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No matter how long a writer might take to craft the perfect story, unforgettable characters, or crazy twist ending, a good fan theory can blow it out of the water. Most of the time, they're only meant to give fans a bit of fun, or a wild idea to debate. But sometimes, they actually can answer questions left unresolved, or get fans to love heroes and villains more than they ever thought possible.
Here are Screen Rant's 10 Movie Theories That Completely Change Amazing Films.
E.T. The Extraterrestrial
Steven Spielberg's adorable alien movie had every kid wishing they had their own E.T. to look after. But George Lucas took his friend's reference to Star Wars - when E.T. seems to recognize a Yoda Halloween costume - and raised him a shared universe, including members of his species in the Senate of his Star Wars prequels. But if E.T. exists in the Star Wars mythology, his adorable abilities start to look different.
The fact that he can raise Elliott's bike into the air, or heal his finger with the The Force. But only one kind of Force user can bring the dead back to life, or resurrect themselves. How the movie changes when you consider the odds of E.T. being a Sith lord... well, that's up to fans to decide.
Harry Potter
There's no way around it: Willy Wonka had to rely on some magic to make his famous candy. But one fan theory claims that the troublemaking, red-haired Wonka is no random wizard: he's actually George Weasley from the Harry Potter series in disguise. It's a wild theory, but the evidence is shocking. For starters, George and his twin Fred invented similar kinds of candy in their own store, before Fred was killed by Death Eaters. There's even George's missing ear, blown off in The Deathly Hallows with Wonka alluding to the same injury. It's the opposite ear, but that actually fits the Weasley's sense of humor.
Finally, there's the elf-like Oompa Loompas who do all his work, and the evidence that George took his twin's death harder than fans realized. How else do you explain Wonka's office, with every single item sliced perfectly in half? At least he found a friend in Charlie.
Fight Club
Even though the story of Fight Club and Project Mayhem is packed with twists, fans can't help but look for even more mysteries hidden within it. Or, in the case of one of the funnier fan theories, outside of it. The narrator of the story is never actually named, so fans have come up with one of their own: Calvin, as in "Calvin and Hobbes," the popular comic strip following a young boy and his troublemaking imaginary tiger.
The theory says that Calvin eventually had to give up his imaginary friend, bottling up his rebel spirit and joining the working masses. Until he reaches a breaking point, and his fun-loving, occasionally destructive and subversive friend returns - this time, in the form of a man, but every bit as wild. Is it true? Probably not. But it shows why fan theories can be even better than a movie's own script.
Fans of the Dark Knight weren't just outraged when Michael Keaton was cast as Tim Burton's Batman, but at the new twist on his origin story. In the comics, it was a random mugger named Joe Chill who killed Bruce Wayne's parents, but in the big screen version, it was Jack Nicholson's Joker, decades before he would become his green-haired alter ego. Taking down his parents' killer is a major plot point, but some fans have wondered if the change is more than it seems.
According to their theory, The Joker never actually killed Bruce's parents - that's just a lie he tells himself, blaming each new supervillain for the same crime. It shows Bruce is more damaged and tortured than fans realized, giving the movie an even darker tone.
The Suicide Squad
Who says a fan theory has to be perfectly believable? Sometimes, it's better if it's just fun to consider. Before movie fans even knew Jared Leto by name, he was cracking ribs as a member of - you guessed it - Fight Club. In fact, he was Tyler Durden's favorite pupil, which was why the narrator had to leave him brutally beaten, with only a handful of teeth. Fast forward over a decade and a half, and the first image of Leto's Joker in the Suicide Squad movie had fans suspicious.
A crazed student of chaos and crime, just like Durden, with false metal teeth, played by the same actor? The studio may not have ever intended to imply their Joker could be Fight Club's Angel Face all grown up, but for the fans, the similarities were too perfect to ignore.
When a young girl's body shows up bearing signs of a shark attack, the small town's mayor goes into damage control, trying to keep the new police chief from closing the beaches, chalking the girl's death up to a boating accident. But what if Brody just stopped a cover-up that had run for years? The city's leaders claim the girl isn't the first to die while swimming, stating that "it's happened before," and it's only when an outside expert is brought in that the "boating accident" excuse is blown to pieces.
It's easy to believe the mayor is evil enough to plant a tiger shark to take the blame, but we'll never know how many citizens wound up in a shark's belly, just to be covered up by the town authorities.
Kill Bill
Quentin Tarantino's two-part martial arts manhunt says all it needs to in the title: Uma Thurman's Bride is out to Kill Bill, her former mentor. And in the second film, she finally finishes the job... or does she? In the end credits, the characters on The Bride's hit list all are crossed out, a sign that she killed them along the way. All Except Daryl Hannah, who wasn't killed, just left for dead in the desert (minus her eyes).
But David Carradine's name isn't marked at all, implying that The Bride DIDN'T kill Bill after all. Was he faking his death? The added detail in the credits wouldn't make sense if he wasn't, but the director isn't giving an official answer any time soon.
Once the hero Jake Sully is accepted by the natives of Pandora, he learns that the tribe's power over other animals lies in their ponytails. When they link with the rest of the planet's wildlife, a bond is formed, permanently linking them together. The most important link comes when Jake bonds directly with the life force behind the entire moon. When he wakes up, he leaves his human allies behind, and leads the natives to victory.
So some have asked: did Jake really decide to do the right thing, or did the life force he bonded with command him to do it, just like he controlled animals before? It all worked out in the end, but it makes you see the hero in a completely different light.
Star Wars
The prequel trilogy caused plenty of plot problems with the original Star Wars story, with these two characters chief among them. The problem? Why would Chewbacca have kept quiet about knowing the Jedi Yoda this entire time, and why would R2D2 keep his knowledge of Darth Vader's true identity all to himself? Some fans have offered a fun solution, claiming Han Solo's co-pilot and the droid were secret agents of the Rebellion the entire time.
It may have seemed like coincidence, but what if R2D2 knew exactly where to look for Luke Skywalker? And what if the meeting between Obi-Wan and Chewie was more than just a job intervie, but an order given to lead Han Solo into the Rebel Alliance? There's no way to ever prove it, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth considering.
Indiana Jones
Fans of the galaxy far, far away knows just how many Star Wars easter eggs wound up in the Indiana Jones series, as a tribute by director Steven Spielberg to his producer and friend, George Lucas. But fans have come up with an even funnier explanation. Since Han Solo was frozen in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back, and the first Indiana Jones movie was released a year later, fans claim Indy is nothing but the dream of a frozen Han.
He imagines himself as the archaeologist adventurer, but hints of C-3PO, Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2D2 and even carbonite all trickle in. By the same theory, Return of the Jedi never happened - which makes sense. Han saving the day, and getting the girl (who just happens to be Luke's sister, not his lover) always did seem like too happy an ending...
Those are some of the funnier or mindblowing theories we've found among fans, but which ones are your favorites? Let us know in the comments, and remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos like this one.


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MI: Michigan spends $1B on charter schools but fails to hold them accountable. Michigan taxpayers pour nearly $1 billion a year into charter schools — but state laws regulating charters are among the nation's weakest, and the state demands little accountability in how taxpayer dollars are spent and how well children are educated. A yearlong investigation by the Detroit Free Press reveals that Michigan's lax oversight has enabled a range of abuses in a system now responsible for more than 140,000 Michigan children. That figure is growing as more parents try charter schools as an alternative to traditional districts. . . . Wasteful spending and double-dipping. Board members, school founders and employees steering lucrative deals to themselves or insiders. Schools allowed to operate for years despite poor academic records. No state standards for who operates charter schools or how to oversee them. Detroit Free Press
TX: The real story behind Cintra nearing bankruptcy on SH 130. . . .Cintra is also in financial trouble on its Indiana Toll Road concession, and hoping to restructure its overwhelming $3.8 billion debt on its 75-year lease in order to stay solvent despite doubling the toll rates once it took over the tollway from the state. Transurban just handed over operation of the Pocahontas Parkway (895) in Virginia to its creditors in yet another fledging P3. TransUrban owed $300 million to a consortium of European banks who had DBi Services now take over operations of the lackluster toll road. . . .There are private roads, but public infrastructure is inherently a governmental function. So free market principles don't apply. It's why we have eminent domain – the public understands that sometimes private property must be condemned for public necessity. But under P3s, that land is taken for a private profit. Examiner.com
IN: Indiana voucher report raises funding questions. Nearly half the kids who used state-funded vouchers to attend private school last year never tried the public system first. That startling fact was part of a new report released recently by the Indiana Department of Education. It comes just a few years after the voucher program first launched. And the number of those students heading straight into vouchers is likely to increase, even though one original intent of the program was to provide an alternative to parents and students for whom public school wasn't working. The Courier-Journal
CA: Riverside, California Prepares To Dump Red Light Cameras. Officials in Riverside, California have lost faith in red light cameras after eight years of use. On Tuesday, Councilman Chris MacArthur moved to have staff draft a proposal that cancel the city's contract with Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia and bring down all fourteen cameras — to applause in the council chambers. The motion passed six to one. MacArthur made his case by listing each photo enforced intersection in his ward along with the number of accidents before and after camera installation. There was no reduction in collisions. The Newspaper.com
Beachfront Access. Though the rules of public beach access differ from state to state, the "public trust doctrine" ensures that the water and the part of the beach covered by high tide belong to all. But that can be rendered moot when property owners close off access to the public. Is privatization of beaches appropriate? Should those with beachfront homes have to open their land to all comers? New York Times

subset: commoncrawl


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I. Introduction
There has been much agonizing over achieving the collective benefits from addressing global climate change. However, pricing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel use can produce important national co-benefits. Most obviously, as carbon charges reduce use of coal, natural gas, and petroleum products, this reduces the amount of people killed by outdoor air pollution, currently estimated at 3.7 million a year worldwide.1 To take another example, if congestion, accidents, and other externalities from motor vehicle use are not fully internalized through other pricing policies, again there are potentially significant co-benefits to the extent that carbon charges reduce vehicle use. The potential for co-benefits suggests that countries need not wait on internationally coordinated efforts if some carbon mitigation is in their own national interests—that is, the domestic environmental benefits exceed the CO2 mitigation costs, leaving aside climate benefits.
