the environmental economic impact of woodland a two stage hedonic price model of the amenity value of forestry in britain woodland is an important part of the environment providing economic benefits through its use in commercial timber production and through its value as an amenity as well as providing recreation for visitors woodland is also important to local residents for whom it provides leisure opportunities and a source of aesthetic enjoyment it is well known that the price of a house may reflect a household s willingness to pay to live near an environmental amenity such as a forest and to gain access to it the nature of this relationship may be examined by applying the hedonic price technique an econometric method which investigates house prices and the variation in structural and environment characteristics over space this study uses a two stage hedonic price model to explore the impact of forest type on house price and to estimate the demand for broadleaved woodland for a sample of houses adjacent to forestry commission land

regional economic growth and human capital the role of over education ramos r surinach j and artis m regional economic growth and human capital the role of over education regional studies this article analyses the link between human capital and regional economic growth in the european union using various indicators of human capital calculated from census microdata it is concluded that the recent economic performance of european regions is associated with an increase in over education in fact measures of educational mismatch seem to be more strongly connected to regional economic performance than do other traditional measures of human capital stock ramos r surinach j and artis m ramos r surinach j et artis m la croissance economique regionale et le capital humain l impact de la sureducation regional studies cet article cherche a analyser le lien entre le capital humain et la croissance economiqu

la dolce vita hedonic estimates of quality of life in italian cities colombo e michelangeli a and stanca l la dolce vita hedonic estimates of quality of life in italian cities regional studies this paper investigates quality of life in italian cities using the hedonic approach it analyses micro level data for housing and labour markets to estimate compensating differentials for local amenities within four domains weather environment services and society large compensating differentials in housing markets are found whereas the effects on wages are relatively small quality of life varies substantially across space and is generally better in large and medium sized cities of the centre north services and social conditions are strongly related to overall quality of life it is also found that across cities quality of life is positively and significantly related to subjective well being

the value of value pricing of roads second best pricing and product differentiation abstract some road pricing demonstrations use value pricing in which travelers can choose between a free but congested roadway and a priced roadway recent research has uncovered a potentially serious problem for such demonstrations second best tolls may be far lower than those typically charged and from a welfare perspective the latter may be worse than not pricing at all that research however assumes that all travelers are identical and it therefore neglects the benefits of product differentiation using a model with two user groups we find that accounting for heterogeneity in value of time is important in evaluating constrained policies and improves the relative performance of policies that offer differential prices

the ramsey problem for congestible facilities abstract in recent years a new set of models drawing on vickrey 1969 has been developed to analyze the economics of congestible facilities these models are structural in that they derive the cost function from consumers time of use decisions and the congestion technology standard models in contrast simply assume the general form of the cost function we apply the new approach to analyze the ramsey problem for a congestible facility and show that the solution generally entails cost inefficiency standard models have failed to reveal this result because they treat the cost function as completely determined by technology

road pricing with optimal mass transit abstract this paper considers the second best policy problem that arises when auto travel is priced below its marginal cost and there is a substitute mass transit mode using analytical methods a global comparison is made between the second best levels of transit service and the fare and their first best levels the fact that the results are global permits an application to road pricing not possible with the local results of kraus 2003

economics of a bottleneck abstract drawing on vickrey amer econ rev 59 251 261 1969 and subsequent literature this paper provides a thorough economic analysis of the simplest bottleneck model of road congestion with peak load demand in the morning rush hour a fixed number of identical individuals one per car must travel from home to work between which is a bottleneck of given capacity the costs of travel include queuing time and schedule delay time early or late for work the frequency distribution of departure times adjusts so that in equilibrium all individuals have the same travel costs the paper extends the previous literature by examining a coarse toll and solving for optimal capacities the application of congestion tolls can generate efficiency gains by altering the frequency distribution of departure times previous estimates of the efficiency gains from congestion tolling are likely to be substantially downward biased because they have ignored this effect

a la carte or smorgasbord multiproduct clubs with costly exclusion abstract decentralized provision of multiple congestible and excludable goods is generally not socially optimal if similar goods are provided simultaneously by smorgasbord multiproduct clubs which sell multiple club services at single prices and other clubs which sell services at individual prices the different pricing rules for the similar club goods introduce an interclub externality consumers have an incentive to use the services of smorgasbord multiproduct clubs at levels in excess of the socially optimal the discrepancy between private and social valuations for the similar services disappears if the government intervenes and equalizes prices for the similar goods across the different types of clubs

durable goods monopoly learning by doing and the coase conjecture abstract the coase conjecture states that if a durable goods monopolist can make offers to sell arbitrarily frequently then in equilibrium she will charge the competitive price and the market will be saturated quickly this conjecture is shown to be refuted when production of the durable good is subject to learning by doing for the linear case it is shown that there exist a stationary strategy perfect equilibrium in which the monopolist charges competitive prices but the market is saturated slowly an interesting analogy between bargaining and durable goods monopoly with learning by doing is also pointed out

