Will COVID-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on climate change?

The COVID-19 crisis is likely to have dramatic consequences for progress on climate change. Imminent fiscal recovery packages could entrench or partly displace the current fossil-fuel-intensive economic system. Here, we survey 231 central bank officials, finance ministry officials, and other economic experts from G20 countries on the relative performance of 25 major fiscal recovery archetypes across four dimensions: speed of implementation, economic multiplier, climate impact potential, and overall desirability. We identify five policies with high potential on both economic multiplier and climate impact metrics: clean physical infrastructure, building efficiency retrofits, investment in education and training, natural capital investment, and clean R&D. In lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) rural support spending is of particular value while clean R&D is less important. These recommendations are contextualized through analysis of the short-run impacts of COVID-19 on greenhouse gas curtailment and plausible medium-run shifts in the habits and behaviours of humans and institutions.

African resource nationalism poses persistent risk

Subject Resource nationalism in African mining. Significance Recent headlines have been awash with claims that resource nationalism is on the rise again across Africa. Governments tend to try to sell resource nationalism as integral to industrialisation, but the rules change too often for stakeholders to be credibly convinced. Impacts Reduced long-term investments will lessen the economic multiplier effect associated with successful mining. Social development benefits associated with responsible mining will stagnate. Public-private investments in human capital and physical infrastructure will dissipate.

Mining, regional Australia and the economic multiplier

Mining in Australia has traditionally delivered a strong development multiplier for regional communities where most mines are based. This relationship has weakened in recent decades as a result of the introduction of mobile workforces - typically known as fly in, fly out. Political parties have responded with policies known as ‘royalties for regions’, though in designing them they overlooked long established Indigenous arrangements for sharing benefits with areas affected directly by mining.

Outlay Rates and the Politics of Capital versus Operating Subsidies in Federal Transit Finance

“Outlay rate” is a measure of the lapsed time between the obligation of federal funds for some purpose and the actual drawdown, or expenditure, of those funds. Outlay rates are an important, though often unspoken, reason for the gradual withdrawal of federal operating support of public transit. Rationales for reducing and/or eliminating federal support of transit operations are examined, overall capital and operating outlay rates for a sample of transit operators in California are measured, and possible causes and effects of federal grant outlay rates are discussed. On average, transit operators do, in fact, expend operating grants more quickly than capital grants. However, the overall size of the grant is actually a better predictor of slow outlays than grant purpose. Although the revenues generated by unexpended transit grants represent real revenues to the treasury, the goal of the federal transit program clearly is not simply to maximize such revenues. Evidence from other studies suggests that strict separation of capital and operating grants contributes to less efficient, overcapitalized transit systems, and an emphasis on capital grants may cost the federal treasury in the form of reduced tax revenues resulting from the lower economic multiplier of capital versus operating grants. Thus, it is unlikely that society benefits from a “float-driven” federal transit subsidy policy. Because federal transit grants seek to generate an array of social and economic benefits far broader than interest earned from the float from unexpended grants, the costs of the current capital-oriented or possible capital-only programs should be more systematically considered.

Minnesota's Logging Equipment Show: An Evaluation and Economic Impacts

Logging and sawmill equipment shows are held in many states to view and compare new machinery. After 30 years of such a show in Minnesota its sponsors sampled the more than 2000 attendees and 80 equipment exhibitors to characterize the people involved and to measure the 1984 event's local economic impacts. Nearly 40% of attendees were loggers, 30% spectators, and less than 10% each sawmillers or foresters. Viewing logging equipment and observing live loading competition were the top reasons cited for attendance. Direct mail was the most effective promotional technique. The average attendee spent about $60 to attend the show, while equipment exhibitors averaged nearly $860 per exhibit. Total expenditures related to the show were nearly $190,000, about 62% of which was spent by attendees. Considering the economic multiplier effect, the ultimate impact of the show on the local economy was more than a quarter of a million dollars. North. J. Appl. For. 3:163-166, Dec. 1986