These considerations raise three important questions for policy.
First, what scale of CO2 pricing is in countries' own interests and how this would affect CO2 emissions? Ideally non-CO2 externalities would be internalized through other policies, including charges for air emissions from coal and for peak-period driving on congested roads. However, until such policies are comprehensively implemented (likely a long time given that no country presently has anything like fully corrective charges) it is entirely appropriate to price CO2 emissions for domestic co-benefits (prior to assessing additional measures warranted by global concerns).
Second, given cross-country heterogeneity in co-benefits (and medium-run constraints on internalization of co-benefits through other policy instruments), efficiency requires differentiated carbon prices across countries, with prices higher in countries with greater co-benefits per ton of CO2 reductions. The question is whether the extra benefits from nationally efficient carbon pricing, compared with uniform pricing (resulting, for example, from linking trading systems), are empirically large—if so, this suggests the potential superiority of pricing regimes allowing countries to choose their own emission prices (ideally subject to some agreed minimum price reflecting global climate damages) over agreements inducing all countries to price emissions at the same rate.
The third question is how much revenue is raised from nationally efficient CO2 pricing and how revenue use might affect the net benefits from pricing co-benefits in different countries. In the latter regard, prior literature (e.g., Goulder et al. 1999, Parry et al. 1999) emphasizes the large differences in costs between carbon pricing policies where revenues are used productively—most obviously to lower the burden of income and other taxes that distort the level of economic activity and its composition—versus carbon pricing policies (like trading systems with free allowance allocations or carbon taxes with low-value earmarks) that fail to exploit efficiency gains from recycling opportunities.
This paper seeks to address the above three questions2, though the main focus is on assessing nationally efficient CO2 prices, that is, prices reflecting domestic (non-internalized) environmental benefits per ton of CO2 reductions. These prices are based on country-level estimates of (non-CO2) environmental damages by fossil fuel product from Parry et al. (2014), and a simple spreadsheet model populated with fuel use, price, and tax/subsidy data, along with simple rules of thumb for the responsiveness of fuel use to carbon pricing. Results are provided for the top twenty CO2 emitting countries, collectively accounting for 80 percent of current, energy-related, global CO2 emissions.
The main findings can be summarized as follows.
As regards the first question, the nationally efficient CO2 price is typically quite large, for example, $63 per ton—estimated for year 2010 and in US $ for that year—in China, and averages $57.5 per ton among the top twenty emitters. For comparison, a US government study (US IAWG 2013) puts the global damage from CO2 emissions at $35 per ton, and CO2 prices in the European Union's Emissions Trading System have been below $10 per ton since January 2013. In most cases, co-benefits primarily reflect reduced air pollution deaths from less coal use, though in some cases they primarily reflect reduced road fuel subsidy distortions and reduced vehicle externalities. In a few cases (where health damages from coal are limited and motor fuel excises are broadly in line with, or exceed, non-carbon externalities) nationally efficient CO2 prices are around $10 per ton or less, and negative in one case (Brazil, where fuel taxes currently overcharge for domestic externalities). Imposing nationally efficient CO2 prices reduces total CO2 emissions for the top-twenty emitters by 13.5 percent below baseline levels (a reduction in global emissions of 10.8 percent).3
On the second policy question, net economic benefits are increased by 23 percent under nationally efficient CO2 prices rather than a uniform price (for the same 13.5 percent reduction in emissions from the largest twenty emitters). This is a significant (though not dramatic) gain and reinforces the pragmatic case for flexible pricing regimes when co-benefits, or more generally fiscal needs and political feasibility differ across countries, or when equity concerns (given constraints on international transfers) warrant lower prices for lower income countries.
As regards the third policy question, on average revenues are large, almost 2 percent of GDP across the top twenty countries. Moreover, if revenues from nationally efficient carbon prices are used to cut broader income taxes, the overall benefits from carbon pricing can increase substantially, on average by about 100 percent (this is the 'double dividend' which can occur when the full range of distortions from the broader fiscal system is properly considered). But if revenue recycling benefits are forgone, the costs of carbon pricing are substantially higher, and actually exceed co-benefits. This underscores the key reservation about environmental taxes, namely the risk that revenues are used for low-value purposes— combining carbon taxes with offsetting reductions in other taxes avoids this risk.
The usual caveats about parameter uncertainty apply—due to data constraints and uncertainties (e.g., over pollution/health relationships or the valuation of health effects) co-benefits may be measured with considerable imprecision, though sensitivity analyses suggest the general flavor of the results is robust (if anything, co-benefits may be significantly understated here due to conservative assumptions). Terms of trade effects, which can lower national (but not global) welfare for fuel exporters, are however excluded, as are emissions leakage issues4, and adjustment costs from resource re-allocations across sectors. It should also be noted that that the measurement of energy subsidies used here (accounting for just over half of the nationally efficient CO2 price in Saudi Arabia, for example) is not universally accepted, subsidies vary year-to-year with international fuel price volatility, and for practical purposes it may make more sense to reform the subsidies first, before implementing (more opaque) carbon pricing schemes.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses a straightforward formula for the nationally efficient CO2 price and country-level data needed to implement it. Section 3 presents the main results. Section 4 introduces broader fiscal linkages. Section 5 offers concluding remarks.
II. Defining and Measuring Nationally Efficient CO2 Prices
A. Analytical Framework
This sub-section discusses the welfare effects of carbon pricing in the presence of fuel taxes/subsidies and environmental externalities and (very basic) formulas to be estimated.
(i) Assumptions
A very simple comparative static model of fossil fuel use in a particular country is used where Xi denotes the consumption of fuel, pi is the pre-tax supply price, and i indexes four possible fuels—coal, natural gas, gasoline, and diesel used by road vehicles.5
The fuel market prior to carbon pricing is shown in Figure 1. The height of the demand curve at any point is the benefit to fuel users from an extra unit of consumption (e.g., the benefit, net of travel time costs, from vehicle travel from an additional liter of gasoline), while the height of the supply curve reflects the costs (payments for labor, capital, energy, and resources to extract, transport, and process fuel, or import it) of producing an extra unit. The fuel demand curve is taken as linear over the relevant range for analytical convenience, which is a reasonable approximation given the scale of fuel reductions considered here. In addition, the fuel supply curve is taken to be perfectly elastic—allowing for an upward sloping supply curve would dampen fuel responses to carbon taxes, but perhaps only modestly in the longer run when supply curves tend to be relatively flat (e.g., Bovenberg and Goulder 2001).
Figure 1.Net Benefits from a Pre-Existing Fuel Tax
Suppose there is a pre-existing excise tax of ti per unit on fuel i,6 so the consumer fuel price is pi + tt and fuel consumption is Xt1. Compared with the zero-tax case, consumer (or fuel user) surplus is lower by trapezoid abed, while the government gains rectangle abcd in tax revenue, leaving a welfare cost of triangle bee (welfare costs, correctly measured to account for linkages with the broader fiscal system, are discussed later).
Suppose also that fuel use is associated with a domestic environmental cost (i.e., excluding CO2 damages) per unit of zi. For coal and natural gas these costs primarily reflect mortality risks to people exposed to the air pollution produced by combusting these fuels. For gasoline and road diesel, the costs also include those imposed on others from the extra road congestion, accident risk, and road damage due to the driving associated with additional fuel use. In measuring these externalities, account is implicitly taken of existing regulations, for example for emissions control technologies or vehicle safety, through their effects on observed emission rates, traffic fatalities, etc. Box 1 discusses further externalities from fuel use that (for various reasons) are excluded from co-benefit estimates used here, terms of trade effects, perhaps, being the most notable.
Accounting for these environmental costs, the fuel tax now produces domestic environmental benefits of rectangle fgec in Figure 1 and there is a net welfare gain, of trapezoid fgeb—a positive welfare gain is more likely the larger are non-CO2 environmental costs per unit relative to the fuel tax.
