the retail price of inequality abstract this paper studies the relation between a city s income distribution and its retail price level using panel data we find that an increase in the presence of lower middle income households relative to poor or upper income households is associated with lower prices our findings suggest that greater income inequality raises the prices that poor households face thus making it harder for them to invest in human capital

human capital accumulation in a federation abstract more than half of the variation across u s school districts in real k 12 education expenditures per student is due to differences between rather than within states i study the welfare implications of redistribution of education expenditures by the federal government using an analytically tractable model of human capital accumulation with heterogeneous agents and endogenous state policies the net welfare effect of federal redistribution depends on a trade off between the positive effect of redistributing resources toward poorer states and the negative effect resulting from misallocation of population across states federal redistribution increases welfare in a calibrated version of the model

decomposition analysis of co2 emission intensity between oil producing and non oil producing sub saharan african countries abstract the need to decompose co2 emission intensity is predicated upon the need for effective climate change mitigation and adaptation policies such analysis enables key variables that instigate co2 emission intensity to be identified while at the same time providing opportunities to verify the mitigation and adaptation capacities of countries however most co2 decomposition analysis has been conducted for the developed economies and little attention has been paid to sub saharan africa the need for such an analysis for ssa is overwhelming for several reasons firstly the region is amongst the most vulnerable to climate change secondly there are disparities in the amount and composition of energy consumption and the levels of economic growth and development in the region thus a decomposition analysis of co2 emission intensity for ssa affords the opportunity to identify key influencing variables and to see how they compare among countries in the region also attempts have been made to distinguish between oil and non oil producing ssa countries to this effect a comparative static analysis of co2 emission intensity for oil producing and non oil producing ssa countries for the periods 1971 1998 has been undertaken using the refined laspeyres decomposition model our analysis confirms the findings for other regions that co2 emission intensity is attributable to energy consumption intensity co2 emission coefficient of energy types and economic structure particularly co2 emission coefficient of energy use was found to exercise the most influence on co2 emission intensity for both oil and non oil producing sub saharan african countries in the first sub interval period of our investigation from 1971 1981 in the second subinterval of 1981 1991 energy intensity and structural effect were the two major influencing factors on emission intensity for the two groups of countries however energy intensity effect had the most pronounced impact on co2 emission intensity in non oil producing sub saharan african countries while the structural effect explained most of the increase in co2 emission intensity among the oil producing countries finally for the period 1991 1998 structural effect accounted for much of the decrease in intensity among non oil producers while co2 emission coefficient of energy use was the major force driving the decrease among oil producing countries the dynamic changes in the co2 emission intensity and energy intensity effects for the two groups of countries suggest that fuel switching had been predominantly towards more carbon intensive production in oil producing countries and less carbon intensive production in non oil producing ssa countries in addition to the decomposition analysis the article discusses policy implications of the results we hope that the information and analyses provided here would help inform national energy and climate policy makers in ssa of the relative weaknesses and possible areas of strategic emphasis in their planning processes for mitigating the effects of climate change

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

price indexes inequality and the measurement of world poverty i discuss the measurement of world poverty and inequality with particular attention to the role of purchasing power parity ppp price indexes from the international comparison project global inequality increased with the latest revision of the icp and this reduced the global poverty line relative to the us dollar the recent large increase of nearly half a billion poor people came from an inappropriate updating of the global poverty line not from the icp revisions even so ppp comparisons between widely different countries rest on weak theoretical and empirical foundations i argue for wider use of self reports from international monitoring surveys and for a global poverty line that is truly denominated in us dollars

the impact of climate change on internal migration in brazil abstract business as usual climate change forecasts point to sharp temperature rises and agriculture yield losses in many regions of brazil we study the impact of these changes on internal migration and population distribution we employ a spatial equilibrium model in which the climate shapes workers locational choices through the usual amenity value channel and the novel indirect channel via agriculture wages our simulations reveal that migration rates are 9 65 higher and that 0 9 million more people migrate inter regionally under future climate conditions furthermore climate change will likely exacerbate the country s regional inequalities as the most developed regions gain population and welfare while the least developed regions lose