subscribe cancel or renew the economics of reading by subscription the authors investigate a consumer s decision of whether or not to join a bookclub and once his her contractual obligations are fulfilled whether to remain as a member cancel his her membership outrights or cancel his her membership and subsequently rejoin the bookclub since the consumer s subscription strategy depends on the transaction costs of purchasing books and on the marketing strategy adopted by bookclubs the authors investigate why bookclubs make introductory offers and or enforce minimum purchase requirements introductory offers allow bookclubs to price discriminate between consumers who self select alternative subscription strategies minimum purchase requirements increase the bookclub s profit by appropriating part of the consumer surplus

why voters may prefer congested public clubs governmental facilities for such services as education health and transportation are often small of poor quality and overcrowded even when the costs are spread among all taxpayers we also find that governments may subsidize private facilities providing the same services or may charge admission fees at public facilities we explain these phenomena with a model which considers two types of people rich and poor a majority consisting of poor people may purposely build small and low quality facilities to discourage use by the rich thereby lowering taxes for the same reason the poor may benefit from an admission fee at public clubs or even from a subsidy to private clubs they do not use

uniform versus peak load pricing of a bottleneck with elastic demand abstract this paper considers commuting to work across a bottleneck such as a bridge or tunnel with elastic demand with no toll there is wasteful queueing the optimal peak load toll eliminates queueing and leaves total traffic unchanged the second best uniform toll cannot eliminate queueing but reduces total traffic the second best uniform toll may be larger or smaller than the maximum value of the optimal peak load toll

growth pollution and life expectancy china from 1991 2012 abstract this paper examines the relationship between income pollution and mortality in china from 1991 2012 using first difference models we document a robust positive association between city level gdp and life expectancy we also find a negative association between city level particulate air pollution exposure and life expectancy that is driven by elevated cardiorespiratory mortality rates the results suggest that while china s unprecedented economic growth over the last two decades is associated with health improvements pollution has served as a countervailing force

economic growth in a cross section of cities abstract we examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth between 1960 and 1990 income and population growth move together and both types of growth are 1 positively related to initial schooling 2 negatively related to initial unemployment and 3 negatively related to the initial share of employment in manufacturing racial composition and segregation are uncorrelated with urban growth across all cities but in cities with large nonwhite communities segregation is positively correlated with population growth government expenditures except for sanitation are uncorrelated with growth government debt is positively correlated with later growth

imperfect price discrimination and welfare we develop a model in which a monopolist uses differences across consumers in their valuation of time to imperfectly price discriminate though it is customary to analyse price discrimination problems by the calculus of variations after postulating a continuum of types we assume a finite number of types and exploit the geometry and duality of the contract set and the structure of the programming specification we analyse in detail the qualitative properties of the model s solution and show by construction that our results exhaust the implications of the model for equilibrium contract pairs we show that imperfect discrimination is not bounded in welfare terms between perfect discrimination and single price monopoly and that the deadweight loss consumer surplus and output comparisons between single price monopoly and imperfect discrimination are ambiguous

the mobility of highly skilled human capital in taiwan most economists agree that a country s economic growth depends on human capital physical capital technology and several other minor inputs human capital is the basic wealth of every country highly skilled workers are the most important component of human capital human capital can have a positive spillover effect on society when talented young people leave their native country to work elsewhere this brain drain inhibits the country s economic growth several factors contribute to brain drain these can be classified roughly into three categories economic academic and personal economic factors play the most important role from the early 1960s to the late 1980s taiwan suffered a brain drain when many people who had earned advanced degrees in western countries chose to leave taiwan to work elsewhere in this study s statistical analysis i show that taiwan s economy is based in past on an effective labour force and explain why taiwan s economy has grown over the past 30 years with the improved e

foundations of dynamic monopoly and the coase conjecture subgame perfect equilibria are characterized for a market in which the seller quotes a price each period assume zero costs positive interest rate continuum of buyers and some technical conditions if buyers valuations are positive then equilibrium is unique buyers strategies are stationary and the price sequence is determinant along the equilibrium path but possibly randomized elsewhere otherwise a continuum of stationary equilibria can exist but at most one with analytic strategies coase s conjecture is verified for stationary strategies reducing the period length drives all prices to zero or the least valuation connections to bargaining models are described journal qf economic literature classification

on the economics of subscriptions firms sell journals both by offering subscriptions which provide the purchaser with all issues of the journal and by selling individual copies at a comparatively high price we show that by selling subscriptions in addition to individual copies a monopolist can price discriminate thereby increasing his profits and that such price discrimination may increase the level of social welfare compared to a situation in which no subscriptions are sold

monopoly and product quality abstract this paper points out that without restrictions on the cost function distribution of consumer types and on the extent of market coverage the standard parameterization of preferences cannot by itself guarantee that a monopolist would choose a separating menu moreover there may not be any quality distortion

ski lift pricing with applications to labor and other markets the market for ski runs or amusement rides often features admission tickets with no explicit price per ride therefore the equilibrium i nvolves queues which are systematically longer during peak periods s uch as weekends moreover the prices of admission tickets are much l ess responsive than the length of queues to variations in demand eve n when these variations are predictable despite the queues and stick y prices the authors show that the outcomes are nearly efficient und er plausible conditions they then show that similar results obtain f or some familiar congestion problems and for profit sharing schemes i n the labor market copyright 1987 by american economic association

