Athanasios Kampas

Agricultural University of Athens · Laboratory of Rural Economic Development

This paper examines second-best pollution taxation within a unified framework, which simultaneously takes into account society’s preferences towards producer profits and environmental costs, the possibility of raising public revenue through pollution taxes and the costly administration of pollution taxes. Several new results were derived concerning...

The paper examines the issue of allocating fishing rights for the management of East Atlantic and Mediterranean tuna. Although it is well-known that fairness plays a crucial role for the acceptability of international environmental agreements, usually there is a trade-off between fairness and stability. Our results confirm such a trade-off between...

This paper examines the allocation of entitlement rights for the management of com- mon property resources. In particular, the case of allocating a Total Allowable Catch quota for the Mediterranean swordfish is examined as a case study. The proposed approach comprises three steps. First, there is a bargaining procedure between the European Union (EU...

The 2003 CAP reform considerably affects cropping patterns in European agriculture. At the same time the imperatives of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) are expected to modify irrigation decisions especially in Southern Europe where irrigated agriculture utilizes about 70–80% of total water. The paper uses a nonlinear optimization model that inc...

There is a vast body of literature dedicated to identifying the major drivers that explain human impacts on the environment. In this study, we utilize the STIRPAT framework to assess whether two controversial factors should be considered when examining how humans affect the environment. Specifically, we investigate whether the quality of the democr...

Abstract Whether and how new members can join international fisheries agreements, which are in charge of managing the global commons, is a complex issue and remains unresolved in the scholarly literature. This paper presents a simple, participatory and fair procedure, which utilizes the concepts of minimum rights and the nondiscrimination principle...

This article develops a theoretical model that explores firms' abatement choices. The main results are: First, in a market comprised of a not sufficiently large number of heterogeneous firms always there exists a subset of firms that are willing to undertake abatement activities, if their marginal altruistic cost of emissions is positive. Second, a...

This paper uses the most appropriate measures and data sources to map the likely growth delinking of Polish economy for the period 1990-2016. Evidences of green growth exist and were assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. This paper also examines the likely policy implications by means of cross-correlation analysis. The results indicate...

The concept of economic complexity and the relevant economic complexity index (ECI) have been introduced in the theory and empirics of economic growth. As a consequence, the literature on economic complexity covers its relationship with several factors related to growth including environmental implications. Using traditional non-parametric statisti...

This article explores farmer's decisions regarding the expansion of organic farming through intensive input use and the degree of in-house organic fertilizer production. Using a theoretical synthesis of two strands of the scholarly literature, namely pro-environmental norms and the goal-framing theory, the contribution of this article to the curren...

It is a central theme in the scholarly literature that incentives promote efforts and serve policy goals. Yet, incentive schemes may sometimes backfire due to complex interplay between motives with moral commitments and personal perceptions. In such a setting, some novel results were obtained.

This theoretical research enriches the well-established postulate of incentives driven rationality, with elements of different strands of the psychological scholarly literature, such as the motivational crowding out and the goal framing theory, to examine how and when farmers join voluntary schemes concerning environmental protection. Some novel re...

This paper seeks to contribute to existing debates on the relationship between democracy and environmental quality. More specifically, we aim to provide nuance and insight into the question as to whether democratic regimes are better equipped to protect the environment. After critically reviewing theoretical arguments and providing an overview of e...

Sustainability is not something that can be taught. This may be an odd statement to start off a foreword to a book that seeks to enhance the capacities of the academic teachers and trainers to conduct interdisciplinary education that focuses on sustainability. Ultimately a more sustainable world calls upon our ability to learn to continuously resp...

The last CAP reform provides Member States the option to apply the Basic Payment Scheme in finer scale than the national level, termed hereafter as regionalization. We use a farm model that represents almost 90% of the Greek commercial farms for evaluating a wide range of regionalization scenarios. Exploratory Data Analysis is used to get insights...