taxation and housing old questions new answers this paper sketches how the tax reforms of the 1980s affected the incentives and distortions associated with tax policy toward housing markets there are three principal conclusions 1 reductions in marginal tax rates particularly for high income households reduced the tax induced distortion in the user cost of owner occupied housing this lowered the deadweight losses associated with the favorable tax treatment of homeownership 2 the increase in the standard deduction in the tax reform act of 1986 tra86 removed several million middle income homeowners who previously itemized from the ranks of itemizers for these households tra86 raised the marginal cost of owner occupied housing these changes also exacerbated the regressive nature of the mortgage interest subsidy in 1988 more than half of the tax losses associated with mortgage interest deductions accrued to the 8 of taxpayers with the highest economic incomes 3 tra86 reduced incentives for rental housing investment contributing to the decline in new multifamily housing starts from 500 000 per year in 1985 to less than 150 000 in 1991 in the long run these policies will lead to higher rents this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

heterogeneous vertical tax externalities and macroeconomic effects of federal tax changes the role of fiscal advantage abstract how do state tax rates respond to federal tax shocks this paper presents a novel mechanism of heterogeneous vertical tax externalities across state levels of fiscal advantage showing that tax increases can be expansionary even without their reinvestment states rich in natural resources have a fiscal advantage in the inter state competition over production factors which allows them to respond better to increases in federal taxes and consequently attract capital from other parts of the nation we add heterogeneity in fiscal advantage levels to an otherwise standard model of vertical tax externalities and horizontal tax competition the model shows that irrespective of federal redistribution the contractionary effect of a federal tax increase can be overturned in fiscally advantaged states through an increase in their tax base using the case of the u s and narrative based measures of federal tax shocks a la romer and romer 2010 we provide empirical evidence for the various aspects of this mechanism specifically our baseline estimates indicate that controlling for federal transfers a 1 increase in the gdp share of capital related federal taxes at the beginning of a year increases the growth rate of the per capita tax base by approximately 0 7 in high fiscal advantage states at the end of it

the unequal geographic burden of federal taxation in the united states workers in cities offering above average wages cities with high productivity low quality of life or inefficient housing sectors pay 27 percent more in federal taxes than otherwise identical workers in cities offering below average wages according to simulation results taxes lower long run employment levels in high wage areas by 13 percent and land and housing prices by 21 and 5 percent causing locational inefficiencies costing 0 23 percent of income or 28 billion in 2008 employment is shifted from north to south and from urban to rural areas tax deductions index taxes partially to local cost of living improving locational efficiency

how variety seeking versus inertial tendency influences the effectiveness of immediate versus delayed promotions abstract four studies investigate 1 whether a variety seeking versus inertial environment activates a certain mind set about risk propensity and 2 whether this mind set influences preferences for immediate versus delayed promotions study 1 demonstrates that a variety seeking environment activates a risk taking mind set whereas an inertial environment activates a risk averse mind set and that such a difference in risk propensity makes a delayed immediate promotion relatively more appealing for consumers with a variety seeking inertial tendency study 2 reveals that preferences for a brand offering a delayed promotion are stronger when consumers have a variety seeking tendency and that preferences of consumers low vs high in need for cognitive closure are more influenced by the difference in variety seeking versus inertial tendency study 3 provides further insights by allowing participants to be variety seeking or inertial and by controlling for redemption effort and the hedonic utilitarian as

co2 emissions and intersectoral linkages the case of spain this paper proposes a methodology to identify the most relevant productive transactions in terms of co2 emissions in the most polluting sectors of an economy and applies this methodology to the spanish case emissions can be related to the co2 emissions intensity of sectors co2 intensity factor to the size of the economy s flows scale factor to the input output productive relationships within an economy technology production factor and to the structure of final demand of different sectors demand factor a formal analysis of these factors is carried out by means of an input output framework combined with a sensitivity analysis by considering key sectors and relevant transactions in terms of co2 emissions the most effective policy measures aimed at reducing co2 emissions can be identified

