micro economic applications of marginal changes in risk abstract extending a recent definition we propose a theorem on the impact of marginal changes in risk on the optimal decision of a risk averse individual several micro economic applications are then provided

toward equitable and sustainable rural water supplies a contingent valuation study in brazil because many rural people are poor it is usually assumed that rural water supplies must be financed by government agencies it is now widely recognized however that many rural people can and will pay for improved water supplies and that sustaining and extending services depends on mobilizing this willingness to pay this article describes a study of willingness to pay for water in brazil the study shows that surveys of actual and hypothetical water use practices can provide policy relevant information on willingness to pay which is shown to vary according to household socioeconomic characteristics and the characteristics of the existing and new supplies of water in rural brazil tariffs for yard taps can be increased substantially before significant numbers of housebolds would choose not to connect to an improved system whereas provision of free water at public taps can protect the poor without jeopardizing the financial viability of the scheme billions of people in developing countries face daily problems in obtaining water for drinking cooking bathing and washing more than 1 500 million people 30 percent of the world s population are estimated to be without access to uncontaminated water and an unknown but large proportion have to spend hours daily to collect water briscoe and de ferranti 1988 churchill 1987 because the adverse consequences for productivity health and quality

employment deterrence and crime in a dynamic model using maximum likelihood techniques and monthly panel data we solve and estimate an explicitly dynamic model of criminal behavior where current criminal activity impacts future labor market outcomes we show that the threat of future adverse effects in the labor market when arrested acts as a strong deterrent to crime moreover such forward looking behavior is estimated to be important hence policies that weaken this deterrence will be much less effective in fighting crime this suggests that prevention is more powerful than redemption since anticipated redemption allows criminals to look forward to negating the consequences of their crimes

estimating a socially optimal water price for irrigation versus an environmentally optimal water price through the use of geographical information systems and social accounting matrices this article develops a method for establishing water prices and their effects in order to provide policy makers an environmentally and socially optimal range of regional prices for irrigation water two prices are determined the environmentally optimal price of water is defined as the one that internalizes the environmental costs generated by agricultural consumption the social optimally price of water is defined as the one that maximizes levies on water for agriculture without affecting the regional economy the environmentally optimal price is calculated with an economic model built over a geographical information system gis that allows the economic quantification and valuation of the environmental cost of water in different basins the optimal price is calculated with a demand curve for irrigation water introduced into a social accounting matrix sam to observe if the regional economy can accept higher prices without affecting the regional gdp potential water prices are established ranging from prices that minimize the negative impact in the regional economy to those that totally internalize the environmental cost of water

what accounts for the decline in crime in this article we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the united states we propose a dynamic equilibrium model that guides our quantitative investigation of the major determinants of observed patterns of crime our main findings can be summarized as follows first the model is capable of reproducing the drop in crime between 1980 and 1996 second the most important factors that account for the observed decline in property crime are the higher apprehension probability the stronger economy and the aging of the population third the effect of unemployment on crime is negligible fourth the increased inequality prevented an even larger decline in crime overall our analysis can account for the behavior of the time series of property crime rates over the past quarter century

four models for determining environmental quality effects on recreational demand and regional economics abstract underestimation of regional economic effects associated with the improvement of recreation facilities or environmental quality at a recreation site is likely to result unless all four recreation choice decisions are included in estimates of the first round or direct changes in final demand these four related recreation choices are 1 decision to participate in a given recreation activity 2 decision about which of the available sites to visit 3 decision about the frequency of trips to take to a given site and 4 decision about length of stay at the recreation site recent advances in statistical techniques for modeling each one of these four recreation choice decisions is presented we emphasize how recreation facilities and site environmental quality can be incorporated into such models lastly an empirical example of using a related multinomial logit site selection model and trip frequency model for deer hunting allows us to illustrate how linking two of the four recreation choices yields more complete estimates of the change in number of trips income and employment

