Quattro Saggi di Economia Pubblica Applicata: l'Ambiente e la Macroeconomia

This dissertation is a collection of four papers in applied public economics, which exploiting different econometric techniques investigates heterogeneous research questions concerning the environment and the macroeconomy. The first chapter is titled "Valuing drinking water after a PFAS contamination event: results from a meta-analysis benefit transfer". The objective of the paper is twofold: (i) the development of a meta-regression analysis focused on the estimates of the household's willingness to pay for a drinking water quality improvement, for which data have been collected from 40 past primary valuation studies; (ii) the exploitation of the meta-regression model estimated for a benefit transfer exercise aimed at providing a value for the individual social benefits from PFAS potential decontamination in the Veneto Region. The second chapter is titled "When fiscal discipline meets macroeconomic stability: the Euro-stability bond". The paper explores the implications of introducing a Euro-stability bond mechanism that entails sovereign debt mutualization in the Eurozone while avoiding short-term redistribution across countries or incentivizing fiscal profligacy. Using a theoretical framework, we demonstrate that such a mechanism can maintain market fiscal discipline while enhancing social welfare across member states. Estimating a Global VAR model with data from 10 Eurozone countries, the U.S., Japan, and China, we then compare a baseline and a counterfactual scenario to show a marked reduction in public debt-to-GDP trajectories forecast uncertainty when our Euro-stability bond is introduced. The findings suggest that the Euro-stability bond could shield the Eurozone from macroeconomic instability and mitigate risks of adverse economic events, whose probability over time significantly decrease in our event probability forecasts analysis. The third chapter is titled "Energy intensity and structural changes: does offshoring matter?" and is co-authored with Claudia Amadei and Cesare Dosi. In the paper we investigate the role of structural changes in decoupling energy-related carbon emissions from economic growth in a panel of 15 OECD countries. Using an Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) with an offshoring factor, we show that shifts toward less energy-intensive sectors in production are often not matched by equivalent changes in consumption patterns. To further analyze this mechanism, we develop a novel measure of demand-invariant structural change derived from the divergence between consumption-based and production-based carbon emissions, employing a Bayesian Structural Panel VAR model. Our findings reveal that shocks in this divergence are a good proxy for demand-invariant structural changes caused by offshoring and lead to significant and persistent reductions in energy intensity. The last chapter is titled "Fiscal impacts of climate anomalies". We contribute to the debate on the macroeconomic implications of climate changes analyzing the impact of climate anomalies on public finances within a macroeconometric framework that also accounts for economic activity. Using temperature and precipitation shocks derived from natural weather variations, we study their effects on debt and deficit ratio in a panel of 14 European countries and the United States. Through the means of a structural Bayesian Panel VAR model, we show that adverse climate shocks are contractionary and lead to significant increases in public debt and deficits over a business cycle horizon. However, we find notable differences in the inflationary impacts and persistence of the two shocks. Subsample analyses suggest that warmer, climate-vulnerable, and highly indebted countries experience the strongest fiscal and economic consequences. Finally, a deeper investigation identifies reduced tax revenues and increased government spending on subsidies as the primary transmission mechanisms behind the climate-induced adverse fiscal dynamics.