demand for environmental goods evidence from voting patterns on california initiatives this article studies voting behavior on 16 environmental ballot propositions in california in order to characterize the demand for environmental goods the environment is found to be a normal good for people with mean incomes but some environmental goods are inferior for those with high incomes at least when supplied collectively an important price of environmental goods is reduced income in the construction farming forestry and manufacturing industries income and price can explain most of the variation in voting there is little need to introduce preference variables such as political ideology

on revenue recycling and the welfare effects of second best congestion pricing in a monocentric city abstract this paper examines congestion taxes in a monocentric city with pre existing labor taxation when road toll revenue is used to finance labor tax cuts 35 of the optimal road tax in our numerical model does not reflect marginal external congestion costs but rather functions as a ramsey mirrlees tax i e an efficiency enhancing mechanism allowing for an indirect spatial differentiation of the labor tax this adds a quite different motivation to road pricing since welfare gains can be produced even in absence of congestion we find that the optimal road tax is non monotonic across space reflecting the different impacts of labor supply elasticity and marginal utility of income which both vary over space the relative efficiencies of some archetype second best pricing schemes cordon toll flat kilometer tax are high 84 and 70 respectively when road toll revenue is recycled lump sum the optimal toll lies below its pigouvian level extensions in a bimodal framework show that the optimality of using road toll revenue to subsidize public transport depends on the initial inefficiency in public transport pricing

the interactive effects of human capital and quality of life on economic growth abstractto bridge the gap in the quality of life qol and economic growth literature and understand the reinforcing effects of qol and human capital on economic development we examine the interactive effects of these two factors on wage growth from 2000 to 2007 at the county level across the united states first a rosen roback model is employed to estimate implicit values of amenities including climate clean air and other natural attributes which are used to generate qol indices second qol human capital represented by the share of college graduates and their interaction serve as key variables in the wage growth model an instrumental variable approach and location fixed effects are used to address endogeneity of human capital and control for location specific unobservable characteristics results suggest that human capital and qol significantly contribute to economic growth and the growth effects are even larger in nonmetropolitan counties importantly we find that the effect of human capital on

when are agents negligible the authors examine the following paradox in a dynamic setting equilibria can be radically different in a model with a finite number of agents than in a model with a continuum of agents they present a simple strategic setting in which this paradox is a general phenomenon however the paradox disappears when there is noisy observation of the players actions and the aggregate level of noise does not disappear too rapidly as the number of players increases the authors give several economic examples in which this paradox has recently received attention durable goods monopoly corporate takeovers and time consistency of optimal government policy copyright 1995 by american economic association

pricing urban congestion a structural random utility model with traffic anticipation abstract we design and estimate a game theoretic congestion pricing mechanism in which the regulator aims at reducing urban traffic congestion by price discriminating travelers according to their value of time vot travelers preferences depend on their observable characteristics on the endogenous amount of congestion anticipated on their marginal utility mu of income and on some unobserved factors using a french household survey we estimate the demand models to simulate different pricing mechanisms we find that unobserved determinants of transportation demand are significant and are used to measure the anticipated time spent in traffic and the comfort of traveling diverging from these expectations is felt as more discomfort than if no expectations were formed a priori however some of this discomfort is derived from travelers marginal utility of income the lost time in traffic is clearly unpleasant because of its opportunity cost when the regulator and the transportation provider share common objectives we show that a great welfare improvement can be achieved when implementing a homogenous pricing that accurately accounts for travelers vot

improving social responsibility in rmg industries through a new governance approach in laws developing countries need to reform legislation to ensure the global supply firms in ready made garment rmg industry is adequately addressing obligations of social responsibility literature typically focuses on strategies for raising responsible standards in global buying firms within the rmg industry but fails to focus on implementing strategies for suppliers in developing countries this article addresses this gap by specifically focusing on the rmg industry in bangladesh the home of the third largest rmg supplier in the world it concentrates on analysing how and to what extent the law can assist in developing social responsibility performance of the rmg manufacturing firms in developing countries it ultimately concludes that a new governance approach in laws can effectively increase the social responsibility practice standards of an industry where global buying firms are profit driven and governmental agencies are either inadequate or corrupt

second best congestion pricing the case of an untolled alternative abstract this paper deals with second best one route congestion pricing in case of an untolled alternative using a two link network simulation model the effects of various demand and cost parameters on the relative efficiency of one route tolling are analyzed it is investigated whether the existence of costs of congestion charging may be a reason for one route tolling to be more overall efficient than two route tolling finally the efficiency of revenue maximizing one route and two route tolling is discussed

reputation in bargaining and durable goods monopoly this paper analyzes durable goods monopoly in an infinite horizon discrete time game we prove that as the time interval between successive offers approaches zero all seller payoffs between zero and static monopoly profits are supported by subgame perfect equilibria this reverses a well known conjecture of coase alternatively one can interpret the model as a sequential bargaining game with one sided incomplete information in which an uninformed seller makes all the offers our folk theorem for seller payoffs equally applies to the set of sequential equilibria of this bargaining game

durable services monopolists do better than durable goods monopolists the authors consider a monopolist who can commit to a price path when selling a good for which individual consumers demand at most one unit only if the monopolist can also commit to destroying unpurchased stock and the timing of stock release can she earn more than a static monopolist this additional commitment power has empirical revelance for a wide range of goods that the authors term durable services the inability to store output facilitates price discrimination by a durable services monopolist by permitting the credible threat of rationing the authors detail sufficient conditions for a durable services monopolist to produce more than a static or durable goods monopolist produces