In contrast if fuel is subsidized (which is common, for example, for petroleum in oil producing countries in the Middle East and North Africa where administered pricing causes large divergences between international and domestic prices) ti < 0 and there is a deadweight loss from the subsidy, the mirror image of triangle bec in Figure 1, between the supply and demand curve to the right of fuel consumption Xi0. In addition, there is a further deadweight loss equal to the extra consumption caused by the subsidy, times the environmental damage per unit of fuel use.
(ii) Nationally Efficient CO2 Prices
Figure 2 shows the impact of a new carbon charge of τ per ton of CO2 emissions imposed on a fuel with non-CO2 environmental damages and pre-existing taxes and CO2 emissions factor (i.e., tons of emissions released per unit of fuel combustion) ei. Trapezoid abcd reflects the impact of the charge on exacerbating the deadweight loss from the fuel tax but, for the case illustrated here, this is more than offset by the non-CO2 environmental benefits, leaving a net welfare gain of trapezoid efba. This trapezoid has average height Zi–ti–τei/2 and its base, the reduction in fuel use, is
Figure 2.Net Benefits from a CO2 Charge on an Individual Fuel
In equation (1),
Box 1.Other Externalities from Energy Use
There are a variety of other candidates for externalities associated with the production and use of fossil fuel energy that, for various reasons, are not taken into account here. Examples include:
Active living benefits from travel mode shifting. City-level studies (e.g., Woodcock et al. 2009) suggest there are substantial health benefits when individuals shift away from car trips to other travel modes involving physical exercise, including biking, walking, and walking to transit stops. However, much of the behavioral response to motor fuel taxes reflects other factors (e.g., longer run improvements in vehicle fuel economy, car pooling, combining car trips, using transit with minimal walking distance to stops) and people may internalize at least some of the health benefits in their travel mode decisions.
Environmental impacts from fuel extraction, storage, and transportation. Adverse side effects here include de-spoiling of the natural environment at mining and drilling sites, toxic releases from mine tailings and fuel processing wastes, leakage from fuel storage tanks, oil spills, etc. However, these types of external costs appear to be small in magnitude relative to external costs considered here (e.g., NRC 2009) and they are better addressed through other instruments than fuel taxes (e.g., double hull requirements for tankers, requirements that mined areas are returned to their natural state).
Energy security. The external costs of foreign energy dependence have always been opaque, and more so as expanding supplies of unconventional oil and gas reduce the share of global supplies coming from regions that might be viewed as unstable. In individual cases, policies to promote greater diversity in energy supply may make sense, but it is difficult to develop consistent, crosscountry estimates of taxes to correct for energy security concerns.
Indoor air pollution. The World Health Organization (WHO 2014) estimates that even more people die prematurely from inhaling indoor air pollution (e.g., fumes from fuel burning in cooking stoves) than from outdoor air pollution. But again, to what extent indoor air pollution—where the households causing pollution are mostly the ones affected by it—should be viewed as an external cost is not entirely clear. Moreover, there is a risk that high prices for taxed fossil fuels may cause switching to untaxed fuels (e.g., biomass, garbage) with equally, or perhaps worse, health effects. More pressing policies might include, for example, incentives for better ventilated stoves and clean fuel alternatives.
Terms of trade effects. If a group of countries collectively price carbon emissions this can result in lower international fuel prices and a transfer from fuel exporters to fuel importers—effectively, a worsening of the terms of trade for the former. From a national welfare perspective, this would represent a co-cost rather than a co-benefit for exporters. But these costs are not considered here as they are tricky to estimate—they depend, for example, on how many countries price carbon and how fuel supply (often in administered markets) responds.
Aggregating over fuel markets (where quantity changes reflect both own- and cross-price effects), the total welfare change is:
Differentiating (2) with respect to τ (ηi is constant) gives the nationally efficient CO2 tax or price:
- the larger are the non-internalized, non-CO2 external costs for fuels (relative to fuel prices);
- the greater the share of emissions accounted for by fuels with relatively high net external costs; and
- the greater the relative price responsiveness of fuels with relatively high net external costs.
However, a proportionate increase in all fuel price elasticities has no effect on the efficient tax—this increases the co-benefits and the CO2 reductions in the same proportion, but with no effect on co-benefits per ton of CO2 reduced. In other words, the efficient tax is independent of the overall responsiveness of the fossil fuel energy system to the tax (as reflected, for example, in the prospects for renewables and adoption of energy-saving technologies).
Equations (1) to (3) are applied using data discussed below, and used (in a spreadsheet) to infer nationally-efficient carbon prices, and their impacts on emissions, fuel use, and welfare.
B. Data
This subsection discusses baseline emissions and fuel data, fossil fuel externalities, and the price responsiveness of fuel use. The focus is on the top twenty CO2 emitting countries, henceforth "T20". The study year is 2010 (which avoids the need for data forecasting), the question asked being what would have been the nationally efficient CO2 price for T20 countries in that year.
(i) Emissions and Fuel Data
Energy-related CO2 emissions for 2010 (and GDP) are taken from IEA (2014). As indicated in Figure 3, China is the biggest emitter (26.8 percent of global emissions), followed by the United States (16.9), Russia (5.5), India (5.3), Japan (3.6), Germany (2.3) and Iran (1.9), while Poland (0.9) is the smallest emitter among the T20. The T20 together accounted for 80 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2010.
Figure 3.CO2 Emission Shares and Intensity, 2010
Source. IEA (2014).
Also shown in Figure 3 is the CO2 intensity of the economy, measured in tons per $1,000 of GDP—for a given carbon price and proportionate emissions reduction, the CO2 intensity indicates the scale of potential revenues and net economic benefits relative to the size of the overall economy. Most countries have a CO2 intensity of around 0.2 to 0.6 tons per $1,000 of GDP, though China, Russia, India, and South Africa (all heavy coal users), and Iran and Saudi Arabia (intensive petroleum users), have CO2 intensities of around 1.0 or more.
Consumption of coal, natural gas, gasoline, and motor diesel by country for 2010 was also obtained from IEA (2014).
Figure 4 shows the individual contribution of these fuels (using their carbon emissions factors—see below) to total emissions from the four fuels. Coal accounts for 75 percent or more of emissions in China, India, Poland, and South Africa but 20 percent or less in Brazil, France, Italy, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. Natural gas accounts for around 20 to 60 percent of emissions in 15 countries, though only 2 to 3 percent in China and South Africa. Motor fuels combined mostly account for around 10 to 50 percent of emissions.
Figure 4.Contribution of Fuels to CO2 Emissions, 2010
Source. IEA (2014).
Carbon emissions factors (ei) are taken from Parry et al. (2014) and show essentially no cross-country variations for a particular fuel, though per unit of energy, natural gas, gasoline, and motor diesel generate about 59 percent, 73 percent, and 78 percent respectively of the CO2 emissions per unit of coal energy. Carbon emissions factors and fuel use give the CO2 shares (Si).
Fuel user prices (pi + ti) for 2010 by country are taken from an IMF database (see Clements et al., 2013, pp. 143–44). These prices are compiled from various sources including publicly available data, survey data, reporting from country authorities, and extrapolations from international reference prices. Fuel excise tax (or subsidy) rates (ti) are from OECD (2010) and Clements et al. (2013)—where not available publicly, these reflect estimated price gaps between demand and supply prices.
Figure 5 shows pre-existing taxes/subsidies in 2010, expressed per ton of CO2 (i.e., the tax/subsidy rate for a particular fuel divided by the carbon emissions factor for that fuel). There are no meaningful excises on coal and natural gas among the T20, and a handful of countries provide gas subsidies, for example, India (equivalent to $19 per ton of CO2), Iran ($95) and Russia ($18).7 However, most countries levy sizeable motor fuel excises, equivalent to over $100 per ton of CO2 for gasoline in 12 countries and for diesel (which is frequently tax favored relative to gasoline) ten countries. However, motor fuels are heavily subsidized in Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, where gasoline subsidies were between $92 and $193 per ton of CO2 in 2010. An important caveat about the subsidies, however, is that to the extent they reflect differences in domestic and international fuel prices they vary from year to year with volatility in the latter. Moreover, the price-gap concept of a subsidy generally favored by economists is not accepted by all governments, especially if domestic prices recover domestic supply costs (the implications of ignoring subsidies are noted below).
Figure 5.Pre-Existing Fuel Taxes/Subsidies, 2010
Source. Clements et al. (2013) and authors' calculations.
Note. Fuel taxes/subsidies per unit of fuels are divided by the fuel's emissions factor to express them in $ per ton of CO2. Most countries do not significantly tax or subsidize coal or natural gas consumption.
(ii) Externalities
External costs (zi) are taken from a recent IMF study (Parry et al. 2014). Given the uncertainties and controversies involved in quantification (e.g., how to value health risks in different countries) these estimates are best viewed as a starting point for discussion though they are based on conservative assumptions (e.g., in regard to air emission rates at coal plants—see below). Methodological details are summarized in the Appendix (given that this paper does not refine the methodology). Here we go straight to the numbers, which are for 2010.
