Author: Stephen DeCanio

Home > Articles posted by Stephen DeCanio (Page 3)

30 Jun

Posted at 14:51h in Selected Articles by

"Carbon Rights and Economic Development: A Property Rights Approach" Critical Review 6, 1992

Abstract

Even in the absence of complete scientific consensus on the magnitude, timing, and regional distribution of the effects of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, it is worthwhile to examine potential policy responses to the prospect of climate change. An internalization of the greenhouse externality based on property rights in carbon emissions offers...

30 Jun

Posted at 14:50h in Selected Articles by

"Barriers within Firms to Energy-Efficient Investments" Energy Policy 21, 1993

Abstract

Many investments in energy efficiency fail to be made despite their apparent profitability. Internal hurdle rates are often set at levels higher than the cost of capital to the firm. Reasons for these practices include bounded rationality, principal-agent problems, and moral hazard....

30 Jun

Posted at 14:50h in Selected Articles by

"The Future Through Yesterday: Long-Term Forecasting in the Novels of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne" The Centennial Review 38, 1994

Introductory Paragraph:

Suppose you were living in 1896, the date Arrhenius published his amazing paper on the Greenhouse Effect, and that your profession or intellectual passion was to predict the distant future....

30 Jun

Posted at 14:49h in Selected Articles by

"Economic Modeling and the False Tradeoff Between Environmental Protection and Economic Growth" Contemporary Economic Policy 15, 1997

Abstract

One important element of the current policy debate on what measures should be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is the controversy over the costs of reducing those emissions. “Top-down ” macroeconomic and general equilibrium models give much higher estimates of the costs than “bottom-up” models based on  microeconomic and...

30 Jun

Posted at 14:44h in Selected Articles by

"The Efficiency Paradox: Bureaucratic and Organizational Barriers to Profitable Energy-Saving Investments" Energy Policy 26, 1998

Abstract

The paradox of why profitable energy-saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate. The underlying phenomenon might be called the 'efficiency paradox,' because it represents a case in which business firms, which are often presumed (or taken axiomatically) to be economically efficient, make decisions that  do  not maximize profits. New data...

30 Jun

Posted at 14:44h in Selected Articles by

"Information Processing and Organizational Structure" (with William E. Watkins) Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 36, 1998

Abstract

Standard economic theories of the firm (and other organizations) stress profit maximization as the foundation for derivation of predictable behavior. Yet statistical and case-study evidence continues to accumulate that real firms do not act as required by the neoclassical framework.  Instead of being represented by ever more elaborate maximization models,...

30 Jun

Posted at 14:43h in Selected Articles by

"Estimating the Non-Environmental Consequences of Greenhouse Gas Reductions is Harder Than You Think" Contemporary Economic Policy 17, 1999

Abstract

Top-down and bottom-up models of the non-environmental consequences of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions embody different implicit theories of economic organizations. Yet neither approach is explicit in showing the detailed computations that must be traced if the activities of firms are to be described realistically. Specification of...

29 Jun

Posted at 22:10h in Uncategorized by

"Economic Analysis, Environmental Policy, and Intergenerational Justice in the Reagan Administration:  The Case of the Montreal Protocol," International Environmental Agreements:  Politics, Law and Economics 3 (2003)

Abstract

Economic arguments played a significant role in the decision by the Reagan Administration to lead the international effort to protect the stratospheric ozone layer from depletion caused by certain otherwise useful industrial chemicals....

29 Jun

Posted at 14:53h in Selected Articles by

"Two Hidden Sources of Productivity Growth in American Agriculture, 1860-1930" (with William N. Parker) Agricultural History 56, October 1982, pp. 648-62

Initial paragraph

Sustained productivity growth in modern agriculture depends largely upon two complex social processes of learning. In genetic and biochem- ical technology, scientists must learn how to adjust plant varieties and animal breeds to the various and changing conditions of the natural environment....