understanding china s urban pollution dynamics china s ongoing urban economic growth has sharply increased the population s per capita income lowered the count of people living below the poverty line and caused major environmental problems we survey the growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of china s urban pollution challenges we begin by studying how urban population and industrial growth impacts local pollution levels and greenhouse gas production as the urban population grows richer its demand for private transportation and electricity sharply increases such privately beneficial activity exacerbates urban pollution externalities facing these severe environmental challenges china s urbanites increasingly demand quality of life progress we survey the emerging literature investigating the demand for environmental progress in china progress in mitigating externalities hinges on whether the powerful central and local governments choose to address these issues we analyze the political economy of whether government officials have strong incentives to tackle lingering urban externalities we conclude by discussing future research opportunities at the intersection of environmental and urban economics jel o18 p25 p28 q53 r23 r41 r58

clubs local public goods and transportation models a synthesis abstract clubs local public goods and transportation models are analyzed within a unified model the emphasis is on the derivation of optimal allocation pricing and the size of the sharing group we derive the conditions under which optimal prices will yield surplus or deficit as well as those under which competitive provision will be efficient given heterogeneous tastes we prove that segregation according to tastes is generally efficient although several cases where this result does not hold are also discussed we show that the existing literature is unnecessarily restrictive and that the unified approach suggested here considerably extends the existing analysis of clubs local public goods and the transportation problems

parental investment in children s human capital in urban china the present study tests the extent of parental forgone consumption used instead to invest in children s human capital by use of intrahousehold resource allocation models using an unusual comprehensive data set for urban china there is more spending on boys aged 13 to 15 but more on girls aged 16 to 18 suggesting that standard human capital theories and traditional perceptions of gender bias do not completely explain educational expenditure decisions the evidence from urban china is consistent though with human capital models which consider parental intertemporal preferences also the findings suggest that the perceived bias in favour of sons exists weakly in contemporary urban china

methodologies and perspectives in research on labour relations in global agricultural production networks a review the integration of global south actors into the global agricultural economy has attracted research on labour effects this is because global south actors are often integrated at the level of produc

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

declining mortality inequality within cities during the health transition in the united states in the late 19th and early 20th century large cities had extremely high death rates from infectious disease within major cities such as new york city and philadelphia there was significant variation at any point in time in the mortality rate across neighborhoods between 1900 and 1930 neighborhood mortality convergence took place in new york city and philadelphia we document these trends and discuss their consequences for neighborhood quality of life dynamics and the economic incidence of who gains from effective public health interventions

what do we learn from the weather the new climate economy literature a rapidly growing body of research applies panel methods to examine how temperature precipitation and windstorms influence economic outcomes these studies focus on changes in weather realizations over time within a given spatial area and demonstrate impacts on agricultural output industrial output labor productivity energy demand health conflict and economic growth among other outcomes by harnessing exogenous variation over time within a given spatial unit these studies help credibly identify i the breadth of channels linking weather and the economy ii heterogeneous treatment effects across different types of locations and iii nonlinear effects of weather variables this paper reviews the new literature with two purposes first we summarize recent work providing a guide to its methodologies datasets and findings second we consider applications of the new literature including insights for the damage function within models that seek to assess the potential economic effects of future climate change jel c51 d72 o13 q51 q54

the value of scarce water measuring the inefficiency of municipal regulations abstract rather than allowing urban water prices to reflect scarcity rents during periods of drought induced excess demand policy makers have mandated command and control approaches primarily rationing the use of water outdoors while such policies are ubiquitous and likely inefficient economists have not had access to sufficient data to estimate their economic impact using unique panel data on residential end uses of water in 11 north american cities we examine the welfare implications of urban water rationing in response to drought using estimates of expected marginal prices that vary both across and within markets we estimate price elasticities specific to indoor and outdoor water use our results suggest that current policies do target water uses that households themselves are most willing to forgo nevertheless we find that rationing outdoor water in cities has costly welfare implications primarily due to household heterogeneity in willingness to pay for scarce water we find that replacing rationing policies with a market clearing drought price would result in welfare gains of more than 29 of what households in the sample spend each year on water

inequality at birth some causes and consequences recent research shows that health at birth is affected by many factors including maternal education behaviors and participation in social programs in turn endowments at birth are predictive of adult outcomes and of the outcomes of future generations exposure to environmental pollution is one potential determinant of health at birth that has received increasing attention a large literature outside of economics advocates for environmental justice and argues that poor and minority families are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards i provide new evidence on this question showing that children born to less educated and minority mothers are more likely to be exposed to pollution in utero and that white college educated mothers are particularly responsive to changes in environmental amenities i estimate that differences in exposure to toxic releases may explain 6 of the gap in incidence of low birth weight between infants of white college educated mothers and infants of black high school dropout mothers this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

