Four Essays on Individual Choice and Aggregate Decision: Perception of Health Risk and Consumption of Alcohol and Cigarette and Reduction of Carbon Dioxide and Economic Development

• Main Authors: Je-Liang Liou, 劉哲良
• Other Authors: 吳珮瑛
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/28026037613304492626

博士 === 臺灣大學 === 農業經濟學研究所 === 98 === Essay1: This paper uses the conceptual framework of decomposed theory of planned behavior to analyze a set of censored data. The censored quantile regression is conducted for the diverse risk perceptions of alcohol consumption decision, i. e. a positive risk perception and a negative risk perception. The results show that all explanatory variables do have impacts on the decision of alcohol consumption under the framework of Bayesian learning and decomposed theory of planned behavior. Among these, the risk perception variables with either positive risk or negative risk perception have the most significant impacts. The alcohol consumption elasticities of risk perception for either positive or negative risk perception under the light alcohol consumption are all higher than those under the median and heavy levels of alcohol consumption. As such, group with light alcohol consumption is more effective than other two groups if the related agents intend to educate general public about the impact of alcohol consumption on the health through information delivery. Groups with median and heavy alcohol consumption are mostly affected by the addiction to the consumption of alcohol. Essay2: This paper uses the risk as feelings theory to analyze a set of censored data. The censored quantile regression is conducted for the diverse health risk perception and happiness of smoking decision. The results show that all explanatory variables do have significant impacts on the smoking decision under the framework of risk as feelings theory. The risk perception variable has negative impact on smoking quantities. On the contrary, the happiness portrays the positive impact on smoking quantities. Furthermore, the marginal effect of the risk perception and happiness will change cause of the interrelationship between them. As a result, the effect of risk perception variable will be enhanced with increasing in individual happiness and vice versa. Essay3: This study decomposes the global technology efficiency in energy use and CO2 emission control into their pure technology efficiency and scale efficiency respectively. The interrelationship among global technology efficiency, pure technology efficiency, and economic development both for energy use and CO2 emission control can thus be identified. Fifty-seven countries including all the committed countries in Kyoto Protocol during 1990-2005 are included in the analysis. The results show that the increasing of global technology efficiency in CO2 emission control has to be accompanied by the sacrifice of the global technology efficiency in energy use at the early stage of economic development. However, further development of economy will take both of the global technology efficiency in energy use and CO2 emission control toward inefficient status. If use of energy is inescapable for the growth of economy so is the emission of greenhouse gases from the use of energy then for developed countries enhancing the pure technology efficiency in energy use and scale efficiency in CO2 emission control are important tasks to pursue. On the contrary, developing countries have to engage in the improvement of the pure technology efficiency in CO2 emission and scale efficiency in energy use. Essay4: The purposes of this study are firstly to construct an operational equitable initial rights allocation model. Simulations and computations are conducted for a set of panel data with 57 countries in 1990-2005 under criteria of egalitarian, sovereignty, ability to pay, polluter pay, and various scenarios of Greenhouse Development Rights framework. Then, it is to determine the equity principle under cost effectiveness for countries with different levels of economic development. The same analytic process is applied to China, India, and the United States. The results show that the criteria of sovereignty, polluter pay, and GDR framework with full capacity weight create the cost effectiveness for the high-income, the upper middle-income, the low middle-income, and the low-income group of countries, respectively. The attractiveness for the groups of upper middle-income and low middle-income countries to join the emission reduction array are much easier than the other countries since the lowest total abatement cost for those groups with emission trading will occur at the same equity criterion as those without emission trading scheme. As with China, India, and the United States, the lowest cost occurs at full capacity weight of GDR framework, egalitarian, and sovereignty respectively. It is a challenge to bring those three countries into the emission trading array due to such equity discrepancy between individual country and the world as a whole.