents. Research in marketing and psychology has determined that nonrespondents will often differ from respondents on demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, and attitudes and beliefs, especially those related to the survey in question. Additionally, selection error occurs as a result of respondents (and nonrespondents) censoring their bids. Selection errors are likely to occur for two reasons: (i) removing protest and other missing bids as if they were outliers, and (ii) nonrespondents censoring themselves. To adjust for these problems, most statistical approaches are forced to assume some sort of model relating the likelihood of response to willingness to pay. After applying the alternative methods to the data from the Glen Canyon Dam Study, this paper will show that the results from these methods differ enough to indicate that whether or not an intervention is deemed worthwhile could depend on the error correction method used. Since the more advanced and less restrictive methods generally provide more accurate results, environmental economists should be well versed in these methods or work closely with survey statisticians to obtain the most accurate estimates of population WTP.

Objective: Map and present the state of the scientific art on food security and its connection with Economics and Environmental Accounting. Theoretical framework: The limits of economic use of ecosystem services were extrapolated, the evidence of which lies in climate change and subsequent heterogeneous food availability. From this perspective, the accounting and economic impacts of environmental changes are apparently underestimated by industrial chains that exploit natural capital. Method: A bibliometric analysis of scientific publications was carried out, that were prospected in the Scopus database. 377 scientific publications published between 1986 and 2023 were retrieved. The mining and analysis of the correlation between Economics and Accounting with food security was carried out based on of the co-occurrence of keywords indicated by the authors of the retrieved documents, using the VantagePoint® software. Results: The results of the bibliometric search show greater progress in research in environmental economics. Conversely, the gaps in the valuation of environmental assets, the absence of validated indicators for the inclusion of natural capital in national accounting systems and the voluntary nature of the disclosure of accounting, financial and socio-environmental data may be the explanations for the lack of connection between food safety and environmental accounting. Research implications: Scientific advances in the calculation of the Green Gross Domestic Product and/or in the adaptation of the SEEA (System of Environmental-Economic Accounts) methodology can generate accounting and economic data from the organization of stocks of environmental assets and favor the availability of food.

Economics and ecology: a comparison of experimental methodologies and philosophies

Are Internet surveys an alternative to face-to-face interviews in contingent valuation?

In this book, Professors Baumol and Oates provide a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the economic theory of environmental policy. They present a formal, theoretical treatment of those factors influencing the quality of life. By covering both the theory of externalities and its application to environmental policy, the authors have retained the basic structure and organization of the first edition, which has become a standard reference in the field. In this edition, however, they have updated their analysis to incorporate recent research in environmental economics.

Recent Advances of Experimental Research in Environmental Economics

In this book, Professors Baumol and Oates provide a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the economic theory of environmental policy. They present a formal, theoretical treatment of those factors influencing the quality of life. By covering both the theory of externalities and its application to environmental policy, the authors have retained the basic structure and organization of the first edition, which has become a standard reference in the field. In this edition, however, they have updated their analysis to incorporate recent research in environmental economics.

As a key component of China’s sustainable development strategy, the “dual-carbon” goal indicates the need to actively and steadily promote carbon peaking and carbon neutrality and strengthen resource conservation and environmental protection—a core research focus published in Sustainability. Existing research in environmental economics and corporate sustainability suggests that improving carbon efficiency is a key pathway to climate-resilient industrialization, but the role of corporate market forces in this context remains under-explored. Consistent with the interdisciplinary scope of sustainability in the environmental, economic and social dimensions. This paper takes the industrial sector from 2012 to 2021 as the research sample and empirically researches and analyzes the relationship between enterprise market power and carbon efficiency and its mechanism through theoretical derivation and a fixed effect model. We found that enterprise market power is a remarkable contributor to carbon efficiency. The mechanism test found that the promotion role is reflected in the improvement of profitability, and profitability plays a mediating role in market power and carbon efficiency. In the further heterogeneity analysis, this study found that the degree of environmental information disclosure and whether an enterprise is heavily polluting present notable differences in carbon efficiency. The positive correlation between firms’ market power and carbon efficiency is more significant when firms have a lower degree of environmental information disclosure and are non heavily polluting firms. Through the expansive analysis, it is found that there is a marked cohort effect on carbon efficiency, and the market power can effectively empower the industry cohort effect of carbon efficiency.

Twenty-five years ago, in an introductory article to research in environmental economics, Kneese (1971) distinguished between two types of environmental problem: ‘global’ problems which affect the entire planet and ‘regional’ problems which include ‘all those other than global’. In justifying this last classification, Kneese reasoned:

The 1990s were imbued by a growing concern for international environmental problems. This was reflected by political debates and activities at the international level such as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) 1992, in Rio de Janeiro. At the same time, these issues were also intensively discussed in the academic sphere. The economic analysis of environmental problems has been investigated already in the 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless, the increasing preoccupation with transboundary externalities led to a renaissance of research in environmental economics and to a new body of literature. The basic reason for a reformulation of the research program has been concisely summarized by Carraro and Siniscalco:

Internet is an increasingly popular data collection mode for stated preference research in environmental economics. However, little is known about how this survey mode may influence data quality and welfare estimates. As part of a national contingent valuation (CV) survey estimating willingness to pay (WTP) for biodiversity protection plans, we assign two groups of respondents either to an Internet or face-to-face (in-home) interview mode. Our design aims to better isolate measurement effects from sample composition effects by drawing both samples from the same sample frame. We find little evidence of social desirability bias in the interview setting or satisficing (shortcutting the response process) in the Internet survey. The share of “don’t knows”, zeros and protest responses to the WTP question with a payment card is very similar between modes and equality of mean WTP cannot be rejected. Results are fairlyencouraging for the use of Internet in CV as stated preferences do not seem to besignificantly different or biased compared to face-to-face interviews.

Background Many types of weighting methods, which have integrated the various environmental impacts that are used for life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA), were proposed with the aim of developing the methodology as a useful information resource for decision making, such as in the selection of products. Economic valuation indexes, in particular, have attracted attention, as their assessment results are easy to understand and can be applied in conjunction with other assessment tools, including life-cycle costing (LCC) and environmental accounting. Conjoint analysis has been widely used in market research, and has recently been applied to research in environmental economics. The method enables us to provide two types of assessment results; an economic valuation and a dimensionless index. This method is therefore expected to contribute greatly to increasing the level of research into weighting methodology, in which an international consensus has yet to be established. Conjoint analysis, however, has not previously been applied to LCIA.