motorization in developing countries causes consequences and effectiveness of policy options abstract this paper examines the rise in car use and decline in bus use in developing countries using a theoretical mode choice model and numerical simulations the empirical literature points to rising per capita income as a primary determinant of rising motor vehicle use known as motorization this analysis of commuter car bus mode choice shows that in addition to rising income other factors may drive rising car use at the urban level first greater income inequality increases car use if car use is still low and reduces car use if it is already high second traffic congestion hinders buses more than cars causing positive feedback between car use and travel time that reduces bus use and contributes to its abrupt collapse third policy interventions to reduce congestion in urban areas such as tolling car use and reserving lanes for buses increase consumer surplus by maintaining bus service as an alternate travel mode even as incomes rise socially optimal reserved bus lanes may achieve most of the gains from a socially optimal toll on car use

estimating the welfare effect of congestion taxes the critical importance of other distortions within the transport system abstract this paper extends the first best analysis of peak period congestion pricing to account for interactions with other distortions within the transport system including congestion on unpriced routes accident and pollution externalities suboptimal transit pricing and gasoline taxes we illustrate how the presence of each of these distortions changes the welfare effect of a congestion tax over a wide range of parameter scenarios in all cases the welfare changes are potentially significant implying that these distortions are important to consider in an economic evaluation of congestion taxes

queues rations and market comparisons of outcomes for the poor and the rich this paper presents a positive comparison of the outcomes of several alternative allocation systems the queue system convertible and nonconvertible rations and the unhindered market to distribute the limited quantity of a deficit good among heterogeneous individuals the authors show that for the poor the ranking of systems from better to worse is convertible rations nonconvertible rations the queue system and nonintervention the rich are found to be better off under nonintervention than under other systems these and other results are notably robust not only to many parameters of the economy but also to certain types of commodity taxes and administrative costs copyright 1987 by american economic association

addressing workers rights in the textile and apparel industries consequences for the bangladesh economy summary this paper applies a cge model to analyze the effects of better addressing worker s rights in bangladesh s textile and apparel industries results show that an increased minimum wage for unskilled low and medium skilled workers has negative impacts for these workers in aggregate and also for the economy in terms of export gdp and welfare this comes from the decrease in employment however labor productivity increasing improvements in factory conditions and services to workers not only increase incomes of workers but also welfare entrepreneurs also enjoy higher incomes enabling them to pay for improving the work environment

can privatization of u s highways improve motorists welfare abstract we assess the welfare effects of highway privatization accounting for government s behavior in setting the sale price firms strategic behavior in setting tolls and motorists heterogeneous preferences for speedy and reliable travel we find motorists are able to benefit from privatization by negotiating tolls with private providers that increase their consumer surplus surprisingly we find that by obtaining tolls and service that align with their varying preferences motorists may be better off negotiating with a monopolist than with duopoly providers or under public private competition toll regulation may be counterproductive because it is likely to treat motorists as homogeneous

winning or losing from dynamic bottleneck congestion pricing the distributional effects of road pricing with heterogeneity in values of time and schedule delay abstract this paper analyses the efficiency and distributional impacts of congestion pricing in vickrey s 1969 dynamic bottleneck model of congestion allowing for continuous distributions of values of time and schedule delay we find that congestion pricing can leave a majority of travellers better off even without returning the toll revenues to them we also find that the consumer surplus losses or gains from tolling are not strictly monotonic in the value of time because they also depend on the value of schedule delays the greatest losses are not incurred by drivers with the lowest value of time but by users with an intermediate value of schedule delays and the lowest value of time for that value of schedule delays for second best pricing with an untolled alternative the pattern of distributional effects is quite similar to that for first best pricing in contrast with results from prior static models users who are indifferent between the two alternative routes are not the ones who gain least from this type of second best pricing our results suggest that in assessing the distributional impacts of road congestion pricing it is important to take into account both the distribution of the value of time and of the value of schedule delays as well as the dynamics of departure time choice

quality of life and spatial dimensions of the productivity slowdown this research is concerned with explaning locational variations in the productivity slowdown within the urban manufacturing sector of the united states the observed decline in labour productivity growth rates between the 1963 73 and 1973 82 subperiods is explained on the basis of both national and location specific factors an explict hypothesis examined here is that quality of life is an important area specifc influence on productivity growth and related trends statistical analyses are conducted whereby either an aggregate amenity index or its individual amenity components are utilized to examine the importance of quality of life differentials the results suggest that these amenities particularly environmental quality may be instrumental in explanining the differncial magnitude of the productivity slowdown across urban areas additional findings generally do not confirm the importance of other factors frequently cited as contributing to inter area productivity differences a regression diagnostic an

externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets this paper presents a simple general framework for analyzing externalities in economies with incomplete markets and imperfect infonnation by identifying the pecuniary effects of these externalities that net out the paper simplifies the problem of determining when tax interventions are pareto improving the approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained pareto optima it can also lead to simple tests based on readily observable indicators of the efficacy of particular tax policies in situations involving adverse selection signaling moral hazard incomplete contingent claims markets and queue rationing equilibria traditional discussions of externalities have emphasized the distinction between technological externalities in which the action of one individual or firm directly affects the utility or profit ofanother and pecuniary externalities in which one individual s or firm s actions affect another only through effects on prices while the presence of technological externalities imply in general that a competitive equilibrium may not be pareto efficient pecuniary externalities hy themselves are not a source of inefficiency the fact that prices change has of course important consequences there are both distributional and allocational effects but the distribution effects net out gains for example hy firms whose prices increase are precisely offset by losses e g to individuals who must pay higher prices and there are no welfare losses from the allocation effects as long as the price changes involved are small if firms are maximizing profits and individuals are maximizing utility both facing prices that correctly refiect opportunity costs then standard envelope theorem arguments imply that changes in profits or utility induced by changes in allocations resulting from any small change in prices are negligible