In recent years, there is a widespread use of composite indicators, that are used to analyze, understand and predict social and economic factors and phenomena. This paper uses the Economic Complexity Index, in order to examine the synchronization of this economic complexity with the productive capabilities and environmental performance of a country...

The aim of this paper is to compare the supply-side and demand-side approaches for assessing the scarcity rents of irrigation water. The results obtained from the case study confirm the expectation that the demand-side rationale provides the lower bound estimate of water scarcity rents. Specifically, a hypothetical elimination of water scarcity bri...

The paper examines the issue of designing and implementing policy measures to control complex agricultural externalities. Complex externalities refer to the situation where a production (firm on firm) externality coexists with a detrimental (firm on society) externality. The paper identifies the optimal solution for complex externalities, which is...

Environmental policy often addresses multiple targets, yet much economic analysis of pollution control is based on a single-target objective. In this paper, we present an analysis of policies to control non-point source nitrate pollution in the presence of minimum river flow restrictions. A non-linear bio-physical economic optimisation model of an...

Although the initial allocation of pollution permits is neutral in terms of efficiency, it does have a significant impact on distributive equity. In this paper, we examine the two main categories of permit allocation rules, the distributive and the reductive, for controlling phosphorus pollution in a small catchment in South West England. Based on...

This discussion addresses some aspects of a recent paper appearing in this journal which investigates cost effective coastal water management based on different assumptions of the probability distributions (normal and log-normal) of pollutant transport. We also suggest an alternative approach to overcome the technical problems of using the theoreti...

The 'polluter pays principle' (PPP) is one of the four principles that govern the European Union's environmental policy. Although PPP justifies Pigovian taxation as a legitimate policy means to internalise externalities, there is a potential contradiction between PPP and Pigovian taxation depending upon the definition of pollution control costs. We...

This paper extends the empiricalanalysis of non-point source pollution to thecase where the pollutant is stochastic andalternative regulatory instruments havedifferent administrative costs. It also appliesa method of stochastic programming whereemissions are log-normally distributed. Forthe Kennet catchment in South West England werank a range of p...

One of the primary justifications for using transferable permits for pollution control is that they achieve a given level of emission reduction at the lowest cost. Although the initial allocation of pollution permits may have no impact in terms of efficiency, it does have a significant impact on equity. In this paper, we examine a variety of permit...

Agricultural nitrate emissions within a river catchment are, due to rainfall and other sources of natural variation, uncertain. A regulator aiming to reduce nitrate emissions into surface and groundwater faces a trade-off between reliability in achieving emission standards and the cost of compliance to agriculture. This paper explores this trade-of...

We consider a special case of Schmutzler's and Goulder''s (1997) analysis of output taxes vs emission taxes as environmental policy instruments. We identify new necessary conditions for the existence of an optimum. We also show that, in this case, it is always optimal to have a mixed tax with positive enforcement effort.

Agricultural activities are one of the major drivers of increased nutrient levels such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) to both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Elevated nutrient concentrations are associated with degraded water quality that can result in potential impacts for human health and the environment. A recent European study has ident...

The most important obstacle to solving diffuse pollution problems is that emissions are either unobservable or cannot be observed at a reasonable cost. Biophysical models may provide sufficient information to set a cost-effective emission tax. However, evidence from recent studies has shown that transaction costs for emission-based policies are hig...

The choice of environmental taxes is one of the central themes in policy design for agricultural pollution control, which dominates both empirical and theoretical research. This paper examines two assumptions very often employed in applied research, namely the absence of transaction costs and the normality of agricultural pollutants. Our results in...

Controlling water pollution from agriculture is intrinsically difficult. In most cases, pollution occurs over a wide area and its sources are diffuse and difficult to identify. In addition, water pollution levels can vary substantially over space and time, and depend not only on rainfall pattern and land type, but also on farmers’ decisions. These...

An economic analysis of policies to control nonpoint source nitrate pollution in the presence of minimum river flow restrictions was undertaken. A non-linear bio-physical economic optimisation model of an intensively cultivated Scottish agricultural catchment was constructed. The presence of minimum river flow controls in the catchment was found to...