environmental regulation and u s economic growth in this article we quantify the costs of pollution controls by reporting the results of simulations of the growth of the u s economy with and without regulation for this purpose we have constructed a detailed model of the economy that includes the determinants of long term growth we have also analyzed the interaction between industries in order to capture the full repercussions of environmental regulations however we have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment we find that pollution abatement has emerged as a major claimant on the resources of the u s economy the cost of emission controls is more than 10 of the total cost of government purchases of goods and services

the interaction of taxes and inflation in a macroeconomic model this paper presents a closed economy macroeconomic model in which the nominal income of some assets is taxed whereas that of others is not the short run and long run implications of a change in expected inflation are examined an increase in the expected rate of inflation shifts the composition of aggregate demand since asset holders shift their portfolios from the taxed asset corporate capital to the untaxed asset consumer durables in the long run this shift implies a stock adjustment decline in capital with a consequent decrease in the rate of growth of productivity over the transition period

can a carbon trading system promote the transformation of a low carbon economy under the framework of the porter hypothesis empirical analysis based on the psm did method abstract global warming is one of the issues of great concern in the world the large scale use of fossil fuels has led to the continuous increase in carbon emissions resulting in global energy shortages and environmental pollution reasonable and strict environmental regulation promotes technological innovation by enterprises to achieve a win win situation between the economy and environment which is the core idea of the porter hypothesis the choice of china as the world s largest energy consumer and carbon emitter is not only related to the country s own mode of economic growth but also determines the development of the world s low carbon economy we used the panel data from 2000 to 2016 of 30 provincial level administrative regions in china and adopted the propensity score matching difference in differences method to test the impact of china s carbon trading pilot system on the transformation of a low carbon economy the empirical results show that under the constraints of the established resources and environment there is a positive relationship to some extent between china s carbon trading system and low carbon economic transformation this relationship can realize the win win situation of environmental and economic benefits as advocated by the porter hypothesis and further verify the applicability of the porter hypothesis

plant vintage technology and environmental regulation abstract we use data on productivity and pollution abatement costs at individual pulp and paper mills to test whether the impact of environmental regulation on productivity differs by plant vintage and technology plants with higher pollution abatement costs have significantly lower productivity levels this relationship differs greatly based on a plant s technology with productivity at integrated mills being greatly affected by abatement costs while the impact at non integrated mills is negligible plant vintage does not seem to matter with older and newer plants showing similar impacts reported abatement costs appear to substantially understate the true costs of abatement accounting for the impact of technology differences makes some difference in the estimated overall impact of environmental regulation

environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness evidence from china economic activities are closely related to real world environmental issues currently more attention is paid to the association between environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness ic because of pressures on economic development and environmental protection in this study we identify and explain the association between environmental regulations and ic in china as the largest developing country in the world china has the unavoidable responsibility of protecting the environment and promoting global economic development we analyse the mechanisms behind environmental regulations and industrial competiveness at the provincial level and conclude that the impact of environmental regulations upon ic is not a simple linear one but a u shaped relationship it is argued that the crucial intervention to activate the u shaped relationship or porter s hypothesis is innovation which can be triggered by stringent regulations and well designed policies

who works in a working region inclusive innovation in the new manufacturing economy abstractwho works in a working region inclusive innovation in the new manufacturing economy regional studies scholars have documented economic gains for regions that promote manufacturing through co location of innovation and production activities but it is unclear whether the production jobs created in this new context remain inclusive of workers with limited formal education this paper compares us states that specialize in biopharmaceuticals to understand who participates in a so called working region while some state policy makers have privileged scientific and design occupations at the expense of the production workforce regional actors in north carolina have increased employment in design and development while growing their biopharmaceutical production base aligning innovation and equity goals in the process

academic earmarks and the returns to lobbying abstract in this paper we estimate the returns to lobbying by universities to motivate our empirical work we develop a simple theoretical model of university lobbying for academic earmarks our statistical analysis shows that universities represented by a house appropriations committee hac or senate appropriations committee sac member spend less money on lobbying than those that are not represented in addition using instrumental variables estimations we show that universities without hac or sac representation may receive some benefit to lobbying for earmarks although in many estimations this benefit is not statistically different from zero however for universities with hac or sac representation a 10 percent increase in lobbying yields an additional 2 8 percent or 3 5 percent increase in earmarks respectively this suggests that there are large returns to lobbying for academic earmarks if a university is represented by a member of one the hac or sac but little or no return if not

