A page about Haishan Yu.

Yu H. (2013). The EU ETS and Firm Profits: An Ex-post Analysis of Swedish Energy Firms. Environmental Economics 4(3), 59-71.

Hellström J., Lundgren J., and Yu H. (2012). Why Do Electricity Prices Jump? Empirical Evidence From the Nordic Electricity Market. Energy Economics 34 (6), 1774-1781.

• “Optimal Carbon Abatement in the Presence of Lump-sum Transfer Costs”

   Lump-sum transfers as a means of tackling climate change are mainly perceived as a theoretical construct to achieve the first best Pareto optimum. The previous literature on lump-sum transfers normally focuses on the two polar cases: the absence of lump-sum transfers and the perfect or unconstrained lump-sum transfers leaving the middle way aside. In this paper, we attempt to explore the unmarked part by developing a model with transfer costs explicitly taken into account. We show that whether the first best Pareto optimum characterized by the equalization of marginal abatement costs is attainable depends on the formation of the transfer costs. When the marginal transfer costs are zero, we remain in the first best Paretian world. However, when the marginal transfer costs are positive, we are forced to move to the second best and the first best Partetian optimum is not attainable neither desirable. We also simulate a policy experiment in China to review the optimal abatement and transfer patterns between China’s provinces within a framework of imperfect lump-sum transfers. The welfare gains highlighted in the simulation provide support to take lump-sum transfers as a national climate change policy.

• "Economic Growth and Social Welfare with Global Regime-Switching Thresholds"

       (with Chuan-Zhong Li)

 

   Scientific evidence indicates that human development faces multiple and interacting regime-switching environmental threshold such as climate change, ocean acidification and biodiversity loss. And crossing one or more of such thresholds would trigger rapid and large changes in our life-supporting system with widespread consequences. This paper attempts to study the effects of such thresholds on human wellbeing in a growth theoretical framework. We derive the accounting prices of pollution stocks such as the concentration of greenhouse gases for the risk to trigger catastrophic events, which are needed for conduction dynamic cost-benefit analysis. We first analyze a simple model with single threshold and then extend it to a planar system with correlated double thresholds with a joint probability distribution. The results can be applied to empirical analysis of global climate change and ocean acidification risks, which are highlighted in a Nature article by Rockström et al. (2009).