Environmental taxes are often underexploited. This paper analyses the effectiveness of a garbage tax, assessing its effects on multiple outcomes as well as its acceptability. We study how a Supreme Court decision, mandating the Swiss Canton of Vaud to implement a tax on garbage, affects garbage production and beliefs about the tax. We adopt a difference-in-differences approach exploiting that parts of Vaud already implemented a garbage tax before the mandate. Pricing garbage by the bag (PGB) is highly effective, reducing unsorted garbage by 40%, increasing recycling of aluminium and organic waste, without causing negative spillovers on adjacent regions. The effects of PGB seem very persistent over time. Our assessment of PGB looks very favourable. It may surprise that PGB is not implemented more often. Hence, we look at people's perceptions. We find that people are very concerned with PGB ex ante. Public opposition seems to be the main obstacle to PGB. However, implementing PGB reduces concerns with effectiveness and fairness substantially. After implementing PGB, people accept 70% higher garbage taxes compared to before PGB. We argue that environmental taxes could be much more diffused, if people had the chance to experience their functioning and correct their beliefs.
Le projet "Grand Genève" peine à créer autour de lui un sentiment d'identification fort. La collaboration entre le canton de Genève, le canton de Vaud et les départements de la Haute-Savoie et de l'Ain reste depuis 2005 une entreprise qui apparaît lointaine et détachée de toute notion affective aux yeux de la population. L'étude des discours politiques et des textes institutionnels et médiatiques en lien avec le projet franco-valdo-genevois constitue ici un symptôme révélateur de cette situation.
De nombreux organismes de financement exigent la bonne gouvernance des données de la recherche afin d’en garantir la traçabilité et la pérennisation ainsi que la réutilisation des connaissances générées. Dans ce cadre, SwissUniversities soutient le projet DLCM : un projet d’envergure nationale visant à mettre à disposition de l’ensemble de la communauté de la recherche suisse des services de gestion de données de la recherche. L’enquête conduite durant le pré-projet a permis d’identifier les rôles et tâches correspondant à chaque étape du cycle de vie des données de la recherche. Il en ressort que la mise en oeuvre de telles solutions implique l’intégration des principes archivistiques et notamment la nécessité de mutualiser les bonnes pratiques de la gestion des données de la recherche développées dans des contextes scientifiques, disciplinaires et institutionnels spécifiques. Cette présentation expose les solutions en matière de transfert de connaissances sur trois axes : 1) conseil et service d’appui, 2) formation développée au profil des chercheurs et professionnels de l'information, et 3) intégration des enseignements reliés à la gestion des données de la recherche au sein des programmes de Sciences de l'information, permettant ainsi aux étudiants fraîchement formés d’assurer la pérennité de ce savoir pour les générations futures.
Economic theory assumes that willingness to pay (WTP) increases with the quantity of the consumed good. This implies that there should be a scope effect in contingent valuation studies. However, in previous issues of Ecological Economics, several authors criticized the contingent valuation (CV) method for the absence of such effect or its inadequacy. In this paper, we contribute to this ongoing debate by proposing to systematically apply several WTP statistical distribution assumptions to test for scope effects and check its plausibility, following Whitehead’s (2016) recent recommendations. We perform this approach using data from a Swiss case study assessing the WTP for an increased surface of forest reserves. We find that both mean WTP and scope effects are sensitive to the statistical distribution assumption. Regarding plausibility, scope elasticities provide mixed result and also depend on the assumed statistical distribution of WTP. For small sample size CV studies, a non-parametric analysis, a spike model or an open-ended format can thus be better suited to reveal scope effects than the classical parametric dichotomous choice analysis. We thus recommend to systematically apply several statistical distribution assumptions of WTP to test for scope effects and their plausibility.
Growing requirements for accountability and risk management put decentralized models of public governance under pressure. This article investigates the drivers for change from a completely decentralized, network-oriented model to a more centralized, and procedural governance model of school restaurants in a Swiss city. It focuses on the pressures and challenges that this municipality faces in terms of risks and accountability in order to identify the conditions in which network governance can be successful. We applied a qualitative approach that combined conducting 25 semi-structured interviews of main stakeholders and analyzing documentation. We found that increased demand for school meals from families, the perception of increasing exposure to insufficiently managed risks associated with growing accountability requirements constitute the main drivers for change to the centralization of certain risk-sensitive, costly, and low social purpose activities, thus providing the municipality authorities with more control over the system while preserving the associative function.