Figure 6 shows the external cost estimates by fuel net of any taxes or subsidies— these estimates therefore reflect the gap between corrective taxes for non-CO2 externalities and existing fiscal policies—again expressed per ton of CO2 for that fuel. The external cost is simply the net external costs in Figure 6 plus the taxes (or less the subsidies) in Figure 5.
Figure 6.Non-CO2 External Costs by Fuel, Net of Taxes/Subsidies, 2010
Source. Parry et al. (2014) and authors' calculations.
Note. Per unit external costs, net of fuel taxes/subsidies, are divided by the fuel's emissions factor to express them in $ per ton of CO2.
Non-CO2 externalities for coal are positive in all cases (because air pollution costs are positive while existing taxes are essentially zero), exceeding $50 per ton of CO2 in eight cases, though they are moderate, for example, in South Africa, reflecting relatively low population exposure (given coastal proximities) and mortality risk values.8 Net external costs per ton of CO2 for natural gas are typically much smaller than for coal.9 For many countries, the next external cost from motor fuels is substantial, for example, over $100 per ton of CO2 for diesel fuel for 14 countries (reflecting taxes undercharging of diesel fuel especially, due to unusually high air pollution damages, for Russia), though for five European countries and Brazil non-CO2 costs for gasoline are negative (reflecting taxes in excess of corrective levels). The nationally efficient CO2 price weights the net external costs from each fuel by their share in CO2 reductions (see below) implying, for most countries, a disproportionately large weight applied to coal's external costs.
(iii) (Long-run) behavioral responses
Estimating country-level fuel price elasticities (ηi) is well beyond the scope of this paper as it would require developing a consistent methodology (for example based on cross-sectional regressions, using a country-level data set) to develop these estimates. Instead, common elasticities across countries are assumed, taking a long-run perspective (after turnover of capital), based on the following discussion.
For the United States, a good starting point is the US Department of Energy's National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), which incorporates considerable detail on the energy sector and technology adoption, though the overall price responsiveness of fuel use in this model is viewed as conservative and tends to be somewhat smaller than implied by computable general equilibrium models. According to simulations from a variant of this model in Krupnick et al. (2010), the price elasticity for coal use in the United States (in response to a carbon tax, which takes into account the change in natural gas prices) is around -0.15. For comparison, the simple mean among eight studies of coal price elasticities (focusing on various OECD countries, China, and India) summarized in Trüby and Moritz (2011) is -0.28. A coal elasticity of -0.25 is used for the benchmark calculations here (for all countries)—coal is relatively price inelastic, given the large sunk investments and very long lives of coal plants.
Natural gas tends to be more responsive to changes in its own price, given its frequent role in supplying peak period (as opposed to baseload) power, though (in countries where coal and gas compete) this is dampened as carbon pricing drives up the price of coal relative to gas. Here the natural gas elasticity is also assumed to be -0.25.10
Numerous studies have estimated motor fuel (especially gasoline) price elasticities for different countries and the value assumed here, -0.5 for both gasoline and diesel, reflects, roughly speaking, a central value from the literature.11
C. Results
Benchmark estimates of nationally efficient carbon prices and their emissions impacts are first discussed, followed by a comparison of differentiated and uniform carbon pricing, and some sensitivity results.
(i) Nationally Efficient CO2 Prices: Benchmark Estimates and Emissions Impacts
Figure 7 shows calculations of nationally efficient CO2 prices for the T20 based on the above formulas and data. The average price for the T20 countries (with countries weighted by their emissions shares) is $57.5 per ton of CO2 (all monetary figures are in US $ 2010).
Figure 7.Nationally Efficient CO2 Prices due to Domestic Co-Benefits, 2010
Source. Calculations using equation (3) and data discussed above.
Note. Figures show carbon prices that maximize domestic co-benefits (excluding climate benefits) net of climate mitigation costs (where costs do not account for broader fiscal linkages). Top 20 shows the price averaged across the top twenty emitters where individual country prices are weighted by their emissions shares. For Iran, calculations are based on fuel subsidies prevailing in 2010 which have since been reduced—if there had been so subsidies, the nationally efficient price for Iran would have been $52 per ton of CO2.
Also striking is the cross-country variation in the nationally efficient CO2 price— $291 per ton in Saudi Arabia (with terms of trade effects excluded), $63 per ton in China, $36 in the United States, $11.5 in Australia and -$23 in Brazil (i.e., Brazil on average overcorrects for co-benefits through pre-existing policies). The underlying determinants of these prices are discussed below.
Figure 8 shows the percent reduction in national, energy-related CO2 emissions from imposing nationally efficient CO2 prices, that is, the difference between estimated emissions that would have occurred with these prices in place in 2010, after full adjustment to these prices, and the actually observed emission levels in 2010. The figure also shows the contribution of individual fuels to those reductions.
Figure 8.Emissions Reductions, and Sources of Reductions by Fuel Type, 2010
Source. Calculations using equation (4) and data discussed above.
Note. Figure shows estimated emissions reductions in 2010 that would have occurred if nationally efficient CO2 prices had been in place relative to actual emissions and the contribution of individual fuels to those reductions.
Total T20 emissions fall by 13.5 percent with nationally efficient CO2 pricing. However, there is a good deal of variation across countries—emissions fall by over 40 percent in Saudi Arabia (the outlier) and over 15 percent in China, Iran, Indonesia, Korea, Poland, and Russia, while they fall by less than 6 percent in Australia, Canada, Italy, and South Africa (and increase in Brazil given the nationally efficient price is negative).
For most countries the bulk of the CO2 reductions come from reduced coal use, because carbon pricing has a disproportionately large impact on coal prices (though this is dampened somewhat by the relatively low price responsiveness of coal compared with motor fuels) and coal has a high carbon emissions factor. For Saudi Arabia and Iran, the proportionate increase in motor fuel prices, and for gas in the case of Iran, is relatively large (given low, subsidized, prices for these fuels in 2010) and this leads to large CO2 reductions from these fuels.
Figure 9 returns to the nationally efficient carbon price, showing the underlying contribution to it from individual fuels (i.e., breaking out the four terms aggregated in equation (3)). For 11 countries, coal accounts for the majority of the nationally efficient carbon price. In Poland and China, for example, essentially all of the price reflects co-benefits from reduced coal use, because coal accounts for 86 and 95 percent of CO2 reductions respectively, and co-benefits ton are very large, $99 and $64 per ton of CO2 respectively (due to high air emissions rates and high population exposure to emissions).
Figure 9.Breakdown of Nationally Efficient Carbon Price by Fuel Type, 2010
Source. Calculations using equation (3) and data discussed above.
In Italy and Brazil, co-benefits are more moderate as there is little use of coal, and motor fuel taxes in these countries are close to or exceed estimates of corrective taxes. Iran and Saudi Arabia do not use coal, and so all of the CO2 reduction comes from reduced use of motor fuels, and gas in Iran's case—for motor fuels in particular, there is a large gap between current taxes (which are negative for these countries) and corrective taxes, implying large co-benefits per ton of CO2 reduced. As already noted, not all countries agree with the price-gap measure of subsidies, but even if subsidies are excluded from the calculations, the nationally efficient CO2 price in Saudi Arabia, for example, is still large at over $130 per ton of CO2.12
(ii) Net Benefits with Differentiated and Uniform Carbon Pricing
Figure 10 shows the net economic benefits (excluding climate benefits and not accounting for broader fiscal interactions) from carbon pricing for the T20 countries (from equation (2)), expressed as a percent of GDP. Net benefits are shown under both nationally efficient CO2 pricing and when T20 countries all price emissions at the same rate ($52 per ton) to achieve the same emissions reduction (13.5 percent) in total for T20 countries as under nationally efficient pricing.
Figure 10.Net Benefits from Nationally Efficient and Uniform Pricing, 2010
Source. Calculations using equation (2) and data discussed above.
Note. Net benefits are domestic environmental benefits less CO2 mitigation costs reflecting behavioral responses, such as power generators using cleaner but more expensive fuels and motorists driving less than they would otherwise prefer.
Under differentiated prices, net benefits average 0.20 percent of GDP across T20 countries. However, the gains are larger in China (0.70 percent of GDP) and Russia (0.76 percent of GDP), and much higher still in Saudi Arabia (3.09 percent).
Under the uniform pricing regime, net benefits for the T20 countries average 0.16 percent of GDP—thus there is a sizeable, though not dramatic, extra benefit (23 percent) from differentiated pricing over uniform pricing, in part because the nationally efficient prices in some of the big emitting countries are not that different from the uniform price. But there are some cases where uniform pricing substantially reduces net benefits for individual countries. For example, in Australia, Brazil, Italy, and South Africa the uniform price causes a net domestic cost, instead of a gain under (much lower) nationally efficient prices. Net benefits from Saudi Arabia are also reduced considerably for the opposite reason (the uniform price being far below the nationally efficient price).