transforming the energy sector the evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology this paper analyses the development and diffusion of technologies that utilize renewable energy sources in germany sweden and the netherlands the analysis enlarges the life cycle model of industry evolution to one where the focus is on the formation and evolution of new technological systems particular focus is on explaining success and failures in shifting from a formative phase into one characterized by positive feedbacks a set of challenges is identified for policy makers attempting to influence the process of transforming the energy sector

cost functions and nonlinear prices estimating a technology with quality differentiated inputs the paper is concerned with developing a production theory for the case when some inputs have nonlinear prices because the price depends on endogenous quality this involves extending the notion of a cost function to the case where nonlinear prices are parameters of costs after developing the appropriate theory we apply our results to the case of coal fired electric power generation where fuel quality depends on sulfur and ash impurities environmental regulations induce a negative value on sulfur whereas ash impurities degrade performance and thus reduce production possibilities a number of empirical results emerge including significant rates of technological change that are sulfur and ash saving though capital using this change may explain in part the recent drop in the price of sulfur allowances in the united states

the efficiency and equity consequences of two part tariffs in electricity pricing ahstrat t this paper evaluates electricity two part tariffs with both efficiency and equity criteria the efficiency of tariffs is analyzed by studying the relation between price and marginal cost for both customer connection and variable output the equity of tariffs is addressed by an analysis of cross subsidization to address these issues this paper presents a multiproduct cost function that can provide information on output and connection marginal costs for each customer class using a 1980 cross section of electric utilities it is shown that prices are not set in a first best efficient manner and least favor the commercial class

a model of rental and owner occupied housing abstract a complete model of owner occupied and rental housing is developed the model allows for the endogenous determination of rents the user cost of owner occupied housing and housing tenure choice by individuals in the short run structure prices are endogenous while in the long run the size of the housing stock adjusts to equate structure prices to exogenous construction costs comparative static results emphasize the importance of marginal tax rates and distinguishing between the short and long run for a complete understanding of the impacts of inflation on housing markets

environmental regulation and competitiveness empirical evidence on the porter hypothesis from european manufacturing sectors abstract this paper investigates the weak and strong versions of porter hypothesis ph focusing on the manufacturing sectors of 17 european countries between 1997 and 2009 the hypothesis that well crafted and well enforced regulation would benefit both the environment and the firm was originally proposed by porter 1991 and porter and van der linde 1995 to date the literature has analyzed the impact of environmental regulation on innovation and on productivity mostly in separate analyses and focusing on the usa the few existing contributions on europe study the effect of environmental regulation either on green innovation or on performance indicators such as exports we instead look at overall innovation and productivity impacts first focusing on overall innovative activity allows us to account for potential opportunity costs of induced innovations second productivity impacts are arguably the most relevant indicators for the strong ph as a proxy of environmental policy stringency we use pollution abatement and control expenditures pace one of the few sectoral level indicators available we remedy upon its main drawback namely potential endogeneity by adopting an instrumental variable estimation approach we find evidence of a positive impact of environmental regulation on the output of innovation activity as proxied by patents thus providing support in favor of the weak ph this result is in line with most of the literature on the other front we find no evidence in favor of the strong ph as productivity appears to be unaffected by the degree of pollution control and abatement efforts

the measurement of rationing and the treatment of structural change in the uk mortgage market uk mortgage markets have undergone major structural changes in the past few years resulting in mortgages no longer being rationed the ending of rationing has implications for the specification of empirical models of housing demand housing models have never adequately resolved how to incorporate unobservable mortgage rationing conventional proxy methods are particularly unsuitable when rationing ceases in this paper we propose a new way of measuring rationing directly which incorporates regime switching the model of rationing is extensively tested and estimates of rationing for the period 1963 1988 are provided these may be easily incorporated into housing demand studies

the effects of regulation on research and development theory and evidence while other aspects of the effects of regulation on resource allocation have received considerable attention the impact of regulation on the innovative p ropensities of regulated firms has generated only limited and somewha t tenuous evidence accordingly this article investigates the effect s of regulation and firm structure on research and development r d expenditures a simple model of the behavior of a firm under a rate o f return regulation suggests that both the stringency of the allowed rate of return constraint and the inclusion or exclusion of r d in a firm s rate base will be key determinants of firm level r d expenditu res the empirical results strongly support the theoretical model copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