quality of life firm productivity and the value of amenities across canadian cities we estimate quality of life and productivity differences across canada s metropolitan areas in a hedonic general equilibrium framework these are based on the estimated willingness to pay of heterogeneous households and firms to locate in various cities which differ in their wage levels housing costs and land values using 2006 canadian census data our metropolitan quality of life estimates are somewhat consistent with popular rankings yet find canadians care more about climate and culture quality of life is highest in victoria for anglophones montreal for francophones and vancouver for allophones and lowest in more remote cities toronto is canada s most productive city vancouver is the overall most valuable city qualite de vie productivite des entreprises et la valeur des avantages dans les diverses villes canadiennes on evalue les differences entre la qualite de vie et la productivite des entreprises entre les zones metropolitaines au canada a l aide d un cadre d analyse d equilibre general hedonique ces metriques sont basees sur l estimation de la volonte de payer de menages et d entreprises heterogenes pour se localiser dans diverses villes qui different tant pour ce qui est des niveaux de salaires des couts de l habitation et des prix des terrains a l aide des donnees du recensement canadien de 2006 on construit des evaluations de la qualite de vie des diverses zones metropolitaines qui s arriment convenablement aux ordonnancements en vogue mais on decouvre que les canadiens portent une attention particuliere au climat et a la culture la qualite de vie est la plus elevee a victoria pour les anglophones a montreal pour les francophones et a vancouver pour les allophones et la plus faible pour les villes eloignees des grands centres toronto est la ville la plus productive vancouver est generalement la plus appreciee

optimal taxation under regional inequality abstract we study how regional productivity differences and labor mobility shape optimal mirrleesian tax transfer schemes when tax schedules are not allowed to differ across regions productivity enhancing inter regional migration exerts a downward pressure on optimal marginal tax rates when regionally differentiated taxation is allowed marginal tax rates in high low productivity regions should be corrected downwards upwards relative to the benchmark without migration simulations of the productivity differences between metropolitan and other areas of the us indicate that migration affects the optimal tax transfer schedule more strongly in the regionally differentiated rather than in the undifferentiated case

what are cities worth land rents local productivity and the total value of amenities abstract this paper models how to use widely available data on wages and housing costs to infer land rents local productivity and the total value of local amenities in the presence of federal taxes and locally produced nontraded goods i apply the model to u s metropolitan areas with the aid of visually intuitive graphs the results improve measures of productivity and feature large differences in land rents wage and housing cost differences across metropolitan areas are accounted for more by productivity than quality of life differences regressions using individual amenities reveal that the most productive and valuable cities are typically coastal sunny mild educated and large

a productivity model of city crowdedness abstract population density varies widely across us cities a simple static general equilibrium model suggests that moderate sized differences in cities total factor productivity can account for such variation nevertheless the productivity required to sustain above average population densities considerably exceeds estimates of the increase in productivity caused by such high density in contrast increasing returns to scale may be able to sustain multiple equilibria at below average population densities

decomposition of aggregate carbon intensity for the manufacturing sector comparison of declining trends from 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1991 abstract as with total energy consumption or aggregate energy intensity changes in aggregate carbon intensity may also be decomposed or attributed to changes in various components including fuel mix for electricity generation final energy mix sub sectoral economic activity and sub sectoral energy intensities the adaptive weighted divisia rolling base year index specification is applied to total carbon emissions from the manufacturing sector of 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1991 declines in aggregate carbon intensity for these countries range from 70 and may be primarily attributed to decreases in energy intensity i e increases in the average factor productivity of energy however these declines in aggregate carbon intensity appear to have a complex linkage to increases in energy prices as well as changes in other determinants of gross industrial output

the importance of local fiscal conditions in analyzing local labor markets a new test of the compensating wage differential model is proposed the logic behind roback s model which shows how differences in nonproduced amenities may be reflected in intercity wage differentials is extended to the case of differences in local fiscal conditions represented by tax rates and publicly produced services results show that differences in local tax rates and services provisions do generate compensating wage differentials across cities the effects of a particularly large set of taxes and effective services output measures are examined differences in local fiscal conditions are shown to play important roles in explaining the variance in intermetropolitan wages

the costs of agglomeration house and land prices in french cities we develop a new methodology to estimate the elasticity of urban costs with respect to city population using french house and land price data after handling a number of estimation concerns we find that the elasticity of urban costs increases with city population with an estimate of about 0 03 for an urban area with 100 000 inhabitants to 0 08 for an urban area of the size of paris our approach also yields a number of intermediate outputs of independent interest such as the share of housing in expenditure the elasticity of unit house and land prices with respect to city population and within city distance gradients for house and land prices

measuring the trends in inequality of individuals and families income and consumption we present evidence on the level of and trend in inequality from 1985 2010 in the united states using disposable income and consumption for a sample of individuals from the consumer expenditure ce survey differing from the findings in other recent research we find that the trends in income and consumption inequality are broadly similar between 1985 and 2006 but diverge during the great recession with consumption inequality decreasing and income inequality increasing given the differences in the trends in inequality in the last four years using both income and consumption provides useful information