(iii) Sensitivity Analyses
Table 1 reports results for the T20 countries as a whole, and China (the biggest emitter), for three sets of sensitivity analyses.
|nationally efficient carbon price $/ton CO2
|percent reduction in CO2
|net benefits percent of GDP
|Baseline case
|Top 20 Emitters
|Coal air pollution damages based on average emissions across all plants (rather than only those with controls)
|Top 20 Emitters
|Behavioral responses to carbon pricing all fuel elasticities increased 50 percent
|Top 20 Emitters
|all fuel elasticities reduced 50 percent
|Top 20 Emitters
|coal and natural gas elasticities increased to those for motor fuels
|Top 20 Emitters
|Non-carbon external costs increased 50 percent
|Top 20 Emitters
|Top 20 Emitters
The first uses air pollution damages estimates for coal from Parry et al. (2014) that are based on current emissions rates averaged across all existing coal plants, including those with and those without air emissions control technologies. The above co-benefit estimates are based on the average emissions rates across only plants with control technologies. Which assumption is more appropriate is not entirely clear, given that current average emission rates are likely to be on a downward trend with greater future deployment of control technologies.
The higher emissions rate implies larger co-benefits from carbon pricing. In fact the nationally efficient CO2 price for the T20 as a group increases by about 50 percent to $85.5 (and the associated emissions reductions rise to 17.6 percent), while the nationally efficient price for China, where deployment of emissions control technologies is less common than among the T20 as a whole, increases by 93 percent to $122.1 per ton.
Adjusting all fuel tax elasticities by the same proportion has no effect on the nationally efficient CO2 price (see above), though the emissions reductions from these prices obviously vary. For the T20 group of countries, CO2 emissions reductions vary between 7.1 and 19.3 percent as all fuel price elasticites are reduced and increased by 50 percent. Raising the price elasticities for coal and natural gas up to those for motor fuels (while holding those for motor fuels fixed) also increases the emissions reductions considerably. The nationally efficient prices for the T20 fall modestly in this simulation however (to $52.3 per ton)—on average, the co-benefits per ton of CO2 associated with reducing coal and natural gas are less than the co-benefits per ton from reduced use of motor fuels.
Finally the results are obviously sensitive to different assumed values for non-CO2 external costs. The nationally efficient CO2 prices for the T20 countries as a whole vary between $29.3 and $85.7 per ton as these damage values are reduced and increased by 50 percent. If anything the non-CO2 damage values used in the baseline estimates are likely on the low side (e.g., due to conservative assumptions about coal emission rates).
D. Fiscal Considerations
After noting how much revenue is raised from carbon pricing, this section discusses how fiscal linkages influence the net economic benefits of carbon pricing policies.
As indicated in Figure 11, nationally efficient carbon pricing policies can raise substantial amounts of revenue—above 6 percent in China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The average for the T20 countries is 1.9 percent of GDP, which is still very substantial, though reflects the large influence of the United States (where carbon pricing revenues are 1.1 percent of GDP), given that country-level revenues are weighted here by country shares in T20 GDP.
Figure 11.Revenue from Nationally Efficient Carbon Prices, 2010
Source. Calculations using above equations and data.
Note. The average for the top 20 emitters weights countries revenue to GDP ratio by their shares in total GDP (which raises the influence of countries with high GDP like the United States). Revenue here is measured simply by the CO2 emissions price times CO2 emissions, accounting the price-induced reduction in emissions, but ignoring interactions with other tax bases (e.g., for pre-existing fuel taxes).
Broader taxes in the fiscal system (taxes on personal and corporate income, payrolls, and consumption) burden the economy by creating two sorts of distortion to economic activity. First, the tax system distorts factor markets, thereby reducing the overall level of economic activity. By lowering the net of tax return from working, and therefore discouraging labor force participation, effort on the job, and so on, taxes on labor income reduce work effort below levels that would otherwise maximize economic efficiency. Similarly, by lowering the net of tax returns on investments in (physical and human) capital, these taxes reduce capital accumulation below economically efficient levels. Second, taxes also distort the composition of economic activity, most obviously by encouraging more activity in the informal sector (where productivity tends to be lower than in the formal sector), and also causing a bias towards other tax-sheltered activities or goods (e.g., tax preferences for owner occupied housing cause people to spend more on housing and less on ordinary goods than they would otherwise prefer, lowering the value of their purchasing power). Over the last two decades, public finance economists have emphasized the critical importance of considering the full range of behavioral responses—the composition as well as the level effect—when evaluating the economic costs of the tax system (e.g., Gruber and Saez 2002, Feldstein 1995, 1999, Saez et al. 2010).
Carbon taxes (or tax-like instruments) interact with the broader fiscal system in two important ways. First, large efficiency gains are generated when revenues are used to lower other distortionary taxes (or for other purposes producing comparable gains in economic efficiency)—this is termed the 'revenue-recycling' effect. Second, however, higher energy prices tend to compound the distortions from taxes in factor markets by reducing (via a contraction in overall economic activity) work effort and capital accumulation.
Up to a point (i.e., so long as the reduction in the base of the carbon tax is not too great), there can be a net economic gain from these two effects (the revenue-recycling effect dominates the tax-interaction effect). Basically, this is because cutting broader taxes helps to reduce distortions both to the level, and the composition, of economic activity, while although higher energy prices can lower the level of economic activity they do not, to an approximation, worsen distortions in the composition of economic activity.13
However, the more important point is that if revenue opportunities are not exploited, for example allowances are freely allocated in a trading system or carbon tax revenues are earmarked for spending projects that do not significantly increase economic efficiency, then fiscal linkages considerably increase the costs of carbon pricing policies—perhaps by enough to more than offset the gains from pricing environmental damages! This follows because such polices fail to counteract the adverse tax-interaction effect with revenue-recycling benefits.
Formulas from the literature14 are applied here to adjust the net benefits from nationally efficient carbon pricing from the previous section to account for the two linkages with the broader fiscal system, comparing cases with recycling benefits (revenues are used to cut other distortionary taxes) and with no recycling benefit (revenues are returned in lump-sum transfers). The calculations are inescapably very crude, given the scarcity of empirical work on the economic costs of the broader tax system, at least beyond the United States. The calculations assume that—for each country—using revenue to reduce other taxes results in an efficiency benefit of $0.25 per $1 of revenue recycled and that 60 percent of this gain comes from increases in the level of economic activity and 40 percent from reduced distortions to the composition of economic activity.15
Figure 12 summarizes the results. The orange bars simply reproduce the net benefits from nationally efficient (i.e., differentiated) carbon pricing from Figure 8.
Figure 12.Net Benefits from Carbon Pricing Accounting for Fiscal Linkages, 2010
Source. Net benefits from Figure 10 for the nationally efficient price are adjusted for fiscal linkages based on formulas in Parry and Williams (2010) and assuming an efficiency benefit of $0.25 per $1 of revenue used to reduce distortionary taxes with 60 percent of this benefit due to increases in the level of economic activity and 40 percent from reduced distortions to the composition of economic activity.
Note. The orange bars, replicated from Figure 8, show the net benefits from nationally efficient pricing when linkages with the broader fiscal system are (incorrectly) ignored. The green bars indicate net efficiency benefits from fiscal interactions when revenue is used to cut other distortionary taxes. The grey bars show net efficiency costs from fiscal interactions in the absence of recycling benefits.
The green bars in Figure 12 indicate the additional gain from fiscal linkages when revenues are used to cut other taxes (i.e., the revenue recycling benefit less the cost of the tax-interaction effect). For the T20 countries as a whole, net benefits double to 0.33 percent of GDP—for some countries the proportionate increase in net benefits is much greater still (e.g., more than 200 percent in eight countries). The bottom line from these, albeit very course, calculations is that fiscal considerations appear to significantly reinforce the net benefits from carbon pricing if revenues are used to substitute for other distortionary taxes.
On the other hand, the grey bars in Figure 12 suggest that carbon pricing produces net economic costs—not net benefits—when there are no recycling benefits. That is, the economic costs from the tax-interaction by itself (when it is not counteracted by the revenue recycling benefit) outweigh the gains from pricing co-benefits. This underscores the importance, long emphasized in the literature (e.g., Parry et al. 1999) of implementing carbon pricing as part of a tax shift, rather than an increase in the tax burden—unless the extra government spending yields gains in economic efficiency that are comparable to those from reducing distortionary taxes.
III. Conclusion
This paper provides calculations of nationally efficient CO2 prices, that is, prices to reflect domestic externality benefits (net of any internalization through fuel taxes/compounding through subsidies and excluding climate-related benefits) for reducing use of coal, natural gas, and motor fuels, for the top twenty CO2-emitting countries.
On average these prices are quite high, $57.5 per ton of CO2, suggesting that (most) high-emitting countries need not wait on global coordination to move ahead with carbon pricing programs because the domestic environmental benefits (dominated, in many cases, by reductions in pollution-related deaths) exceed the mitigation costs. Nationally efficient CO2 prices vary substantially across countries however (with population exposure to coal's air emissions, road congestion, health risk valuation, pre-existing fuel taxes/subsidies, etc.), raising a question mark over the desirability of price harmonization measures (like linking of trading systems). Moreover, a key finding from prior literature on carbon pricing remains robust—if carbon pricing revenues are overly used for low-value purposes (or revenues are forgone by free allocation in trading systems) the overall welfare impacts can be negative rather than positive. Ideally, carbon pricing is part of a broader tax shifting operation that lowers other taxes in the fiscal system with the new revenues from carbon taxes (or allowance auctions).