federal environmental policy and local industrial diversification the case of the clean air act carr d and yan w federal environmental policy and local industrial diversification the case of the clean air act regional studies air quality regulations under the clean air act alter local industrial diversification by reducing concentration in polluting sectors of the economy for non attainment areas using comprehensive county level data covering the entire united states over a period of twenty six years this study finds an important connection between air quality regulations and local industrial diversification in both non attainment areas and jurisdictions that have gained attainment status non attainment status for ozone carbon monoxide co or sulphur dioxide so2 brings about significant decreases in local industrial specialization furthermore these effects persist after attainment status has been gained for ozone carbon monoxide or sulphur dioxide carr d et yan w la politique federale pour l environnement et la diversification industrielle locale etude de cas de la loi antipollut

the economic costs of environmental regulation in u s dairy farming a directional distance function approach analyses of the costs of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy production which could be used to assess the effectiveness of alternative policy measures is a missing link in the literature this article addresses this gap by establishing the economic impact associated with a hypothetical greenhouse gas environmental regulatory regime across major dairy producing counties in the united states in doing so the article makes three important contributions to the literature first it develops a comprehensive pollution index based on environmental protection agency methodologies which contrasts with previous studies that rely on partial measures based only on surplus nitrogen stemming from the over application of fertilizer second the article uses a directional output distance function an approach that has not been employed previously to evaluate polluting technologies in the u s dairy sector third the article incorporates a four way error approach that accounts for unobserved county heterogeneity time invariant persistent technical efficiency time varying transient technical efficiency and a random error the results indicate that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy farming would induce a 5 percentage point increase in average technical efficiency in addition the economic costs of implementing this hypothetical regulatory framework exhibit significant spatial variation across counties in the united states

the impact of environmental regulations on industry productivity direct and indirect effects abstract the paper develops an approach to measuring the impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth which is less restrictive than a simple growth accounting approach environmental regulations have a direct impact on productivity growth due to the diversion of resources toward required abatement capital there can be a further indirect effect however as conventional inputs and production processes are changed in response to requirements to purchase abatement capital we estimate this indirect effect using a flexible functional form cost function total factor productivity and the direct and indirect productivity effects of environmental regulations are presented for five polluting industries we find that the indirect effect can be either positive or negative and in all industries is energy using the net impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth is fairly small given that these are the most polluting industries they account for about 10 30 of the productivity decline of the 1970s in these industries

how institutions create historically rooted trajectories of growth this paper is concerned with approaches to growth theory that argue for historically created institutionally rooted national development trajectories there are varied ways of organizing market economies and there is more than just one kind of capitalism the institutional approach begins with the observation that markets embedded in political and social institutions are the creation of government and politics indeed all economic interchange takes place within institutions and groups markets do not exist or operate apart from the rules and institutions that establish them and that structure how buying selling and the very organization of production takes place consequently there are multiple market capitalisms and in a global economy international competition among members must be understood as an interplay of these various national market systems focus is on the historically rooted national institutions which frame the choices of individuals and structure the terms on which issues such as agency problems and contract problems are confronted the approach proposed in this paper is a necessary complement to an institutionalism more familiar in economics this historical institutionalism frames problems and provides answers to puzzles that concern microeconomic based institutionalism the particular historical course of each nation s development creates a political economy with a distinctive institutional structure for governing the markets of labor land capital and goods the institutional structure induces particular kinds of corporate and government behavior by constraining and by z laying out a logic to the market and policy making process that is particular to that s political economy these typical strategies routine approaches to problems and shared o decision rules create predictable patterns in the way governments and companies go v about their business in a particular national political economy the paper then applies 1 these notions to the debate about national systems of innovation empirically there is evidence of distinct national technological trajectories the questions are why the j trajectories exist and why they have particular form national systems arguments need an institutional theory that would permit us to apply both evolutionary and new growth arguments about economic development to particular national cases

