Présentations d’étudiants

Liste des articles à présenter et slides des étudiants

Opinion publique

Misperceived Social Norms and Willingness to Act Against Climate Change (Andre et al. 2024)

Abstract: We document the individual willingness to act against climate change and study the role of social norms in a large sample of US adults. Individual beliefs about social norms positively predict pro-climate donations, comparable in strength to universal moral values and economic preferences. However, we document systematic misperceptions of social norms. Respondents vastly underestimate the prevalence of climate-friendly behaviors and norms. Correcting these misperceptions in an experiment causally raises individual willingness to act against climate change and individual support for climate policies. The effects are strongest for individuals who are skeptical about the existence and threat of global warming.

Media

Measuring Social Benefits of Media Coverage: How Coverage of Climate Change Affects Behaviour (Beattie 2024)

Abstract: It has been well documented that beliefs and actions can be affected by media coverage. In this paper, I study the effect of newspaper coverage of climate change on individual driving behaviour. I construct a measure of the tone of coverage based on comparisons between environmental and sceptical texts. I then use this measure, along with detailed information about driving patterns, to test whether households’ travel decisions are affected by the coverage that they have recently received. I find that coverage of climate change that uses an environmental tone causes households to make environmentally friendly travel decisions, particularly when good substitutes are available. Since driving is a major source of carbon emissions, these results illustrate a potential externality of media coverage.

Inégalités

Vertical and Horizontal Redistributions from a Carbon Tax and Rebate (Cronin, Fullerton, and Sexton 2019)

Abstract: Are carbon taxes regressive? To calculate effects of a carbon tax on each family’s expenditures, plus distributional effects of three revenue-recycling mechanisms, we employ the US Treasury Distribution Model. It includes 322,000 tax returns, matched social security information, imputations from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and an input-output matrix to calculate output prices. Accounting for statutory indexing of federal transfer programs, the calculated carbon tax burden as a fraction of consumption is progressive. Rebate of revenues via transfers makes it even more progressive. Within each decile, we find large variation in energy demands such as for heat in winter and cooling in summer. As a result, commonly ignored horizontal redistributions within deciles are shown to exceed vertical redistributions between deciles. Rebates via transfers widen horizontal redistributions. Some reforms deliver net income gains to the poorest families on average, even as a majority of those poor families incur losses.

Activisme

Every Day Is Earth Day: Evidence on the Long-Term Impact of Environmental Activism (Hungerman and Moorthy 2023)

Abstract: We use variation in weather to study the long-term effects of activism during the original Earth Day on attitudes, environmental outcomes, and children’s health. Unusually bad weather on April 22, 1970 is associated with weaker support for the environment 10 to 20 years later, particularly among those who were school aged in 1970. Bad weather on Earth Day is also associated with higher levels of carbon monoxide in the air and greater risk of congenital abnormalities in infants born in the following decades. These results identify benefits to volunteer activity that would be impossible to identify until years after the volunteering occurs.

References

Andre, Peter, Teodora Boneva, Felix Chopra, and Armin Falk. 2024. “Misperceived Social Norms and Willingness to Act Against Climate Change.” The Review of Economics and Statistics, June, 1–46. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01468.
Beattie, Graham. 2024. “Measuring Social Benefits of Media Coverage: How Coverage of Climate Change Affects Behaviour.” The Economic Journal, July, ueae067. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae067.
Cronin, Julie Anne, Don Fullerton, and Steven Sexton. 2019. “Vertical and Horizontal Redistributions from a Carbon Tax and Rebate.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 6 (S1): S169–208. https://doi.org/10.1086/701191.
Hungerman, Daniel, and Vivek Moorthy. 2023. “Every Day Is Earth Day: Evidence on the Long-Term Impact of Environmental Activism.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 15 (1): 230–58. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210045.