manufacturing energy use in oecd countries decomposition of long term trends abstract in this paper we examine manufacturing energy use in 13 oecd countries over the period 1971 1995 we describe changes in aggregate energy intensity using the adaptive weighting divisia decomposition method we contrast the development in the periods after the oil price shocks of 1973 and 1979 with the period of relatively stable energy prices after the oil price crash of 1986 the results show that manufacturing output grew in most countries pushing up energy use the share of electricity increased in almost every sector while there was a clear trend away from oil and coal towards natural gas changes in the structure of output drove up energy use between 1973 and 1994 in some countries and down in others changes in energy intensities had a profound and downward effect on manufacturing energy use in all countries however contrasting the period after oil prices fell in 1986 with earlier years we see that for most countries the rate of energy intensity decline slowed slightly but did not reverse with falling prices in a few countries efficiency improvements continued to have a strong effect this suggests that even without higher prices improvements of energy efficiency seems to take place

asean tigers and sustainability of energy use decomposition analysis of energy and co2 efficiency dynamics abstract this study is a comparative analysis of the development of energy intensity and co2 emission intensity in the asean countries in the years 1971 97 the reasons and driving forces behind the changes are studied in the article using a complete decomposition methodology the decomposition analysis explains energy use or co2 emissions with three different factors activity effect structural effect and intensity effect the authors provide an analysis of dynamic changes of energy consumption and co2 emission flows intensity effects on energy use and co2 emissions revealed large differences in the performance of asean countries an interesting finding of the study is that in the 1990s the intensity effects on co2 emissions in asean countries have started to increase indicating decreasing co2 efficiencies of the economies the general observation on the basis of decomposition analyses is that the phase of industrialization is increasing the energy intensity of the nations and when the increased energy demand is fulfilled with fossil fuels the co2 emissions will inevitable grow however it has to be recognized that the co2 emissions per capita in asean countries are very low except in singapore compared with many oecd countries

income mobility profiles abstract an income mobility profile is a graphical tool to portray income mobility and identify the association between individual movements and initial status which despite its importance when assessing the social relevance of mobility is often discounted by aggregate mobility indices

financial deprivation prompts consumers to seek scarce goods consumers assess their well being subjectively largely by comparing the present state of their lives to the state of comparable others and to their own state earlier in time the authors suggest that consumers similarly assess their financial wellbeing and when these evaluations highlight a deficit in their financial position they pursue strategies that mitigate the associated sense of financial deprivation specifically consumers counteract the relative deficit in their financial resources by acquiring goods that are consequently unavailable to other consumers in their environment the results from five studies suggest that the inferiority and unpleasant affect associated with financial deprivation motivates consumers to attend to choose and consume scarce goods rather than comparable abundant goods these effects diminish when scarce goods are limited because other people have already obtained them and when consumers attribute their unpleasant feelings to a source unrelated to financial deprivation

monetary policy natural resources and federal redistribution can monetary policy shocks induce redistribution across natural resource rich and poor states within a federation we conjecture that resource rich states are capital intensive hence their investment is more responsive to changes in monetary policy consequently contractionary monetary policy shocks e g increases in the interest rate may induce redistribution from resource poor states to resource rich ones via an equalizing federal transfer scheme because investment is reduced more strongly in the latter we test these hypotheses using a panel of u s states covering several decades and find that 1 resource rich states are significantly and persistently more capital intensive 2 contractionary monetary policy shocks induce a relative drop increase in investment federal transfers in resource rich states over the course of four years 3 these patterns are driven by resource induced differences in the capital share in the economy we estimate that a one standard deviation contractionary monetary shock induces within the first year federal redistribution of approximately 2 5 billion from the resource poor to the resource rich states representing about 11 of the total average annual federal transfers received by the latter states

inequality in indonesia what can we learn from top incomes abstract using taxation and household survey data this paper estimates top income shares for indonesia during 1920 2004 our results suggest that top income shares grew during the 1920s and 1930s but fell in the post war era we observe a sharp rise in top income shares during the late 1990s coinciding with the 1997 98 economic crisis where comparable data are available top income shares in indonesia are generally higher than in other countries a finding that is at odds with the view that indonesia is a relatively egalitarian society this suggests that top income shares may provide a more complete picture of developing country inequality in comparative perspective