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

the impacts of the clean air act on production cost and the substitution between inputs in the electric utility industry abstract the paper examines how having to comply with phase 1 of title iv of the 1990 clean air act affected production cost and the substitution between fuel and non fuel labor capital inputs phase 1 required firms to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions enacting procedures to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions using lower sulfur content coal or other fuel sources could lead to higher cost and impact the substitution between fuel and non fuel inputs using a 1992 2000 panel of 34 u s electric utilities empirical results indicate that the procedures electric utilities enacted to comply with phase 1 contributed to small increases in both marginal cost and total cost firms having to comply with phase 1 were more willing than firms not subject to phase 1 to substitute from fuel to non fuel labor capital inputs following an increase in the price of fuel utilities subject to phase 1 that had a fuel clause were more willing than phase 1 firms without a fuel clause to substitute from non fuel inputs to fuel when the price of the non fuel input increased

the costs of water pollution regulation in the pulp and paper industry this paper studies plant level data on actual and permitted levels of water pollution emissions for the pulp and paper industry there is widespread and substantial overcompliance with the relevant regulations aggregate bod emissions in 1992 were only 50 of the amount allowed overcompliance appears to imply a zero marginal abatement cost and its prevalence therefore has the potential to substantially change the debate over the costs of regulation we show instead that plants incurred substantial costs to overcomply marginal abatement costs were roughly 13 000 ton in 1992 we discuss possible explanations for costly overcompliance and their implications for estimation

revolving door lobbyists we study how ex government ocials benet from the personal connections acquired during public service lobbyists with experience in the oce of a us senator suer a 24 drop in generated revenue when that senator leaves oce the eect is immediate discontinuous around the exit period and long lasting consistent with the notion that lobbyists sell access to powerful politicians the drop in revenue is increasing in the committee assignments power held by the exiting politician

tax subsidies to owner occupied housing an asset market approach inflation reduces the effective cost of homeownership and raises the tax subsidy to owner occupation this paper presents an asset market model of the housing market and estimates how changes in the expected inflation rate affect the real price of houses and the equilibrium size of the housing capital stock simulation results suggest that the accelerating inflation of the 1970s which substantially reduced homeowners user costs could have accounted for as much as a 30 percent increase in real house prices persistent high inflation rates could lead ultimately to a sizable increase in the stock of owner occupied housing

effects of ancestral populations on entrepreneurial founding and failure private liquor stores in alberta 1994 2003 until 1993 all liquor stores in the canadian province of alberta were government owned and run in the fall of 1993 the provincial government exited liquor retailing all government stores were shut down and entrepreneurs were allowed to open private liquor stores in this article we take advantage of this abrupt regulatory change in the alberta liquor retailing industry to address two related issues that have received little empirical attention first we investigate how an ancestral population affects processes of legitimation and competition while density dependence theory predicts that legitimation effects outweigh competitive effects at low levels of density will this be the case when a new population replaces a similar ancestral one second beyond density dependence we investigate how ancestral populations affect the locations of new entrepreneurial ventures will entrepreneurs follow ancestral location patterns and will these ancestral locations confer survival advantages to answer these questions we map all private liquor stores on the street map of calgary alberta s largest city from 1994 to 2003 and analyze store founding and failure we use our results to draw implications for theories of density dependence entrepreneurial behavior and industry spatial structure copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

real options logic revisited the performance effects of alternative resource allocation regimes we delineate three dimensions of resource allocation behavior that allow us to distinguish between real options logic and alternative resource allocation regimes sequencing low initial commitment and reallocation we then measure these in a product innovation context to test for the performance effect of real options logic vis a vis its alternatives sequencing which distinguishes dynamic allocation regimes more generally is associated with higher new product sales low initial commitment and reallocation do not show individual direct effects on new product sales however when assessed as a match we find that the fit between low initial commitment and reallocation yes yes no no increases performance significantly after controlling for such fit as well as sequencing we find no significant performance difference between real options logic and other regimes our findings imply that insufficient identification of real options logic picks up confounding effects which may provide an explanation for the inconclusive results in prior studies of real options and performance in addition to bounding the concept more precisely we contribute to theory by situating real options logic within the broader set of allocation regimes conducive to innovation performance in uncertain competitive markets

natural versus manufactured capital win lose or win win a case study of the finnish pulp and paper industry abstract the effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win win rhetoric specifically in micro level analysis on the macro level the win win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital intensive industry over time the paper shows that rather than generalise the existence of win win situations or the substitutability of capital these positions are determined by purely situational factors as a result in the assessment of substitutability the specific operating context of the industry needs to be taken into account this implies also that environmental policy needs to be designed to be adaptive and responsive to those situational factors to create beneficial outcomes for the economy and for the environment