human capital and the wealth of nations we reevaluate the role of human capital in determining the wealth of nations we use standard human capital theory to estimate stocks of human capital and allow the quality of human capital to vary across countries our model can explain differences in schooling and earnings profiles and consequently estimates of mincerian rates of return across countries we find that effective human capital per worker varies substantially across countries cross country differences in total factor productivity tfp are significantly smaller than found in previous studies our model implies that output per worker is highly responsive to changes in tfp and demographic variables jel e23 i25 j24 j31 o47 no question has perhaps attracted as much attention in the economics literature as why are some countries richer than others much of the current work traces back to the classic work of solow 1956 solow s seminal paper suggested that differ ences in the rates at which capital is accumulated could account for differences in output per capita more recently following the work of lucas 1988 human capital disparities were given a central role in the analysis of growth and development however the best recent work on the topic reaches the opposite conclusion klenow and rodriguez clare 1997 hall and jones 1999 parente and prescott 2000 and bils and klenow 2000 argue that most of the cross country differences in output per worker are not driven by differences in human capital or physical capital rather they are due to differences in a residual total factor productivity tfp in this paper we revisit the development problem in line with the earlier view we find that factor accumulation is more important than tfp in accounting for relative incomes across countries the key difference between our work and previous analyses is in the measurement of human capital the standard approach largely inspired by the work of mincer 1974 takes estimates of the rate of return to schooling as building blocks to directly measure a country s stock of human capital implicitly this method assumes that the marginal contribution to output of one additional year

efficient congestion tolls in the presence of unpriced congestion a peak and off peak simulation model abstract this paper develops a congestion pricing model to examine efficient congestion tolls for an urban highway facility that resembles california state route 91 the highway that has been subject to congestion tolls since december 27 1995 two lanes out of six each way are subject to congestion tolls and the other four lanes are not the simulation model combines the economic theories of second best pricing of transportation facilities and peak load pricing and considers both welfare maximizing and profit maximizing cases the simulation results show that the second best peak period toll is quite low and that the welfare gains from the toll are modest compared to a regime in which all lanes are subject to tolls

tie in sales and price discrimination this paper analyzes a class of contracts between buyers and sellers which specifies that the purchase of one good cannot be effectuated unless a second good is also purchased the economic forces resulting from a tie in are shown to be influenced by factors such as depreciation of the tying good the sales policy of the firm and the discount rate price discrimination the traditional hypothesis for this tie in is seen to make sense only when these factors align themselves in particular ways although an alternative hypothesis risk reduction is unaffected by these factors the price discrimination hypothesis therefore loses much of its appeal relative to the alternative

peak load pricing of a transportation route with an unpriced substitute abstract this paper considers two routes to work which could be two bridges a freeway and a tollroad or roadway travel and subway travel both routes are subject to pure bottleneck and queue congestion if peak load pricing can be imposed on both routes the first best solution is attained however if one route is unpriced then the other route should have a second best time varying toll that is negative at the tails of the rush hour positive near the peak of the rush hour and zero on average if the two routes have the same capacities and if the parameter g is 1 then two thirds of the total traffic should use the priced route and the efficiency gain of second best pricing is two thirds of the efficiency gain of first best pricing

technology intensity and agglomeration economies abstract this article investigates the relationship between industry technology intensity and the impacts of agglomeration economies on industrial growth many recent studies suggest the actual economic impacts of different forms of agglomeration economies depend on industrial characteristics such as technology intensity but systematic empirical evidence is still lacking to fill this gap we analyze employment data covering all 3 digit naics industries of u s counties the results confirm that technology intensive industries are more likely to benefit from jacobs spillovers as measured by related variety while sectors with low technology intensities can better benefit from mar spillovers as measured by regional specialization

uncovering the distribution of motorists preferences for travel time and reliability we apply recent econometric advances to study the distribution of commuters preferences for speedy and reliable highway travel our analysis applies mixed logit to combined revealed and stated preference data on commuter choices of whether to pay a toll for congestion free express travel we find that motorists exhibit high values of travel time and reliability and substantial heterogeneity in those values we suggest that road pricing policies designed to cater to such varying preferences can improve efficiency and reduce the disparity of welfare impacts compared with recent pricing experiments

congestion and tax competition in a parallel network the purpose of this paper is to study the effects of tolling road use on a parallel road network where each link can be tolled by a different government using both theoreticaland numericalmo dels the paper analyses the potential tax competition between countries that each maximise the surplus of local users plus tax revenues in controlling local and transit transport three types of tolling systems are considered i toll discrimination between local traffic and transit ii only uniform tolls on local and transit transport are acceptable iii tolls on local users only the results suggest that the welfare effects of introducing transit tolls are large but that differentiation of tolls between local and transit transport as compared to uniform tolls does not yield large welfare differences also the welfare effects of toll cooperation between countries are relatively small in comparison with the welfare gains of non cooperative tolling of transit the numerical model further illustrates the effects of different transit shares and explicitly considers the role of asymmetries between countries higher transit shares strongly raise the transit toll and slightly decrease local tolls with asymmetric demands the welfare gains of introducing differentiated tolling rise strongly for the country with lower local demand