the evaluation of river water quality improvements by the contingent valuation method the results of an application of the contingent valuation method cvm to the estimation of the recreational benefits which would result from improvements in river water quality are described this

juvenile incarceration human capital and future crime evidence from randomly assigned judges over 130 000 juveniles are detained in the united states each year with 70 000 in detention on any given day yet little is known about whether such a penalty deters future crime or interrupts social and human capital formation in a way that increases the likelihood of later criminal behavior this article uses the incarceration tendency of randomly assigned judges as an instrumental variable to estimate causal effects of juvenile incarceration on high school completion and adult recidivism estimates based on over 35 000 juvenile offenders over a 10 year period from a large urban county in the united states suggest that juvenile incarceration results in substantially lower high school completion rates and higher adult incarceration rates including for violent crimes in an attempt to understand the large effects we found that incarceration for this population could be very disruptive greatly reducing the likelihood of ever returning to school and for those who do return significantly increasing the likelihood of being classified as having an emotional or behavioral disorder jel codes k140 i210

ban the box convictions and public employment ban the box btb policies mandate deferred access to criminal history until later in the hiring process however these policies chiefly target public employers the study is the first to focus on the primary goal of btb reform by measuring the impact of btb policies on the probability of public employment for those with convictions to execute the analyses the study uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1997 cohort 2005 2015 and difference in difference dd estimation the study finds that btb policies raise the probability of public employment for those with convictions by about 30 on average some scholars argue that btb policies encourage statistical discrimination against young low skilled minority males the study employs triple difference ddd estimation to test for statistical discrimination but uncovers no evidence to support the hypothesis jel j15 j71 j78 k4

a socio economic model of stigma and related social problems abstract recent years have seen a rapid expansion of economic literature on stigma a notion that had been widely studied in sociology in relation to social deviance yet the economic literature overlooks the original sociological intuition that certain consequences of stigmatization could be socially inefficient this paper formalizes this intuition by developing a model of community behavior which mimics a classic sociological setting concerning the rehabilitation of a former criminal offender the conditions under which a socially inefficient equilibrium arises are derived some of those conditions are shown to be consistent with the findings from micro labor studies on crime

economic and ecological concepts for valuing ecosystem services abstract the purpose of this special issue is to elucidate concepts of value and methods of valuation that will assist in guiding human decisions vis a vis ecosystems the concept of ecosystem service value can be a useful guide when distinguishing and measuring where trade offs between society and the rest of nature are possible and where they can be made to enhance human welfare in a sustainable manner while win win opportunities for human activities within the environment may exist they also appear to be increasingly scarce in a full global ecological economic system this makes valuation all the more essential for guiding future human activity this paper provides some history background and context for many of the issues addressed by the remaining papers in this special issue its purpose is to place both economic and ecological meanings of value and their respective valuation methods in a comparative context highlighting strengths weakness and addressing questions that arise from their integration

how unregulated is the u s labor market the penal system as a labor market institution1 comparative research contrasts the corporatist welfare states of europe with the unregulated u s labor market to explain low rates of u s unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s in contrast this article argues that the u s state made a large and coercive intervention into the labor market through the expansion of the penal system the impact of incarceration on unemployment has two conflicting dynamics in the short run u s incarceration lowers conventional unemployment measures by removing able bodied working age men from labor force counts in the long run social survey data show that incarceration raises unemployment by reducing the job prospects of ex convicts strong u s employment performance in the 1980s and 1990s has thus depended in part on a high and increasing incarceration rate

the effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of young men many young men commit crime and many are arrested i estimate the effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of arrestees using a large longitudinal data set constructed by merging police records with ui earnings data i find that the effects of arrests are moderate in magnitude and rather short lived