urban population and amenities the neoclassical model of location we develop a neoclassical general equilibrium model to explain cross metro variation in population and density we provide new methods to estimate traded and non traded productivities and elasticities of housing and land supply using density and land area data from wage and housing cost indices the model explains half of u s density and population variation and finds that quality of life determines location choices more than trade productivity productivity and factor substitution in housing matter most but are weak in nicer areas relaxing land use regulations would increase population in the west raising both quality of life and productivity experienced by residents

economic theory and climate change policy our willingness to embrace climate change policies depends on our perception of their benefits and costs evaluation of these costs and benefits requires careful economic analysis yet the standard tools for such assessment computable general equilibrium cge models are inadequate on several grounds their underlying theory suffers from well known logical difficulties in general their equilibria may be neither unique stable nor efficient moreover real world phenomena such as increasing returns to scale learning and technological innovation are neglected in cge models these phenomena make the resulting equilibria in the models inefficient in the real world they can lock society into sub optimal technology choices they introduce uncertainty and path dependence annihilating the concept of a single efficient allocation produced by the unfettered market yet conventional economics assesses the cost of policies solely on the basis of their departure from a purportedly efficient equilibrium ignoring deeper structural changes that are often decisive in practice new socio economic theories and models are emerging that allow for bounded rationality the limiting and enabling character of institutions technological change and the complexities and uncertainties in economic evolution meanwhile existing models should be modified to better reflect real world phenomena and to abandon unfounded assumptions about the inherent inefficiencies of government intervention in the market

local economic development agglomeration economies and the big push 100 years of evidence from the tennessee valley authority we study the long run eects of one of the most ambitious place based economic development policies in u s history the tennessee valley authority using a rich panel dataset of counties we conduct an evaluation of the dynamic eects of the tva on local economies in the seventy years following the program s inception we nd that the tva led to short run gains in agricultural employment that were eventually reversed while impacts on manufacturing employment continued to intensify well after the program s subsidies had lapsed a pattern consistent with the presence of strong agglomeration economies in the manufacturing sector economists have long cautioned that the local gains created by place based policies may be oset by losses elsewhere yielding ambiguous eects on the u s as a whole building on the framework in glaeser and gottlieb 2008 we develop a novel approach to assessing the aggregate consequences of shifting the spatial distribution of manufacturing employment our ndings suggest the aggregate productivity gains associated with relocating manufacturing activity to the tva region were probably minimal

the developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty a new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world we find that 25 of the population lived in poverty in 2005 as judged by what poverty typically means in the world s poorest countries this is higher than past estimates substantial overall progress is still indicated the corresponding poverty rate was 52 in 1981 but progress was very uneven across regions the trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology though precise counts are more sensitive

estimating equilibrium housing demand for stayers abstract this study models demand by owner occupied housing stayers most consumers do not move routinely in response to small changes in income or housing price so the own rent and move stay decisions are modeled as multiperiod optimization in the presence of transaction costs the empirical section uses the american housing survey to provide a panel of household stayers for a metropolitan area results indicate that income and value rent measures in different years have separable and significant impacts on housing demand estimated conditional income elasticities are between 0 40 and 0 45

keeping the american dream alive the interactive effect of perceived economic mobility and materialism on impulsive spending abstractthis research illustrates how perceived economic mobility moderates the linkage between materialism and impulsive spending using various data sources four studies show that materialistic consumers do not easily engage in impulsive spending when they perceive high economic mobility whereas they tend to spend impulsively when they perceive low economic mobility however perceived economic mobility functions in the opposite manner when the purchase is a means to achieve financial success the authors trace this effect to the self regulation process of materialistic consumers such that when perceiving high economic mobility these consumers regulate their behavior toward long term financial success sacrificing the pleasure of acquisitions in the present by elucidating the important role that perceived economic mobility plays in impulsive spending the current research sheds new light on consumer research and offers managerial and public policy implications

an econometric model of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand abstract this paper addresses the determination of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand full housing demand elasticities incorporate the interactive effects among the four stages of the model price and income have major effects in the tenure choice equation sociodemographic variables such as age have complex effects that may be lost in simpler forms of estimation

functional form sample selection and housing demand abstract this paper addresses issues of functional form and sample selection in estimating housing demand urban economic theory suggests that income and price elasticities be allowed to vary with reference incomes and housing prices a generalized box cox estimator rejects linear and log log forms semi log forms are accepted in some cases sample truncation leads to downward biases in permanent income regressions but to slightly upward biased income elasticities price elasticities are generally unchanged