new supply and price dynamics in the singapore housing market in this paper var models are employed to trace the price response of existing houses to the quantity of new units launched by homebuilders in singapore between 1996 and 2009 contrary to the competition hypothesis prediction of a negative reaction it is found that marginal supply granger cause existing house prices in a positive manner the effect is robust to the inclusion of exogenous demand factors as well as price interaction in the primary new houses and secondary existing houses market segments the contagion effect is consistent with the hypothesis that developers due to their ability to predict the market are price leaders in the housing market it is also found that homebuilders exhibit herding behaviour in mimicking each other s timing on when to market their new residential projects

modelling uk house prices using cointegration an application of the johansen technique this paper provides an econometric analysis of the long term equilibrium determination of uk house prices using the relatively recent johansen cointegration procedure this long term equilibrium specification is then utilized in order to estimate a parsimonious dynamic model for uk house prices

export performance and productivity growth the case of taiwan the hypothesis that rapid growth of exports accelerates economic growth has been widely discussed and tested the empirical evidence that supports the hypothesis includes studies by m michaely b balassa p heller and r porter w tyler g feder r kavoussi and r ram using macrodata and m nishimizu and s robinson using two digit industry level data feder found that exports contribute to economic growth because the export sector is not only more productive than the nonexport sector but also generates some external effects that enhance the productivity of the nonexport sector as exports expand both the resource reallocation effect and externality effect lead to an economy wide productivity increase nishimizu and robinson also found the existence of a significant correlation between productivity growth and export expansion on a theoretical level there are at least two interpretations of the correlation between productivity growth and export expansion one stresses scale economies the other stresses competitive forces the scale economies argument emphasizes the benefits that can be derived by means of expanding the scale of operations in the case of countries whose domestic markets are small in size exporting becomes an essential part of achieving scale economies j bhagwati considered scale economies to be a plausible explanation for the superiority of the export promotion trade strategy as opposed to the import substitution trade strategy but warned against the lack of convincing evidence 2 the study by j kwon on the korean manufacturing industry also found that scale economies are a main factor contributing to total fac

initial advantage the origins of the geographic concentration of the pharmaceutical industry in the mid atlantic region in this paper we offer an interpretation of the social and institutional context that promoted the development and evolution of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry our interest is in defining the historical circumstances that led to the geographic concentration of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in the mid atlantic region our focus is both geographic and institutional as we seek to understand the forces behind geographic localization and the ways in which geographic localization may contribute to the advancement of science and to the evolution of industries in this paper we describe the general development of the industry in the mid atlantic region of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries copyright 1996 by oxford university press

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

the impact of regulatory reforms on cost structure ownership and competition in indian banking this paper evaluates the impact of financial sector reforms on the cost structure characteristics and on the ownership cost efficiency relationship in indian banking it also examines the impact of reforms on the dynamics of competition in the lending market we find evidence that deregulation improves banks performance and fosters competition in the lending market results suggest technological progress once indian commercial banks have adjusted to the new regulatory environment this however does not translate in efficiency gains there is also evidence of an ownership effect on the level and pattern of efficiency change finally competition keeps building pace even in the re regulation period and technological improvements are not hampered by the tightening of prudential norms

do exogenous shocks better leverage the benefits of technological change in the staged elimination of differential environmental regulations evidence from china s cement industry before and after the 2008 great sichuan earthquake abstract technological modernization is crucial for productivity and environmental management and has profound implications for china where both overproduction and industrial pollution are serious issues this study reports empirical results for existing cement plants in sichuan province in china capturing changes in productivity and environmental performance between 2007 and 2010 during this time period as the moratorium period of differential environmental regulations came to an end certain existing plants modernized their production processes after the great sichuan earthquake in 2008 using primary data and the directional distant function approach this study investigates the financial and environmental benefits of technological modernization by examining improvements in productivity and environmental performance we find that the decision to modernize by changing the production process from conventional vertical shaft kilns vsks to modern dry rotary kilns as part of a cleaner production strategy yields significant savings in pollution abatement costs without compromising production efficiency we compare this modernization strategy to a reference strategy whereby firms continued to use vsk technology and invested in end of pipe technology to satisfy stricter environmental regulations we find that the environmental benefits of technological modernization are approximately three times greater than the non environmental financial benefits when environmental benefits are considered the payback period is significantly reduced going from 8 97 years to 2 26 years

