Person:
André García, Francisco Javier

First Name

Francisco Javier

Last Name

André García

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/74831

Affiliation

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Faculty / Institute

Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales

Department

Análisis Económico y economía cuantitativa

Area

Fundamentos del Análisis Económico

Identifiers

Full item page

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 32

Media Coverage of Carbon Neutral Organizations in Costa Rica: Environmental Sustainability Practices and Consumer Recognition
(Innovar, 2022) Jorge A. Valenciano-Salazar; Carlos Rivero; André García, Francisco Javier; Rivero Rodríguez, Carlos
This paper studies the visibility, environmental sustainability practices, and public recognition of Costa Rican organizations participating in the Carbon Neutrality (cn) Program. Through a review of Costa Rican online newspapers, we conclude that the three main actions performed by cn firms are the offsetting of carbon emissions, the replacement of polluting inputs by cleaner substitutes, and employees’ training. The main benefits perceived by these firms include reducing production costs, improving the organizations’ image, and achieving market differentiation. In addition, by using non-parametric statistic procedures, we conclude that “highly cited organizations” tend to achieve the cn certification earlier and have a larger number of environmental certifications than “scarcely cited organizations.” By analyzing newspaper coverage data in conjunction with a consumer recognition survey, we determined that “recognized organizations” tend to be the oldest, the largest, and the most cited in the press. In addition, “recognized entities” also tend to obtain the cn certification sooner than unrecognized entities, which means that there is a reward in terms of public recognition for companies that took the risk of being innovative in reducing their carbon footprint.
Becoming Carbon Neutral in Costa Rica to Be More Sustainable: An AHP Approach
(Sustainability, 2020) André García, Francisco Javier; Valenciano-Salazar, Jorge A.
We propose addressing an organization’s adoption of an environmental certification as a multicriteria problem considering environmental sustainability as well as economic and strategic aspects. Our methodological approach uses the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), which we use in an empirical application to analyze the adoption decision of several Costa Rican firms and institutions. Firstly, we select a set of economic, strategic, and environmental criteria that seem relevant for the organization’s direction. We select these criteria according to our literature review and a series of face-to-face interviews with scholars and companies’ managers. As an environmental certification, we focus on Carbon Neutral (CN), which is a domestic certification aimed at reducing or offsetting carbon emissions. For the sake of comparison, we also consider ISO 14001, which is a well-known international standard aimed at compliance with environmental norms. We conduct the AHP analysis using the answers given by 24 companies and institutions, which in aggregate terms, give CN a higher score than ISO 14001. This result is mainly due to the fact that CN ranks above ISO 14001 when attending to environmental sustainability, although ISO 14001 tends to be preferred in economic and strategic terms.
Optimal sequence of landfills in solid waste management
(Optimal Control Applications and Methods, 2001) André García, Francisco Javier; Cerdá Tena, Emilio
Given that landfills are depletable and replaceable resources, the right approach, when dealing with landfill management, is that of designing an optimal sequence of landfills rather than designing every single landfill separately. In this paper we use Optimal Control models, with mixed elements of both continuous and discrete time problems, to determine an optimal sequence of landfills, as regarding their capacity and lifetime. The resulting optimization problems involve splitting a time horizon of planning into several subintervals, the length of which has to be decided. In each of the subintervals some costs, the amount of which depends on the value of the decision variables, have to be borne. The obtained results may be applied to other economic problems such as private and public investments, consumption decisions on durable goods, etc.
Fueling growth when oil peaks: directed technological change and the limits to efficiency
(European Economic Review, 2014) André García, Francisco Javier; Smulders, Sjak
While fossil energy dependency has declined and energy supply has grown in the postwar world economy, future resource scarcity could cast its shadow on world economic growth soon if energy markets are forward looking. We develop an endogenous growth model that reconciles the current aggregate trends in energy use and productivity growth with the intertemporal dynamics of forward looking resource markets. Combining scarcity-rent driven energy supply (in the spirit of Hotelling) with profit-driven Directed Technical Change (in the spirit of Romer/Acemoglu), we generate transitional dynamics that can be qualitatively calibrated to current trends. The long-run properties of the model are studied to examine whether current trends are sustainable. We highlight the role of extraction costs in mining.
Market Power in Output and Emissions Trading
(Games, 2020) André García, Francisco Javier; De Castro Lejarriaga, Luis Miguel
This article focuses on the strategic behavior of firms in the output and the emissions markets in the presence of market power. We consider the existence of a dominant firm in the permit market and different structures in the output market, including Cournot and two versions of the Stackelberg model, depending on whether the permit dominant firm is a leader or a follower in the output market. In all three models, the firm that dominates the permit market is more sensitive to its initial allocation than its competitor in terms of abatement and less sensitive in terms of output. In all three models, output is decreasing and the permit price is increasing in the permit dominant firm’s initial allocation. In the Cournot model, permit dominance is fruitless in terms of output and profit if the initial allocation is symmetric. Output leadership is more relevant than permit dominance since an output leader always tends to, ceteris paribus, produce more and make more profit whether it also dominates the permit market or not. This leadership can only be overcompensated for by distributing a larger share of permits to the output follower, and only if the total number of permits is large enough. In terms of welfare, Stackelberg is always superior to Cournot. If the initial permit allocation is symmetric, welfare is higher when the same firm dominates the output and the permit market at the same time.