structural estimation of congestion costs abstract we estimate a structural model of congestion costs using a bayesian nash equilibrium approach the individual s preference for traveling depends on the anticipated level of congestion which in turn is determined by travelers decisions of mobility the model is estimated using a french transportation household survey results confirm the presence of incomplete information and show that aversion to congestion is 6 6 lower during peak times than during off peak times a traveler s willingness to pay to save 1 min in traffic is estimated at 0 73 euros during peak times and 0 25 euros during off peak times

transport tax reform commuting and endogenous values of time abstract we consider a model of urban transport with two trip purposes commuting assumed perfectly complementary to labour supply and noncommuting to analyse the effects of transport tax reform on the value of time and marginal external congestion costs higher commuting taxes plausibly reduce time values but higher noncommuting transport prices will typically raise the value of time the intuition for this latter finding is that the reduction in congestion that follows from the tax increase itself raises net wages per hour of work inclusive of commuting time empirical illustrations with belgian data show a potentially large effect of transport tax reform on time values in quite a few of the tax reforms studied traffic levels are reduced but the increase in time values implies that marginal external congestion costs actually increase

funding transportation spending in metropolitan washington dc the costs of alternative revenue sources abstract this paper develops and implements an analytical framework for estimating the efficiency costs of raising additional revenue from taxes on labor property gasoline peak road use and higher transit fares for the washington dc area the model incorporates driving externalities and interactions between the different policies an economic case can be made for using congestion taxes and possibly gasoline and property taxes to raise extra revenue though it should be qualified for example the inelastic demand for driving limits the congestion benefits per dollar of revenue raised and these taxes have adverse employment effects in the same way that a tax on labor income does

quality of life indices for analysing convergence in the european union giannias d liargovas p and manolas g 1999 quality of life indices for analysing convergence in the european union reg studies 33 27 35 this paper investigates convergence and tests it empirically across countries of the european union between 1970 and 1990 convergence is defined not only in terms of economic indicators but also in terms of social and quality of life indicators real convergence is computed by evaluating a weighted average coefficient of variation based on economic and quality of life variables the weights are based on an experts opinion survey country rankings based on the values of a composite quality of life index are also constructed the results confirm that real convergence was achieved between 1970 75 for most of the countries convergence stagnated between 1980 85 and then it increased southern european member states did not exhibit similar patterns giannias d liargovas p et manolas g 1999 l analyse de la convergence au sein de l union europe enne a partir

shortages segmentation and self selection this paper considers the rationality and implications of using shortages as a self selection device shortages lead to uncertain access and enable sellers to offer ensured access either to the good or to a preferred variety of the good at a higher price or as part of a bundle it is shown that such activities allow firms to span nonconcavities in their revenue function firms respond to changes in demand and costs through changes in quantity and or the premium for ensured access but not through changes in the base price

the role of amenities and quality of life in rural economic growth a structural model of regional economic growth is estimated using data for 2243 rural u s counties five indices designed to capture specific amenity and quality of life characteristics are constructed using fifty four separate indicators results suggest that amenity characteristics can be organized into consistent and meaningful empirical measures that move beyond ad hoc descriptions of amenities in addition to insights into the influence of local characteristics ranging from tax burdens to income distribution on regional economic growth results suggest that predictable relationships between amenities quality of life and local economic performance exist

how important is human capital for development evidence from immigrant earnings this paper offers new evidence on the sources of cross country income differences it exploits the idea that observing immigrant workers from different countries in the same labor market provides an opportunity to estimate their human capital endowments these estimates suggest that human and physical capital account for only a fraction of cross country income differences for countries below 40 of the us output per worker less than half of the output gap relative to the us is attributed to human and physical capital

quality and congestion in environmental goods the road to the wangapeka abstract an increasing complaint heard among new zealand residents is that their enjoyment of local environmental resources is being diminished by increased congestion from foreign visitors this paper considers a model of vertical differentiation in which foreign high value and domestic low value consumers incur congestion costs in using a common resource we demonstrate that reducing quality in the face of increased foreign demand is optimal absent discriminatory prices but not otherwise we also consider the provision of multiple environmental goods and demonstrate that providing differential qualities may be optimal even if domestic consumers do not use the high quality resources at all

durable goods monopoly with discrete demand we analyze a dynamic game between consumers and the sole seller of a durable good unlike previous analyses we assume that there exists a finite collection of buyers rather than a continuum none of the main conclusions of the literature on durable goods monopoly survives this change in assumption coase s conjecture that a durable goods monopolist cannot earn supracompetitive profits in the continuous time limit bulow s proposition that renting a durable is always more profitable than selling it and stokey s proposition that precommitting to a time path of prices is always optimal are all false when the set of buyers is finite thus the assumption of a continuum of consumers so innocuous and useful a simplification in other contexts has proved misleading in the context of durable goods monopoly