This Appendix discusses the valuation of air pollution damages from stationary sources, and externalities from motor vehicles, that underlie the co-benefit estimates used above.
Air Pollution from Coal and Natural Gas. The key air pollutant from a public health perspective is fine particulate matter (PM2.5, with diameter up to 2.5 micrometers), which is small enough to penetrate the lungs and bloodstream. PM2.5 can be emitted directly during fuel combustion, or formed indirectly through chemical reactions in the atmosphere involving sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.16
Parry et al. (2014) assess damages from these pollutants for coal plants by first estimating 'intake fractions'—the fraction of these emissions that are inhaled by exposed populations as PM2.5. They begin with state-of-the-art estimates (Zhou et al. 2006) of these fractions for the average coal plant in China, where these estimates account—given that pollution from tall smokestacks can be transported great distances—for exposure to people living up to 2,000 km from plants. Parry et al. (2014), extrapolate intake fractions to other countries depending on the number of people living at different distance classifications from the average coal plant in that country relative to the number of people living in those distance classifications in China. This is done by mapping data on the location of coal plants (in over 100 countries) to very granular, spatial population data.17 Note that some of the air pollution deaths will be across the border (given the long-range transport of pollution from tall smokestacks) so not all of the co-benefits from carbon pricing are strictly national benefits.
Intake fractions are then linked to mortality risks. Baseline mortality rates are estimated for diseases (e.g., lung cancer, heart disease) whose prevalence is potentially increased by pollution exposure, using data on age structures for each country and regional average mortality rates by age/type of disease estimated in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project.18 These baseline mortality rates are then scaled by intake fractions and evidence (again from GBD) on how the relative risk for each disease increases with the rate at which pollution is inhaled, to give health impacts per ton of emissions for the three air pollutants.
Health risks are then monetized. There is solid empirical evidence suggesting that people's willingness to pay to reduce health risk19 rises with real income—according to a meta analysis of several hundred stated preference studies by OECD (2012), each one-percent increase in real income increases mortality values by 0.8 percent. Using this statistic, relative per capita income, and a starting value for the average OECD country ($3.7 million per premature death, updated from OECD 2012), Parry et al. (2014) infer mortality values for all countries, and hence damages per ton of emissions.
Finally, environmental damages can be expressed per gigajoule (GJ) of coal energy using country-level estimates of emissions rates per GJ20—that is, the damage per GJ is the emission rate, times the damage per ton of emissions, summed over the three pollutants. The damage estimates underlying the main results below are conservatively based on average emission rates at coal plants currently employing control technologies. Using national average emission rates produces higher damages estimates (as reported in sensitivity analysis) to the extent that existing plants lack controls (or have them but fail to operate them), though these average rates will typically decline in future as newer (usually cleaner) plants progressively replace older plants.21
Parry et al. (2014) used the same approach as above to estimate air pollution damages per GJ of natural gas from power plants, though these damages are far more moderate as gas produces minimal amounts of direct PM2.5 and SO2, and is also less NOx intensive than coal.22 Air pollution damages for gas used in residences and industry were estimated in the same way as for motor fuels (see below) but, since the estimates are similar to those for gas power plants, the latter are used here for all natural gas usage.
Vehicle Externalities. Co-benefits from incorporating carbon charges in motor fuels include reduced air pollution, traffic congestion, accidents and (for the case of heavy trucks) road damage.
Air emissions from motor fuel combustion are released close to the ground and tend to remain locally concentrated rather than being dispersed over large distances. For these fuels, Parry et al. (2014) extrapolate national average intake fractions for emissions in different countries (based on average results from a large city-level database). Mortality effects and monetary damages are then inferred using the same procedures as above, and damages are expressed per liter of fuel use, based on country-level vehicle emission rates. For most countries, air pollution damages from gasoline are small relative to congestion and accident externalities, but are more substantial for diesel due to higher emission rates.
For the congestion component of corrective motor fuel taxes, what is needed is the value of extra travel (i.e., marginal) delay to other road users, averaged across urban and rural roads and peak and off-peak periods, due to an extra car kilometer driven. Parry et al. (2014) obtain rough estimates of this as follows.
First, average travel delay—the difference between time taken to drive a km at prevailing speeds and the time that would be taken at free-flow speeds—was estimated. Due to lack of better data, national average travel delays were extrapolated from a database containing 90 cities in different countries. Statistical regressions were used to relate travel delays to various transportation indicators at the city level, and then country level delays were predicted using the regression coefficients and country-level data for the same transportation indicators.
Second, marginal delay is inferred from average travel delay. It turns out that under a commonly-used specification for the relationship between travel speeds and traffic volume, marginal delay is a simple multiple of average delay—Parry et al. (2014) use a multiple of 4 (which, from the transportation engineering literature, seems a reasonable rule-of-thumb for congestion in urban centers).
Third, marginal delays are converted into passenger delays by scaling by car occupancy and are then expressed in monetary costs using the value of travel time which, based on reviews of empirical literature, is taken to be 60 percent of the market wage. Finally, marginal congestion costs are scaled back by a third, based on evidence suggesting that travel on congested roads (which is dominated by commuting) is less responsive to higher fuel prices than travel on uncongested roads.23
Parry et al. (2014) assess accident externalities by first breaking out country-level data on traffic fatalities into those assumed to reflect external risks, including pedestrian/cyclist fatalities and a fraction of fatalities in multi-vehicle collisions (as opposed to internal risks from single-vehicle collisions) and monetizing them using the same mortality values as used for pollution deaths. Other external costs (e.g., non-fatal injuries to pedestrians/cyclists, medical/property damages borne by third parties) are extrapolated from a limited number of country case studies.
Lastly, Parry et al. (2014) measure the external costs of road damage by countries' spending on road maintenance, scaled back by 50 percent to crudely adjust for the role of weather in road deterioration.
Combined external costs from motor fuel use are summarized by the corrective (or Pigouvian) taxes. For gasoline, corrective taxes are based on externalities from cars, and for diesel, on a weighted average of externalities from (diesel) cars and trucks with weights equal to the respective fuel shares of these vehicles.24 In computing corrective taxes, externalities are scaled back to take into account the fact that only a fraction of the tax-induced reduction in fuel use comes from reductions in vehicle kilometers driven (the other fraction comes longer-run improvements in vehicle fuel economy which has no impacts on congestion, accidents, and road damage).
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text:
This post comes from a reply I made to a post over at (now defunct) Aspergers World. It turned out to be a lot longer than I originally intended to write, but I think it could help shed light on the dreaded issue of Aspie kids getting haircuts.
I'm a 43-year-old Aspie woman whose mother gave up taking me to the hairdresser when I was pretty young — probably around age 4 or 5, because I had so much trouble with it. She started cutting my hair at home, until she did a really awful job on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, and since my dad was the pastor of the church, we couldn't show up at church looking like bedraggled ragamuffins! I squirmed so much when she was trying to cut my hair, that she couldn't cut straight, if she'd tried! So, we were marched off to the home of a hairdresser who went to our church, an hour before we were supposed to be there. Mission accomplished — my family's honor was preserved!
I actually stopped getting my haircut when I was 7, and I didn't go back till I was 12 — I had pigtails, which simplified everything, and I refused to change to something else. Eventually, I went back to the hairdresser when I needed to have more of a hairstyle. Somehow, being 13 and still having the same pigtails as when you were 7 is a little embarrassing, so I bit the bullet and went back, but it was VERY difficult to do! I just couldn't stand it!!!
Dear reader, you may also be interested to know why some of us cannot abide having our hair cut… and sometimes have a full-on meltdown as a result. Here's my experience and the explanation behind it.
I couldn't stand getting my haircut when I was a kid because:
- The sound of the scissors cutting my hair was deafening. It may sound odd, but my hearing has always been so sensitive, I hear even the finest vibrations about 1000% more than most people, so the physical experience of getting my hair cut was audibly traumatic. I could hear the scissors blades cutting through my hair in LOUD rasping sounds. To give you an idea, imagine what it sounds like when you're standing beside a chainsaw without earplugs on. Very raspy and sharp — sharp!!! And I couldn't get away from it, I couldn't stop it, I was stuck in place, while that awful sound was just grinding into my ears. It might sound extreme, but as a kid, that's how I experienced the sound of having my hair cut. I don't know what I would have done, if someone had used a clipper on my hair. It might have driven me over the edge!
- The sensation of getting my hair cut also made me crazy. A lot of Aspie folks talk about how light touch is very uncomfortable, while firm touch is tolerable. The sensation of my hair being lifted away from my head and then cut off was so distracting and disorienting for me, it was physically uncomfortable. And the feel of the little pieces of hair on my face tickling me drove me insane!!! I couldn't brush them off — I kept trying to, but I kept getting in the way of the hairdresser, which prolonged the agony of doing the job. To this day, I cannot stand the feel of those little pieces of hair on my face and neck. And when the hair gets under my collar and into my clothing and rubs me… It really freaks me out, because it distracts me from whatever I'm doing, and I can't get away from it.