productivity growth and environmental regulation in mexican and u s food manufacturing many argued during the nafta debate that trade liberalization would favor mexican over u s food processors especially because of lax environmental laws south of the border we find through an examination of profit functions that productivity growth in mexico has outstripped that in the united states suggesting free trade indeed will benefit mexican suppliers u s pollution regulations have had no impact on the profitability or productivity of u s food manufacturing in contrast mexico s swiftly rising environmental standards have enhanced food processors productivity growth corroborating the porter hypothesis pollution law therefore has favored mexican over u s food processing but for reasons few had anticipated

the allocation of capital between residential and nonresidential uses taxes inflation and capital market constraints we have constructed a simple two sector model of the demand for housing and corporate capital economic growth and an increase in the inflation rate were then simulated with a number of model variants the model and simulation experiments illustrate both the tax bias in favor of housing and the manner in which the increase in inflation between 1965 and 1978 magnified it the existence of capital market constraints offsets the bias against corporate capital but it introduces a sharp inefficient reallocation of housing from less wealthy constrained households to wealthy households who do not have gains on mortgages and are not financially constrained

environmental innovations and profitability how does it pay to be green an empirical analysis on the german innovation survey much of the empirical literature analysing the relation between environmental innovation and competitiveness has focused on the question whether it pays to be green we differentiate between different types of environmental innovations which will be disentangled in those aiming at reducing the negative externalities and those allowing for efficiency increases and cost savings what we analyze is at first the extent to which these two typologies have impacts on firms profitability with opposite signs and secondly whether the motivations driving the adoption of those innovations make the difference in terms of economic gains we find empirical evidence that both the typology of environmental innovation and the driver of their adoption affect the sign of the relationship between competitiveness and environmental performance the empirical strategy is based on a sample of german firms and makes use of a merge of two waves of the mannheim innovation panel in 2011 and 2009 that allow overcoming some endogeneity issues which may arise in a cross section setting

campaign contributions as investments the u s house of representatives 1980 1986 this paper treats the market for special interest campaign contributions and political favors as a simple asset market the model yields a simple equilibrium relationship among three variables the total amount of investor contributions a candidate receives the monetary value of the favors he has promised and his probability of winning using data on open seat races for the u s house of representatives i confront the model with a series of tests despite the starkness of the model the results of these tests are highly supportive

the dynamics of the singapore private housing market in this paper a dynamic stock flow model is modified and applied to the singapore private housing market two empirical models are then constructed which offer an explanation for the dynamic patterns of both real private housing prices and new housing construction in the long run movements in the real gdp per capita and the total housing stock are found to have significant impacts on real housing prices while the user cost the public resale housing prices and the autocorrelation of housing prices with one lag explain most of the short run dynamics of real housing prices on the supply side the long run price elasticity of new housing construction is 1 31 it is also found that long run new housing construction drops 6 5 per cent for every 1 per cent increase in the total housing stock

human capital centred regionalism in economic development a case of analytics outpacing institutions drawing on the case of the delaware valley innovation network a regional consortium funded under the us department of labor the paper argues that sophisticated analytical tools developed to facilitate workforce and occupation led economic development are running ahead of the institution building required to put new approaches into practice there are two main reasons for this first tensions persist around the role of the public sector workforce system in regional development initiatives secondly regional stakeholders disagree about whether knowledge economy investments should include the training of manufacturing transport and logistics workers the documentation of regional occupational specialisations talent gap analyses and the clarification of career pathways are crucial components of human capital centred regionalism in economic development however best analytical practices are of little use without the institutional capacity to translate analysis into coherent effective policy

the effect of within sector upstream and downstream energy taxes on innovation and productivity the aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of environmental regulatory stringency on innovation and productivity using a panel of 8 european countries for 13 manufacturing sectors over the years 2001 2007 this research topic falls under the heading of the porter hypothesis ph of which different versions have been tested we consider both the strong and the weak versions of the ph while also adding some peculiar features to the analysis firstly we assess the role played by environmental taxes that is an instrument rarely tested as a factor which can support the ph secondly we analyse not only the effect of environmental taxes within a given sector within sector but also the role played by environmental taxes in upstream and downstream sectors in terms of input output relationships thirdly we test these relationships also indirectly by verifying whether innovation is one of the channels through which higher sectoral productivity can be achieved by imposing tighter environmental regulations our main findings suggest that downstream stringency is the most relevant driver of innovation and productivity while within sector regulations only affect productivity but not innovation moreover the effect of regulations on productivity is mostly direct while the part of the effect mediated by induced innovations as measured by patents is relevant only for what concerns downstream regulations