consumer rationing and the posssibility of intertemporal price discrimination abstract intertemporal price discrimination is explained from consumer rationing if some consumers who have a low valuation for a good are served first at low prices high valuation consumers buy at a high price although they rationally foresee future price drops price discrimination then yields more profits to a monopolist than a uniform pricing strategy

human capital prices productivity and growth separate identification of the price and quantity of human capital has important implications for understanding key issues in labor economics and macroeconomics price and quantity series are derived and subjected to robustness checks the human capital price series associated with dierent education levels are highly correlated and exhibit a strong secular trend three result

hedonic prices goods specific effects and functional form inferences from cross section time series data tests for two key elements of the hedonic model of price determination for differentiated goods are proposed when cross sectional time series data are available first the hedonic hypothesis that price is determined by sellers and buyers valuations of characteristics bundled in a good is tested against the alternative that consumers demand specific goods the sensitivity of the outcome of the test to unmeasured characteristics serial correlation or heteroscedasticity and misspecification of functional form is assessed second a novel approach to testing functional form illustrates limitations of testing hedonic specifications only against alternatives nested in the box cox functional form

automobile externalities and policies this paper discusses the nature and magnitude of externalities associated with automobile use including local and global pollution oil dependence traffic congestion and traffic accidents it then discusses current federal policies affecting these externalities including fuel taxes fuel economy and emissions standards and alternative fuel policies summarizing insofar as possible the welfare effects of those policies finally we discuss emerging pricing policies including congestion tolls and insurance reform and summarize the appropriate combination of policies to address automobile externalities

the dynamics of the wealth distribution and the interest rate with credit rationing are uniquely determined and wealth dispersion among individuals or firms is irrelevant introducing credit rationing into the solow model modifies these conclusions multiple stationary interest rates and wealth distributions can exist because higher initial rates can be self reinforcing through higher credit rationing and lower capital accumulation the wealth accumulation process is ergodic in every steady state but wealth mobility is lower with higher steady state interest rates aggregate output is higher in steady states with lower interest rates because credit is better allocated short run interest rate or distribution shocks can be self sustaining and can have long run effects on output through the induced dynamics of the wealth distribution and credit rationing

the london congestion charge by the 1990s the average speed of trips across london was below that at the beginning of the twentieth century before the car was introduced and by the end of that decade public concern over levels of traffic congestion was high in early 2003 london imposed a congestion charge a daily charge for driving or parking a vehicle on public roads within central london between the hours of 7 00 a m and 6 30 p m on workdays traffic congestion has declined substantially and the program is largely popular this article describes the origins of the london congestion charge how it overcame practical and theoretical difficulties and what effects it has had the introduction of the london congestion charge is in important respects a triumph of economics it represents a high profile public and political recognition of congestion as a distorting externality and of road pricing as an appropriate policy response

a multistage model of bargaining this paper presents a simple multistage model of bargaining wherein a seller makes an offer that can be either accepted or refused if rejected the process continues how the seller s ability to make commitments affects bargaining outcomes is analysed by comparing the commitment equilibria to those arising when commitment is impossible the effects of increasing uncertainty about preferences and varying the length of the bargaining horizon are analysed the ways in which the bargaining environment can be changed to improve outcomes are discussed

the effect of financial development on convergence theory and evidence we introduce imperfect creditor protection in a multicountry schumpeterian growth model the theory predicts that any country with more than some critical level of financial development will converge to the growth rate of the world technology frontier and that all other countries will have a strictly lower long run growth rate we present evidence supporting these and other implications in the form of a cross country growth regression with a significant and sizable negative coefficient on initial per capita gdp relative to the united states interacted with financial intermediation in addition we find that other variables representing schooling geography health policy politics and institutions do not affect the significance of the interaction between financial intermediation and initial per capita gdp and do not show any independent effect on convergence in the regressions our findings are robust to removal of outliers and to alternative conditioning sets estimation procedures and measures of financial development

optimal departures from marginal cost pricing focuses on departures from marginal cost pricing optimal allocation or resources level of tax revenue that will be collected by the government theorems developed for resource allocation ebsco

self selection and pareto efficient taxation abstract this paper analyses the set of pareto efficient tax structures the formulation of the problem as one of self selection not only shows more clearly the similarity between this problem and a number of other problems such as the optimal pricing of a monopolist which have recently been the subject of extensive research but also allows the derivation of a number of new results we establish i under fairly weak conditions randomization of tax structures is desirable ii if different individuals are not perfect substitutes for one another in production then the general equilibrium effects until now largely ignored in the literature of changes in the tax structure may be dominant in determining the optimal tax structure in particular if the relative wage of high ability and low ability individuals depends on the relative supplies of labor the optimal tax structure entails a negative marginal tax rate on the high ability individuals and a positive marginal tax rate on the low ability individuals the marnitude of which depends on the elasticity of substitution iii if individuals differ in their preferences pareto efficient taxation may entail negative marginal tax rates for high incomes while iv if wage income is stochastic the marginal tax rate at the upper end may be 100 our analysis thus makes clear that the main qualitative properties of the optimal tax structure to which earlier studies called attention are not robust to these attempts to make the theory more realistic