the limitations of decentralized world redistribution an optimal taxation approach abstract a centralized scheme of world redistribution that maximizes a border neutral social welfare function subject to the disincentive effects it would create generates a drastic reduction in world consumption inequality dropping the gini coefficient from 0 69 to 0 25 in contrast an optimal decentralized i e with no cross country transfers redistribution has a miniscule effect on world income inequality thus the traditional public finance concern about the excess burden of redistribution cannot explain why there is so little world redistribution actual foreign aid is vastly lower than the transfers under the simulated world income tax suggesting that voluntary world transfers subject to a free rider problem produces an outcome that is consistent with rich countries such as the united states either placing a much lower value on the welfare of foreigners or else expecting that a very significant fraction of cross border transfers is wasted the product of the welfare weight and one minus the share of transfers that are wasted constitutes the implicit weight that the united states assigns to foreigners we calculate that value to be as low as 1 2000 of the value put on the welfare of an american suggesting that u s policy is consistent with social preferences that place essentially no value on the welfare of the citizens of the poorest countries or that implicitly assumes that essentially all transfers are wasted

swedish co2 emissions 1993 2006 an application of decomposition analysis and some methodological insights this study undertakes a decomposition analysis to identify the drivers of carbon dioxide emissions change in the swedish business and industry sectors 1993 2006 on aggregate energy intensity decreased but this does not seem to have been very important for reducing emissions rather fuel substitution seems to have been more important which is in line with findings from the decomposition literature on sweden however at the sectoral level we find no clear pattern of the effect of fuel substitution and energy intensity on emissions we also draw some methodological conclusions decomposition analysis should be undertaken at the most disaggregate level possible assessing decomposition results by summing results over several time periods leads to biased results and decomposition analysis should not be based only on some initial and final years of a long time period furthermore we address the problem of double counting energy flows in decomposition analysis of aggregate effects when the energy sector is included and point out potential problems related to output measured in monetary terms

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

the importance of cost of living and education in estimates of the conditional wage gap between black and white women while evidence about discrimination in u s labor markets typically implies preferential treatment for whites recent studies document a substantial wage premium for black women for example fryer 2011 although differential selection of black and white women into the labor market has been a suggested explanation we demonstrate that accounting for selection does not eliminate the estimated premium we then incorporate two additional omitted variables recently documented in the literature 1 local cost of living and 2 years of education attained conditional on afqt score after controlling for these variables we find no evidence of a wage premium for black women

the impact of private versus public consumption on variety seeking behavior three experiments demonstrate that people incorporate more variety into their consumption decisions when their behavior is subject to public scrutiny studies 1 and 2 indicate that consumers expect others to evaluate their decision more favorably if they choose variety and that this sometimes leads individuals to incorporate more variety into their public than private decisions results of study 2 confirm predictions that a relevant individual difference variable self monitoring moderates the effects of expected evaluation on variety seeking the final study demonstrates that pressure to choose variety in public is eliminated when a social cue signals the appropriateness of consuming one s favorites

feeling economically stuck the effect of perceived economic mobility and socioeconomic status on variety seeking five studies provide converging evidence for the joint effect of perceived economic mobility and socioeconomic status ses on compensatory behavior such that low ses consumers who perceive low economic mobility i e economically stuck consumers seek more variety than other consumers we trace this effect to these consumers desire to compensate for their low sense of personal control furthermore we show that these consumers variety seeking tendency disappears when their sense of control is boosted by other means or when the more varied option is not associated with a sense of control alternative explanations based on instrumental benefits reactance and affect were tested and did not account for the effect thus the current research provides fresh insights to consumer research by contributing to the literature on compensatory behavior variety seeking and ses

compensating differentials and income taxes are the wages of dangerous jobs more responsive to tax changes than the wages of safe jobs income taxes distort the relationship between wages and nontaxable amenities when the marginal tax rate increases amenities become more valuable as the compensating differential for low amenity jobs is taxed away while there is evidence that the provision of amenities responds to taxes the literature has ignored the consequences for job characteristics which cannot fully adjust this paper compares the wage response of dangerous jobs to the wage response of safe jobs when tax rates increase we should see the pretax compensating differential for on the job risk increase empirically i find large differences in the wage response of jobs based on their riskiness