the use of criminal record in employment decisions the rights of ex offenders employers and the public the evidence suggests that employers discriminate against ex offenders in the labour market the problem is potentially serious as it involves a substantial proportion of the population especially the male population since research has shown that most people with prior convictions stop offending by their late 20s or early 30s the validity of selection based on criminal record remains questionable this paper examines the need for legal protection of ex offenders by limiting employers access to and use of information on criminal background the rights and interests of the various parties involved employers ex offenders and the general public are discussed approaches to the legal protection of ex offenders in australia are reviewed and legislative changes proposed

the transition from school to jail youth crime and high school completion among black males abstract in this paper we study the relationship among schooling youth employment and youth crime the framework a multinomial discrete choice vector autoregression provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interactions among a youth s schooling work and crime decisions and arrest and incarceration outcomes we allow for observable initial conditions unobserved heterogeneity measurement error and missing data we use data from the nlsy97 on black male youths starting from age 14 the estimates indicate important roles both for heterogeneity in initial conditions and for stochastic events that arise during one s youth in determining outcomes as young adults

the effect of employment frictions on crime this article provides estimates on how long it takes for released inmates to find a job and when they find a job how less likely they are to be incarcerated an on the job search model with crime is used to model criminal behavior derive the estimation method and analyze policies including a job placement program the results show that the unemployed are incarcerated twice as fast as the employed and take on average 6 months to find a job the article demonstrates that reducing the average unemployment spell of previously incarcerated criminals by 3 months reduces crime and recidivism by more than 5

the effect of drug prohibition on drug prices evidence from the markets for cocaine and heroin this paper examines the effect of drug prohibition on the black market prices of cocaine and heroin the paper examines the ratio of retail to farmgate price for cocaine heroin and several legal goods and it compares legal versus black market prices for cocaine and heroin the results suggest that cocaine and heroin are substantially more expensive than they would be in a legalized market but to a lesser degree than suggested in previous research

crime and economic incentives we explore the role that economic incentives particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution play in determining crime rates we use data on the police force areas of england and wales between 1975 and 1996 and find relative falls in the wages of low wage workers lead to increases in crime we carry out a number of experiments with different wage measures including a wage measure that accounts for the effects of changes in the composition of employment these reinforce the picture of a strong association between the low wage labor market and crime the result that incentives play a central role is reinforced further by the strong impact on crime of deterrence measures and of a measure of the returns to crime

crime rates and labor market opportunities in the philippines 1970 2008 abstract the paper estimates the impact of labor market variables on crime in the philippines using national level time series and regional level panel data the evidence suggests that wage rate and labor force participation rate have stronger effect on crime than criminal deterrence variables

option price estimates for water quality improvements a contingent valuation study for the monongahela river abstract we present the findings from a contingent valuation survey designed to estimate the option price bids for the improved recreation resulting from enhanced water quality in the pennsylvania portion of the monongahela river the findings are based on a survey design that used professional interviewers to conduct personal interviews determined from a representative sample of 393 households in addition the research suggests that protest bids and outliers be viewed similarly accordingly a new technique for identifying outlying responses is proposed the findings suggest that the question format affects the option price estimates and that criteria for determining the final sample of responses can have an important influence on contingent valuation results

does incarceration length affect labor market outcomes abstractthis paper studies how longer incarceration spells affect offenders labor market outcomes by using a reform that increased incarceration lengths by approximately 1 month i use detailed register data for offenders who predominantly serve incarceration spells of 1 2 months i analyze the sample for several years prior to and after incarceration and show that the reform led to an exogenous increase in incarceration lengths i find that the longer incarceration spells result in lower unemployment rates and higher earnings possibly because marginal increases in short incarceration spells improve conditions and incentives for rehabilitation while the costs of jail related to these outcomes are unaffected i show that the estimates are robust to different econometric specifications and further provide evidence that my results are not driven by changes in macroeconomic conditions

imprisonment and labor market outcomes evidence from a natural experiment because of racially disproportionate imprisonment rates the literature on mass incarceration has focused on the labor market consequence of imprisonment and the implications of those effects for r