political careers or career politicians two main career paths are prevalent among politicians in modern democracies there are career politicians i e politicians who work in the political sector until retirement and political careers i e there are politicians who leave politics before retirement and work in the private sector in this paper we propose a dynamic equilibrium model of the careers of politicians in a political economy with a private sector and a political sector where individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their market ability as well as their political skills we characterize the conditions under which the two career paths emerge in equilibrium and establish a number of comparative statics results with respect to the quality of politicians and their careers

beyond lobbying expenditures how lobbying breadth and political connectedness affect firm outcomes the extant lobbying literature largely focuses on the effects of firm aggregate lobbying expenditures suggesting that more lobbying expenditures fuel positive firm benefits we argue the focus on

differential environmental regulation effects on electric utility capital turnover and emissions this paper tests the hypothesis that differential regulations reduced the rate of capital turnover in the electric utility industry resulting in increased emissions of sulfur dioxide based on a sample of forty four privately owned electric utilities operating over the period 1969 83 the authors results indicate that 1 regulation increased the age of capital by an average of 3 29 years 24 6 percent 2 increases in the age of capital have no statistically significant impact on emissions and 3 in the absence of regulation emissions would have increased by 3 79 tons per million kwhs 34 6 percent copyright 1993 by mit press

a general index of technical change this paper outlines a procedure for estimating a general index of technical change within the context of a quite general production technology specifically when panel data are available for firms in an industry time specific dummies can be combined in a nonlinear estimation procedure to yield a general index of technical change that may be both nonneutral and scale augmenting this approach offers numerous advantages over the traditional time trend representation of technical change for example the general index can serve as the basis for analysis of the determinants of technical change results for a sample of 30 electric utilities over the period 1951 78 show that the productivity decline of the 1970s can be attributed primarily to sulphur oxide restrictions and secularly declining capacity utilization due to rapidly increasing peak load demands

the sensitivity of productivity growth measures to alternative structural and behavioral assumptions an application to electric utilities 1951 1984 this article examines the sensitivity of three alternative multifactor productivity growth estimates for the electric utility industry during the 1951 1984 period the results indicate that multifactor productivity growth estimates are quite sensitive to the relaxation of various structural and behavioral assumptions first a benchmark measure is constructed along the lines suggested by solow 1957 this residual approach produces estimates that suggest a substantial decline in firm level productivity growth after the mid 1960s prior to obtaining the second and third estimates empirical tests of the structural and behavioral assumptions underlying a firm s operation are conducted first the structural assumption of constant returns to scale is rejected and the resulting long run scale adjusted multifactor productivity growth estimates are found to be consistently less than the residual estimates second the behavioral assumption of long run equilibrium is rejected comparing the long run scale ad

the determinants of industry political activity 1978 1986 c ampaign contributions made by corporate political action committees pacs are increasingly important and controversial in u s elections influence purchasing is often alleged by pundits and campaign finance reform is continually debated in congress in the academy social scientists have analyzed the allocation of interest group monies and have looked for possible impacts on legislation few however have tried to explain the total contributions of economic interest groups we shall analyze variations in contributions across industries and over time with an empirical model based on organizationally constrained profit maximizing behavior we assume that corporate pac contributions in an industry are raised to enhance industry profits subject to the constraints of organization costs and freeriding incentives our empirical work covers 124 industries over five election cycles from 1978 through 1986 both the costs and benefits of political activity vary across industries we argue that the benefits of political action are determined by direct contact with the government as a regulator or purchaser of industry output by government s ability to ameliorate adverse market conditions and by the industry s ability to solve collective action problems without government assistance the costs of industry political action arise mainly from collective action problems because effective political activity often requires concerted action by the constituent firms in each industry we also make a methodological contribution previous studies use statistical techniques that suffer from sample selectivity bias or else force the probability of acting politically to be explained by the same set of coefficients as is the amount of action taken we explain and employ a technique that accounts for both problems the results are consistent with the theses that industries follow investment oriented goals in deciding the amount of political action to undertake and that collective action problems are important constraints on industry political activity we can explain between 60 and 80 of the variation in contributions in our sample first we review existing work on corporate political activity particularly papers examining patterns of aggregate pac spending by industry then we present an organization cost constrained industryprofit maximizing model based on a comparison between an idealized zero organization cost industry and the more realistic case where organizing collective action is difficult the independent variables used in the analysis are also discussed and defined next we discuss the dependent variable and total industry contributions and explain our statistical method then the results are presented followed by a discussion of industry structure and political activity to make clear how our results can explain different contribution patterns we give examples using five actual industries