carbon intensity and economic development 1962 1991 a brief exploration of the environmental kuznets curve the relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity co2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991 the inverted u curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982 this is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle income countries the curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy

impacts of growth and structural change on co2 emissions of developing countries abstract carbon dioxide emissions the most significant greenhouse gas are growing at more rapid rates in developing economies relative to advanced economies this paper estimates the effects of the growth of gdp changes in industrial structure fuel mixes and energy efficiency on the carbon dioxide emissions of nine developing countries using a decomposition model policy implications for reducing emissions in the light of the findings are discussed

the desirability of commodity taxation under non linear income taxation and heterogeneous tastes abstract this paper revisits the atkinson stiglitz result on uselessness of commodity taxation in the presence of optimal non linear income taxation in a more general setup namely when tastes are heterogeneous this general analysis displays the key economic assumptions under which the atkinson stiglitz result is robust a small tax on a given commodity is desirable if high income earners have a relatively higher taste for this commodity or if consumption of this commodity increases with leisure an application to the case of savings suggests that even in the presence of optimal non linear earnings taxation there is a role for a supplemental capital income tax in the standard overlapping generation model

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

identifying productivity and amenity effects in interurban wage differentials this study focuses on the relative importance of amenity and productivity differences in determining wage differentials across urban areas the approach developed takes advantage of the connection between land and labor market clearing conditions required for locational equilibrium of households and firms data on recent movers are used to estimate equilibrium wages and rents for a sample of metropolitan areas this information is then used to identify amenity and productivity components of wages for each city in the sample using national estimates of the relative share of land in consumption and production differences in productivity and amenities are found to be roughly equal sources of wage variation across the sample

the world distribution of income falling poverty and convergence period we estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 138 countries between 1970 and 2000 country distributions are constructed by combining national accounts gdp per capita to anchor the mean with survey data to pin down the dispersion poverty rates and head counts are reported for four specific poverty lines rates in 2000 were between one third and one half of what they were in 1970 for all four lines there were between 250 and 500 million fewer poor in 2000 than in 1970 we estimate eight indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution of income all of them show reductions in global inequality during the 1980s and 1990s

a combined input output and sensitivity analysis approach to analyse sector linkages and co2 emissions abstract this paper proposes a methodology which identifies the main productive linkages between activity branches in terms of co2 emissions and applies this methodology to the spanish case it suggests that emissions are related to the input output productive relationships within an economy to the co2 emissions intensity of sectors and to the structure of final demand of different sectors a formal analysis of these factors is carried out by means of an input output framework combined with sensitivity analysis and lineal programming the most co2 emissions intensive productive relationships in spain are shown this consideration of the main linkages contributes to the identification of the key sectors and facilitates the design of effective policy measures aimed at co2 emissions abatement

what do we know about global income inequality in this paper we review the recent literature on global interpersonal income inequality while all estimates agree that the level is very high with a gini of between 0 630 and 0 686 in the 1990s there is no consensus regarding the direction of change we discuss methodological issues including the use of national accounts versus survey based estimates of mean income or consumption and the choice of purchasing power parity exchange rates findings of a rise or fall in global income inequality are not robust across different estimation methods and datasets given the diversity of estimates and various sources of uncertainty including gaps and errors in the underlying data we conclude there is insufficient evidence to determine the direction of change in global interpersonal inequality in recent decades

resource rents redistribution and halving global poverty the resource dividend summary this paper considers the proposal that each country distributes its resource rents directly to citizens as a universal and unconditional cash transfer or resource dividend and estimates its potential impact on global poverty for the years 2000 06 using a global dataset on resource rents and the distribution of income i find that if every developing country implemented the policy then the number of people living below 1 a day would be cut by between 27 and 66 depending on the year and the assumptions made looking ahead poverty could be better than halved as long as commodity prices do not drop below their 2004 level

the optimal distribution of population across cities abstract we develop an urban model that incorporates 1 heterogeneous sites 2 fiscal and urban externalities and 3 an endogenous number of cities i e the extensive margin of urban development within and across city decreasing returns to scale cause agents to perceive their city as being too large in the socially optimal allocation as a consequence in equilibrium the largest cities on the most amenable sites are undersized whereas the smaller cities on less amenable sites are oversized we propose a test for optimal city size with heterogeneous sites extending the henry george theorem