- I constantly felt like I was going to lose my balance. Sitting absolutely still in the chair was really very hard for me. I always felt like I was going to fall over, and I was afraid that I'd be cut by the scissors. I was so intent on holding still, and I was so distracted by the feel of my hair being cut and falling on my face and neck, and the sound of the scissors cutting my hair, that I felt really nauseous. I literally felt sick, whenever I got my haircut. When I'm off balance, I sometimes have to hold my head a certain way in order to feel right again — imagine what it's like riding a tilt-a-whirl for three hours, then getting off and having someone tell you that you have to sit up straight and hold absolutely still for your haircut. That's what it was like for me. But whenever I tried to turn my head to right my balance, I'd get out of position, and whoever was cutting my hair would get very upset with me. I couldn't help it — I was just trying to stay upright. And not throw up.
- The constant talking made me crazy. For some reason, everyone wanted me to talk to them when I was getting my hair cut, which made me so uncomfortable and upset, because I wasn't much for small talk conversation to begin with, and then adding the hairdresser's shop to the mix was even worse. There were always lots of strangers who wanted to talk to me, or who were talking loudly in the background (over the sound of the hairdryers and other equipment). I couldn't interact with everyone – the hairdresser(s) were always so chatty, and I had a very hard time keeping up with what they were saying — I was trying to keep my balance, after all. And because I couldn't talk to them, they thought I was being difficult and stubborn and they were uncomfortable with me, which just made my self-consciousness worse.
- The smells of the hair styling products made me crazy, too. They were too strong!!! And they made me feel sick. I was having such a hard time sorting out all the sensations — the feel of the hair being cut and falling on me, the sounds of everyone talking, the presence of many strangers I didn't know and was afraid I'd act stupid in front of, the sound of the scissors on my hair, the need to keep balanced, so I wouldn't get cut… Having to smell hair products on top of it was just too much!
- The salon was always too bright! Of course, people who cut hair have to have enough light to see what they're doing, but for me, it was too much light. Fluorescent too — very glaring! I can get overwhelmed really easily, if bright light is combined with loud sounds and strong smells, so the hairdresser salon was not a friendly place for me. It was just so overwhelming.
- The salon was always too loud. As I said above, all the talking made me crazy, but the sound of the machinery was even worse. I had a hard time with appliance motor sounds when I was a kid — and in a hair salon, it was the worst of all worlds! I never knew when someone was going to turn on a hair dryer or some other machine, and the pitch of the hairdryers was so loud and shrill, it pierced my ears. OMG, I get tense just thinking about it now, and today is a relaxing Sunday morning!
Now, being a girl, I wasn't allowed to act out, (or else!) so I can't remember having any meltdowns while getting my hair cut around others. But I do remember it being so hard for me, and afterwards I was really reeling from the experience, and I acted out at home. Nobody around me understood what I was going through — all they knew was that I looked nice, and that's what mattered. But for me, it was so hard!
I still don't get my hair cut as often as I probably should — and I go to a small barber shop in off hours, so I don't have to interact with a lot of people, and there aren't a lot of hair products around. A regular women's salon is too overpowering, smell-wise, and in just about every other way.
If your child is having trouble with haircuts, you may want to pay close attention to the sensory environment in which you cut their hair. Is it loud? Is it bright? Are there lots of smells? Are there sudden sounds? Is he wearing clothing that's comfortable for them? Are they well-supported where you have them sit? If they're anything like me, having a quiet, evenly lighted (not fluorescent — those bulbs make me crazy!), non-smelly (as in, no plug-in "air fresheners" or other perfumes) environment, where there aren't a lot of people, and they talk quietly and calmly and don't demand constant interaction… that's the ideal place to have a haircut.
Haircuts are still hard for me, and they're things I need to "tough out" on a regular basis. But I find that if my senses are directed somewhere other than the haircut, I can actually do it. I still get a little freaked out by the whole experience, so I concentrate deliberately on my breathing. And I have to consciously relax. Sometimes I can't even feel my arms and legs, I get so tense. OMG — just thinking about it, puts me on edge.
Sometimes, when I'm in the barber chair (and my haircuts usually take only 15 minutes or so), I forget to breathe! I'm so keyed up and freaked out by all the sensory input… it's an effort, just trying to interact normally and not withdraw and act autistic and make everyone in the place really nervous.
So, I concentrate really hard on my breathing… I remember to relax…. I hold onto my eyeglasses under the sheet… and I keep my eyes closed, while the hair falls… and when I can open them (which makes it easier to keep my balance), I focus on the glass cylinder with the blue sanitizing solution on the counter — the one that has all the long thin combs in it, and I count the combs and try to imagine what ingredients are in the solution… all the while trying to maintain polite conversation and act like a normal person.
But enough about me. I hope this gives you a sense of what we Aspies go through with haircuts. And I hope it gives you some more ideas about how you can help your own Apsie kid have more successful haircuts. It might sound pretty bad, the way I describe the haircut experience — but I've had years of practice, and it's just how it is with me, so it's actually not the horror show it might sound like. We all have our things we need to get through… our challenges, our shortcomings. Just 'cause mine are more extreme than others' doesn't mean they're necessarily worse — just different. And I have my coping skills. A whole lot of them, in fact.
Other ideas from Aspie-Land:
How 'bout if you have your child watch a video while you cut their hair? Something to occupy their senses, so they're not overwhelmed while you're cutting his hair. If your kid is utterly fixated on Thomas the Tank Engine, they might not even notice the haircut while you're giving it to them, if they're watching a video of Thomas.
Or give them something to hold… something that has a sensation that he likes. When I was a kid, satiny fabric soothed me like nothing else, so being able to rub something satin chilled me right out. I couldn't fall asleep, if I didn't have my blanket with the satin edge on it. Nowadays, when I need to just bite the bullet and get through a tough situation, I'll hold a piece of velcro (the sharp side) firmly between my fingers to focus my attention and get my mind off everything else around me. Sometimes, I just need to tough it out, and velcro or a rough piece of napkin or fabric to rub between my fingers, is very helpful. And it saves everyone around me from being vexed by my issues.
Maybe something to hold AND a video to watch… ?
I think it's also brilliant to give kids fair warning about the haircut and let them prepare for it mentally and emotionally. We Aspies tend to do better, if we have advance warning. Something as simple as a hug can be very uncomfortable, even painful, for us, if we don't have a chance to prepare for it. But if we know we're about to get a hug from someone, we can sometimes reciprocate without looking/feeling uncomfortable to others.
Same thing with unpleasant experiences. My nephew — who is about as textbook Aspie as they come — refused to take medicine to bring down a fever… until, that is, we explained to him what was going to happen, what the medicine was for, and we did a few "trial runs" of taking the medicine, using some juice in a teaspoon for practice. When the time came for him to take the medicine, he didn't like it, but he did take it, and he started to get better. We praised him intensely after it, which just made his day. He's such a perfectionist, that hearing praise for even the smallest thing really brightened him up. There were no more issues around him taking his medicine, which was a very good thing.
Speaking of trial runs — if I were getting haircuts at home, and my mom told me she got new clippers, I'd get a little nervous. New things make us nervous. Other people think, "New clippers! How cool!!!" But we think "Oh, no — what's going to happen?! Will they be loud? Will they be sharp? Will they be shaped the same way? Will they be easier or harder to handle? Is Mom going to get upset with me again for reasons I don't understand? Am I going to do this wrong again?" My own mom used to get so mad at me… and my dad would yell. But I could NEVER figure out what I'd done wrong. I had no idea… and I couldn't stop myself. All I knew was, I'd messed up again, and my parents were really upset with me. So, nobody was very happy about things.
When it comes to new experiences, as I'm sure you know, we Aspies tend to get anxious, and some of us really catastrophize, which makes us even more upset. Different sounds and different experiences than we're used to can be anxiety-producing, even if the differences are positive. I would want to be shown the clippers, allowed to hold them and turn them on and off (with supervision, of course!) and made familiar with the sound and the feel of them — in a very closely moderated situation, where I had some kind of control over the experience. Then actually doing the clipping is less of an issue, because the unknowns are fewer. Preparation on all levels helps more than I can say. And there's something about physically going through motions ahead of time that can be very calming, when the time comes to "just do it".


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( – promoted by OKWatchdog)
The state Senate on Monday narrowly stopped a little-noticed push to close off access to public information. You're probably familiar with the state employees birth dates mess, but other bills are aimed at reining in open government.
House Bill 1613, which passed the House but, refreshingly, failed in the Senate by a party-line 24-21 vote, makes a number of changes to confidentiality under the Insurance Code. The bill does some general housekeeping that, while seemingly unnecessary, also probably isn't too harmful. Then it goes too far, shielding basic information not only from disclosure but from subpoena.
The bill could still be reconsidered in the Senate.
In its more innocuous sections, the bill expands documents used in financial and market examinations of insurers. The body of law surrounding open records typically exempts "work papers," internal documentation and other things that lead up to the sorts of determinations mentioned in the bill.
