Karina Simone Sass (p), Tomaz Lopes Cavalheiro Ponce Dentinho, Fabiana Issler

Ofir Rubin

The paper is about the vulnerability of people and places to natural hazards. We propose a bottom-up method to map natural hazards' vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and exposure, and apply it to the people and places of Timor Leste. Our analysis is based on five hundred fulfilled questionnaires collected in ninety villages and six municipalities of Timor Leste, on Census Data, and on orography data. We use an extended Q Analysis to evaluate people’s adaptive capacity, cluster analysis on orography to estimate exposure, and three stages of regression to relate declared vulnerability with estimated adaptive capacity and exposure. The adaptive capacity relates directly to the attitudes expressed in the rankings on hazards, assets, reactions, and expectations of the features of the respondents; and exposure related to the territorial orography. Results show not only the consistency and applicability of the method but also highlight recommendations to reduce vulnerability and increase adaptive capacities such as the increase of accessibility to Dili and the promotion of buildings on the hills instead of the plains.

Yanai Ankaoua, Ofir Rubin (p), Stav Rosenzweig, Aviv Steren, Ziv Bar-Nahum

Karina Simone Sass

To encourage consumers to purchase low emission cars, countries implement environmental feebate programs. These schemes levy high purchase taxes on new cars with high emission levels, and rebate new cars with low emission levels. However, it is unclear whether these programs are effective in supporting environmental goals and in enhancing overall welfare. We investigate an environmental feebate scheme introduced in Israel in 2009. Whereas similar policy measures introduced in other countries at around the same time aimed at reducing only CO2 emissions, the policy in Israel was more comprehensive in that it was the only feebate scheme in the world that included all 5 key car pollutants (CO2, NOX, THC, CO, and PM). We use data of all new cars marketed in Israel between 2007-2018 and employ a differentiated products modeling approach to assess the market under the feebate scheme. We then use simulations to generate market outcomes had the feebate scheme not taken place. Our findings indicate that, under the feebate scheme, retail prices were higher and fewer cars were sold, thereby generating lower (higher) consumer (manufacture) surplus. Surprisingly, the feebate scheme has proven counterproductive to policymakers' intentions of decreasing emission, as emissions have increased. While the overall welfare effect of the policy was close to null, we show a positive association between the rebate size on a product and manufacturer markup. This finding suggests that manufacturers strategically took advantage of the environmental policy to increase their markups. We discuss the policy implications of these results.