In this paper, we examine the efficiency of the sort done by the Swiss lower secondary school tracking system, looking at students’ outcomes in dual vocational education and training (VET)—the most common education type at the upper secondary level in the country. We discuss a simple Ricardian model about the process of school tracking based on the absolute advantage (i.e., the ability) of students in abstract learning, as opposed to contextualised learning which is more decisive in dual VET. The mismatch created by the tracking system for certain types of students is key to explain the relative track effect on outcomes in dual VET. Using administrative panel data for the Canton of Geneva, we estimate a series of zero inflated models. All results support the assumption of a miss-allocation of students to lower secondary school tracks. We thus conclude that the efficiency of the sort related to the tracking system could be improved, were students sorted on the basis of their comparative and not absolute advantage in each form of learning.
Les auteurs mènent une évaluation contingente sur un échantillon représentatif de la population pour estimer la disponibilité à payer (DAP) pour un programme de création de nouvelles réserves forestières en Suisse. Le scénario prévoit des restrictions d’accès aux zones forestières en question, raison pour laquelle l’analyse porte essentiellement sur les valeurs de non-usage, en particulier les valeurs d’existence. L’analyse paramétrique et non paramétrique des réponses au choix dichotomique (Single Bounded Dichotomous Choice) indique une DAP moyenne de 470 CHF à 500 CHF (entre 390 et 415 EUR environ) par année et par ménage. Les auteurs étudient le biais de sélection engendré par les réponses protestataires et constatent qu’il ne modifie pas statistiquement la DAP. L’analyse des déterminants de la DAP indique que l’effet de revenu est positif mais limité par un seuil et que les résidents urbains sont plus enclins à accepter de payer pour financer le programme.
Turning the Paris Agreement’s greenhouse gas emissions pledges into domestic policies is the next challenge for governments. We address the question of the acceptability of cost-effective climate policy in a real-voting setting. First, we analyze voting behavior in a large ballot on energy taxes, rejected in Switzerland in 2015 by more than 2 million people. Energy taxes were aimed at completely replacing the current value-added tax. We examine the determinants of voting and find that distributional and competitiveness concerns reduced the acceptability of energy taxes, along with the perception of ineffectiveness. Most people would have preferred tax revenues to be allocated for environmental purposes. Second, at the same time of the ballot, we tested the acceptability of alternative designs of a carbon tax with a choice experiment survey on a representative sample of the Swiss population. Survey respondents are informed about environmental, distributional and competitiveness effects of each carbon tax design. These impacts are estimated with a computable general equilibrium model. This original setting generates a series of novel results. Providing information on the expected environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes reduces the demand for environmental earmarking. Making distributional effects salient generates an important demand for progressive designs, e.g. social cushioning or recycling via lump-sum transfers. The case of lump-sum recycling is particularly striking: it is sufficient to show its desirable distributional properties to make it one of the most preferred designs, which corresponds to a completely novel result in the literature.We show that providing detailed information on the functioning of environmental taxes may contribute to close both the gap between acceptability ex ante and ex post and the gap between economists’ prescriptions and the preferences of the general public.
Carbon pricing is a recurrent theme in debates on climate policy. Discarded at the 2009 COP in Copenhagen, it remained part of deliberations for a climate agreement in subsequent years. As there is still much misunderstanding about the many reasons to implement a global carbon price, ideological resistance against it prospers. Here, we present the main arguments for carbon pricing, to stimulate a fair and well-informed discussion about it. These include considerations that have received little attention so far. We stress that a main reason to use carbon pricing is environmental effectiveness at a relatively low cost, which in turn contributes to enhance social and political acceptability of climate policy. This includes the property that corrected prices stimulate rapid environmental innovations. These arguments are underappreciated in the public debate, where pricing is frequently downplayed and the erroneous view that innovation policies are sufficient is widespread. Carbon pricing and technology policies are, though, largely complementary and thus are both needed for effective climate policy. We also comment on the complementarity of other instruments to carbon pricing. We further discuss distributional consequences of carbon pricing and present suggestions on how to address these. Other political economy issues that receive attention are lobbying, co-benefits, international policy coordination, motivational crowding in/out, and long-term commitment. The overview ends with reflections on implementing a global carbon price, whether through a carbon tax or emissions trading. The discussion goes beyond traditional arguments from environmental economics by including relevant insights from energy research and innovation studies as well.
The project LODZ (Linked Open Data Zurich) adopts an experimental approach to merge data and develop a semantic web infrastructure to enable its discovery. For this purpose, three institutions in the field of art and design provided their metadata. The project cycle followed six steps: team building, gathering and cleaning of the original data, modelling, transforming, interlinking and exploration of the Linked Data set. The resulting pilot application offers innovative and attractive features based on the capability of the Linked Data, with the aim to provide a better user experience. The major challenge of this project was the creation of links between the internal datasets, and with external sources. An important lesson learnt is therefore to focus more on the interoperability of data at the time of cataloguing in the original databases, for example by integrating external identifiers rather than just terms in the form of strings.