What's the need to explicitly ban it? If I'm wrong about this information being confidential in Oklahoma (it is in Texas, where I spent years pursuing this sort of information as a journalist), please let me know. I don't mind being told I'm wrong.
The most troubling part of this bill seems to be an attempt to protect a corner of the insurance market that is particularly susceptible to abuse. Discount medical plans technically aren't insurance, although they're often deceivingly marketed as such. Because of this potential for flimflam, the Insurance Department requires them to register and regulates their marketing materials. Discount medical plans are basically an agreement with certain providers to offer discounts. You're still responsible for all costs.
The discount medical plan language, however, is too broad. Even advertisements and solicitations are included. So a discount medical company can send run an ad that later proves fraudulent, which many people see, but those same people and the media can't request copies of these materials because they're "confidential." It's ridiculous. That's like saying a press release is confidential after everyone has seen it. Solicitations and advertisements are meant to be seen by the public and are the primary means these companies recruit customers.
Imagine trying to sue a discount medical plan for deceiving you but being unable to subpoena the ad that led you to purchase the service. How could you build a case?
The bill's Senate author, Cliff Aldridge, R-Midwest City, who works as an insurance agent, said in committee that the bill was intended to keep "anyone just walking in off the street and requesting it." That's a pretty lame excuse for closing the door to public information, especially considering that the insurance industry already can share much of this same information. I respect the need to keep trade secrets confidential, but c'mon. This threat is imaginary. The average Joe has never filed an open records request and never will. And the media rarely scrutinizes the insurance business.
Meanwhile, tons of information is available for commercial purposes. Remember those stories in The Oklahoman and Tulsa World about the state selling records that contain birth dates….
Aldridge said he didn't intend to shield information needed in criminal proceedings. What about civil proceedings? Cases involving insurance shenanigans are typically tried in civil courts; criminal cases are rare by comparison.
I'll be the first to admit that there are far more troubling bills coming out of the Legislature this year. But I'd be remiss if I weren't concerned about the overall effect of incremental tightening of public access to the government's data. A little bit here, a little bit there, pretty soon there are only crumbs.
In a March 23 editorial in The Edmond Sun newspaper, the bill's House author, Rep. Randy McDaniel, R-Oklahoma City, praised transparency, sunshine and a bill that creates the Government Website Information Act. While it's a laudable bill, what the Legislature giveth with one hand, it taketh away with the other.


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Welcome to WebmasterWorld Guest from 22.214.171.124
Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Why would the results be in a different order according to the page size? The 100 results/page makes sense since pages from within the same website are grouped together, however listing them separately (and not even close together) makes you see the same website several times at different positions. What is the logic of that?
Also, when a webmaster wants to know their website position, they have to check it at different page sizes.
I wonder how many people (ordinary people -- not webmasters!) ever change their results per page from the default of 10? I would guess less than 20%, maybe even less than 10%. So, from that perspective, it may not be worth worrying too much about discrepancies in the results caused by varying the page size.
I agree, however the problem is that the duplicate results appear using the default 10 results/page, and pushes the other websites down. If you are the lucky one to be listed more than once, great, otherwise duplicate results are pushing you down the list.
If you show 10 results, the next PAGE can show the same website again.
When you show 100 results, the same website will only appear once on the results PAGE. So a website that originally appeared in positions 5/6 and 17/18, will now have their second result pushed back when you change to 100 results per page, so that they may now get the result 5/6 and 100/101.
That is how it used to work!
Each website appears once (together - one listing, plus one indented listing) per PAGE of display
That is not the behavior that is displayed. At 10 results/page, each website appears once together with the indented listing (which is just another page of the same website) as you correctly indicated. However, at 100 results/page each website appears once, however not always together with the indented listing.
Sometimes the indented listing (the one that was indented at 10 results/page) appears several positions lower as a completely separate (non-indented) result. As a result, the position of a particular website (counting each result, indented or not, as a single result, which is how Google does it) can be #17 at 10 results/page and #25 at 100 results/page. This behavior only happens when there are indented results.
When you show 100 results, the same website will only appear once on the results PAGE
That is not correct. Maybe you are confusing �website� with �webpage�. At 100 results/page, the website that appeared on one page together with its indented extra webpage, often (but not always) appears as two separate, non-indented, not-together, not even in succession, results.
Here is an imaginary example. At 10 results/page you may see on one page:
Widget 1
Widget 2
Then at 100 results/page you may see one page:
Widget 1
Widget 2
So now you are seeing the same website twice on a page.
So a website that originally appeared in positions 5/6 and 17/18
I�ve never seen a website listed twice with indented results as two separate results even on different pages. Are you sure this is possible?
will now have their second result pushed back when you change to 100 results per page, so that they may now get the result 5/6 and 100/101
But then you would have the same website listed on result 5/6 and 100 on the same page. Wouldn�t it have to be 101/102 instead?


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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Colour Refresh Newsflash from Stampin' Up! I'm doing a Happy Dance!
Hi Everyone, Stampin' Up! have announced a new colour refresh for the upcoming annual catalogue. Any old colour supplies are only available while stocks last. So let me know what you'd like to order. I'm so excited Wisteria Wonder and Island Indigo are staying. What colours are you looking forward to you?
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Check Out These 4 Advantages of Owning a Home-Based Business
Are you tired of working for someone else? Each year, thousands of people trade-in a nine to five job for a business of their own. While starting a business may seem relatively easy, it is anything but. Without a great idea and a lot of hard work, it will be nearly impossible for you to have success.
The main decision you have to make when starting a business is where you will setup shop. If you are operating on a shoestring budget, then a home-based office is a great option. Equipping your home office with the latest tools is simple with the right easy payday installment loans. Read below to find out about some of the benefits that come along with having a home-based business.
- A Home-Based Business Offers You Personal Freedom
One of the biggest benefit that comes with having a home-based business is that it can provide you with a great deal of personal freedom. Having to spend hours in traffic trying to get to your job can be very frustrating. The last thing anyone wants is to spend all of their time in between work and home. Instead of wasting all of your time commuting to and from work, you can have far more freedom with a home-based business. With a home-based business, you will be able to set your own schedule. Rather than taking this freedom for granted, you need to make a schedule that is geared towards getting things done. Failing to put yourself in a position to succeed with the right schedule can lead to you losing business and not being able to achieve the success you are after.
- You are the Master of Your Financial Destiny
When working for someone else, you will be at their mercy when it comes to what you can make. The only way you can make more money when working for another person is by getting promoted. If you are tired of waiting for your boss to give you more money, then it is time to start your own business. When owning your own business, you will be able to keep the money you make. Be sure to seek out the services of an accountant to avoid getting into tax trouble with your new business. An accountant familiar with business tax codes will have no problem helping you keep your finances in good shape.
- The Sky is the Limit
Another advantage of owning your own home-based business is that the sky is the limit when it comes to growth. Having this type of unlimited growth potential is something you need to avoid taking lightly. Instead of resting on your laurels and becoming complacent, you need to always strive for more. The harder you work, the easier you will find it to achieve the high level of success you are after. There may come a time when you need to take on a strategic partner to further your mission. When this time comes, be sure to do your homework to avoid making mistakes.
- Chart Your Own Course
If you work for another company, you will lack a say in the direction this business takes. Without this type of control, you will be dependent on others to make your living. Charting your own course to success will allow you to take the risks you deem necessary. Having this type of control is what owning a home-based businessis all about. Taking some time to research your market is the best way to avoid mistakes along the way. Getting to know what your customers want will put you in a unique position to succeed in your chosen field.
While achieving success with a home-based business may be difficult at first, the time and effort you invest will be well worth it. Working with a mentor will help you find out and avoid common small business pitfalls.


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Glen Wakeman has devoted his entire career to starting and growing businesses by lending not only his expertise, but providing coaching and live seminars to explain what a business should do to stay sustainable. He did this under the corporate guidance of General Electric's banking company for many years, but now he's doing it under his own business auspices as Chairman of Launchpad Holdings. This business is focused on turning small startups into thriving companies by providing information on how to attract and secure funding for growth, see more. Glen Wakeman once explained to Ideamensch why he wanted to start this company.
Glen Wakeman told Ideamensch that all too often people don't understand the real difference between a business idea or model and a real actual business plan, refer also to linkedin.com. He also felt there needed to be a more affordable SAAS solution out there by which people could learn about these business solutions. Most of his daily schedule involves planning sales and meeting with clients, and concludes with reviewing financials. Wakeman says the biggest trend that he's looking forward to is cognitive learning such as what's happening with IBM's Watson program, learn more here. He utilizes five areas of business building in executive leadership, human capital, business execution, governing policies and risk management.
Glen Wakeman got his business bachelor's degree from the University of Scranton and finished his master's at the University of Chicago, try this link. He got into business development while starting out at GE Capital and managed several P&L companies out of its various branches. He traveled around the world opening up businesses in six different countries and also became the founder and CEO of Nova Four, a venture capital investment firm. He founded Launchpad holdings around 2015 and has also served as an executive advisor for two startups Sitterbees and Dreamfunded. He also has a certification in Six Sigma Black Belt.
Watch this awesome video, https://www.glenwakeman.com/video


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