the market impact and the cost of environmental policy evidence from the swedish green car rebate we quantify the effects of the swedish gcr a program to reduce oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions in the automobile industry we find the gcr to increase the market shares of green cars and its cost to be 109 tonco2 saved thus 5 times the price of an emission permit since the main green cars in sweden are ffvs flexible fuel vehicles which can switch between petrol gasoline and ethanol we also account for fuel choice which increases the cost of the program finally we show that consumers would have purchased ffvs regardless of the rebate provided by the gcr

taxation inflation and the terms of trade abstract the interaction between changes in the rate of inflation and tax systems can have potential terms of trade effects an open economy macroeconomic model is presented in which such effects are analyzed the asset menu consists of money corporate capital whose nominal income is subject to taxation and consumer durables whose return is tax exempt this may be contrasted with the conventional menu of money and capital and or bonds durables are imported an increase in the rate of inflation then implies that the terms of trade of the country in question deteriorates in the long run

pricing for the clean air evidence from chinese housing market abstract air pollution is widely believed to cause healthy risks and influence nations economic dimensions this paper investigates the impact of air pollution on housing prices in china s 286 prefectural level cities during 2005 2013 to address the endogeneity problem of pm2 5 concentrations in our regression we propose an instrument variable strategy based on ventilation coefficient the estimation results suggest that a 10 increase in pm2 5 concentrations causes a 2 4 reduction in local housing prices air pollution also hinders the progress of urbanization limits cities human capital formation and changes people s expectations of housing prices that we interpret as three potential mechanisms behind our main findings

productivity scale economies and technical change reconsidered recently several writers have presented theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that suggests that an electric utility s long run productivity growth rate can be decomposed into a variety of factors for example gollop and roberts 12 decompose a utility s total factor productivity growth rate into three distinct components 1 technical change 2 a scale effect and 3 an environmental regulatory factor results for the 1970s indicate that declining rates of technical change and output growth coupled with increased regulatory intensity lead to a noticeable decline in the firm s long run productivity growth rate similarly nelson and wohar 15 examine the impact of technical change scale economies and rate of return regulation on an electric utility s longrun productivity growth rate evidence suggests that the technical change and scale components behaved in a manner similar to the gollop and roberts 12 findings the evidence concerning the impact of the regulatory factor was less convincing due to the difficulty in obtaining reliable estimates of the regulatory constraint parameter a common characteristic of this literature is that the firms under investigation are assumed to employ all inputs at their long run cost minimizing levels as such the productivity decomposition model is primarily concerned with distinguishing between shifts in the production function versus movements along the production structure according to caves christensen and swanson 5 a violation of the long run equilibrium assumption adds an equally important factor to the decomposition of productivity growth specifically the movement toward or away from longrun equilibrium as a consequence researchers must further distinguish between long run and short run productivity growth estimates 2 in a recent article 9 daly and rao illustrate theoretically and empirically using a long run cost function and data pertaining to ontario hydro that a firm s long run productivity growth rate can be decomposed into 1 technical change 2 non constant returns to scale and 3 a capacity

environmental regulation and environmental productivity the case of china abstract constrained by the dual mission of supporting industrial growth and reducing emissions china s traditional emission reduction oriented environmental policies unavoidably face a dilemma this study adopts the gml index to calculate china s industrial productivity by considering environmental factors in addition based on the assumption of industry heterogeneity the author examines the non linear relationship between china s environmental regulation and environmental productivity and calculated the optimal regulation environment for industries according to this study when impact of undesirable outputs pollutant emissions is considered environmental regulation and environmental productivity are positively correlated which to some degree validates the porter hypothesis at present environmental regulation has significant positive effects on clean production industries but shows a lag effect on pollution intensive industries the degree of environmental regulation and environmental productivity show an inverted u shaped relation and display three thresholds it should be noted however that the relationship between regulation and productivity may vary across industries these findings have clear policy implications rather than continually increasing the level of environmental regulation the government should establish standards for individual industries that emphasize flexibility