Sustainability and firms’ mission in a developing country: the case of voluntary certifications and programs in Costa Rica
(Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2021) Valenciano-Salazar, Jorge A.; André García, Francisco Javier; Martín De Castro, Gregorio
Voluntary environmental and social certifications represent a channel by which firms can contribute to sustainable development. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, we explore the motivations and obstacles that Costa Rican companies face when adopting Carbon Neutral (CN) and Fairtrade (FT) certifications. CN is a domestic certification aimed at reducing or offsetting carbon emissions and fighting climate change. FT is a well-known international label that guarantees compliance with environmental and social standards. We conclude that ethical and environmental reasons influence the managers’ decision, along with economic and strategic incentives, such as improving the image of the company and the relationship with stakeholders. High investment and certification costs are ranked as the most difficult obstacles to overcome. By exploring the differences between both certifications, we find out that increasing sales, market shares or prices are more important motivations for the FT companies than for CN ones.
Designing Efficient Subsidy Policies in a Regional Economy: A Multicriteria Decision-Making (MCDM)-Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Approach
(Regional Studies, 2009) André García, Francisco Javier; Cardenete, M. Alejandro
Since policy-makers usually pursue several conflicting objectives, policy-making can be understood as a multicriteria decision problem. Following the methodological proposal by André and Cardenete (2005) André, F. J. and Cardenete, M. A. 2005. Multicriteria Policy Making. Defining Efficient Policies in a General Equilibrium Model, Seville: Centro de Estudios Andaluces. Working Paper No. E2005/04, multi-objective programming is used in connection with a computable general equilibrium model to represent optimal policy-making and to obtain so-called efficient policies in an application to a regional economy (Andalusia, Spain). This approach is applied to the design of subsidy policies under two different scenarios. In the first scenario, it is assumed that the government is concerned just about two objectives: ensuring the profitability of a key strategic sector and increasing overall output. Finally, the scope of the exercise is enlarged by solving a problem with seven policy objectives, including both general and sectorial objectives. It is concluded that the observed policy could have been Pareto-improved in several directions.
Technology Adoption in Emission Trading Programs with Market Power
(The Energy Journal, 2018) Arguedas, Carmen; André García, Francisco Javier
In this paper we study the relationship between market power in emission permit markets and endogenous technology adoption. We find that the initial distribution of permits, in particular, the amount of permits initially given to the dominant firm, is crucial in determining over- or under-investment in relation to the benchmark model without market power. Specifically, if the dominant firm is initially endowed with more permits than the corresponding cost effective allocation, this results in under-investment by the dominant firm and over-investment by the competitive fringe, regardless of the specific amount of permits given to the latter firms. The results are reversed if the dominant firm is initially endowed with relatively few permits. Also, the presence of market power results in a divergence of both abatement and technology adoption levels with respect to the benchmark scenario of perfect competition, as long as technology adoption becomes more effective in reducing abatement costs.
Intertemporal and spatial location of disposal facilities
(Spanish Economic Review, 2009) André García, Francisco Javier; Velasco, Francisco; González-Abril, Luis
The optimal capacities and locations of a sequence of landfills are studied, and the interactions between these characteristics are considered. Deciding the capacity of a landfill has some spatial implications since it affects the feasible region for the remaining landfills, and some temporal implications because the capacity determines the lifetime of the landfill and hence the moment of time when the next landfills should be constructed. Some general mathematical properties of the solution are provided and interpreted from an economic point of view. The resulting problem turns out to be non-convex and, therefore, it cannot be solved by conventional optimization techniques. Some global optimization methods are used to solve the problem in a particular case in order to illustrate how the solution depends on the parameter values.
Using a CGE Model to Identify the Policy Trade-Off between Unemployment and Inflation: The Efficient Phillips Curve
(Economic Systems Research, 2012) André García, Francisco Javier; Lima, Carmen M.; Cardenete, M. Alejandro
This paper provides a new reading of a classical economic relation: the short-run Phillips curve. Our point is that, when dealing with inflation and unemployment, policy-making can be understood as a multicriteria decisionmaking problem. Hence, we use so-called multiobjective programming in connection with a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to determine the combinations of policy instruments that provide efficient combinations of inflation and unemployment. This approach results in an alternative version of the Phillips curve labelled as efficient Phillips curve. Our aim is to present an application of CGE models to a new area of research that can be especially useful when addressing policy exercises with real data. We apply our methodological proposal within a particular regional economy, Andalusia, in the south of Spain. This tool can give some keys for policy advice and policy implementation in the fight against unemployment and inflation.