housing productivity and the social cost of land use restrictions abstract we use metro level variation in land and structural input prices to test and estimate a housing cost function with differences in local housing productivity both ols and iv estimates imply that stringent regulatory and geographic restrictions substantially increase housing prices relative to land and construction input costs the typical cost share of land is one third and substitution between inputs is inelastic a disaggregated analysis of regulations finds state level restrictions are costlier than local ones and provides a regulatory cost index rci housing productivity falls with city population typical land use restrictions impose costs that appear to exceed quality of life benefits reducing welfare on net

neighbourhood effects and housing demand in this paper we estimate a model of housing demand with neighborhood eects we exploit special features of the national sample of the american housing survey and properties of housing markets that allow us to create natural instruments and therefore identify the impact of social interactions we find evidence of both endogenous and contextual neighborhood eects we report two alternative sets of estimates for neighborhood eects that dier in terms of the instruments we use for estimating the model when the endogenous neighborhood eect is large the respective contextual eects are weak and vice versa the elasticity of housing demand with respect to the mean of the neighbors housing demands the endogenous eect ranges from 0 19 to 0 66 and is generally very significant the contextual eects are also very significant a key such eect the elasticity with respect to the mean of neighbors permanent incomes ranges from 0 17 to 0 54

estimating a dynamic spatial equilibrium model to evaluate the welfare implications of regional adjustment processes the decline of the rust belt this article develops and estimates a new dynamic spatial equilibrium model to study the regional transition dynamics and its impact on individual and aggregate welfare the model consists of a multiregion multisector economy comprised of overlapping generations of individuals with heterogeneous skills and mobility costs the empirical findings suggest that a large fraction of the decline of the rust belt can be attributed to the reduction in its region specific comparative advantage in the goods producing sector this decline generated significant differences in welfare across regions policy experiments show that such inequality can be significantly reduced through place based policies

inequality among world citizens 1820 1992 this paper investigates the distribution of well being among world citizens during the last two centuries the estimates show that inequality of world distribution of income worsened from the beginning of the 19th century to world war ii and after that seems to have stabilized or to have grown more slowly in the early 19th century most inequality was due to differences within countries later it was due to differences between countries inequality in longevity also increased during the 19th century but then was reversed in the second half of the 20th century perhaps mitigating the failure of income inequality to improve in the last decades jel d31 f0 n0 o0

wages rents and amenities differences among workers and regions what explains persistent regional earnings differences this paper argues that regional differences in amenities can account for the wage differences in contrast cost of living variations do not account for wage differences but actually exacerbate them this conclusion results from a model in which variations in rents and wages are equalizing differences for amenity differences empirical results are consistent with the model

differences in relative prices and international differences in growth rates the new growth literature following paul m romer 1986 and robert e lucas jr 1988 has formulated models in which growth rates can differ systematically across countries a large empirical literature has used cross sectional techniques to examine the cause of international differences in growth rates this paper examines whether this work has used data which have been constructed in such a way as to introduce inadvertently a spurious correlation between growth and income levels this effect occurs because relative prices evolve because of different rates of technological progress in different industries many of the new growth models assume single goods or goods produced by the same technology so this phenomenon has so far escaped analysis if technological progress is more rapid in some sectors than others relative prices will change during the process of development the change of relative prices has two effects on measured growth rates first the choice of base prices affects the growth rate this phenomenon is sometimes called the gerschenkron effect second using any base prices or weights introduces a spurious correlation between income and growth less developed countries would tend to have lower growth rates not because they grew more slowly but because of data construction techniques for the sake of simplicity these phenomena will be called the gerschenkron or the level effect and the spurious correlation effect 3 this paper examines the international comparison program icp and the penn world tables pwt which are based on the icp the penn world tables are the data most widely used in empirical studies of international differences in economic growth both the icp and pwt use international prices to adjust for differences in the purchasing power of currencies these prices most closely resemble hungarian prices using such prices tends to produce time series with lower growth rates than those in the national accounts for countries less developed than hungary conversely the growth rates would be higher for countries more developed than hungary however the growth rates of poorer countries are not systematically lower in the penn world tables the paper examines why the growth rates are not distorted and makes some specific recommendations for data construction and use virginia polytechnic institute and state university blacksburg va 24061 0316 part of this work was supported by a grant from the institute of international studies at brown university and by a summer internship at the division of international finance at the federal reserve board i am grateful to peter garber david weil oded galor and anonymous referees for helpful comments alan heston and robert summers have also helped me understand icp and pwt methodology of course i alone am responsible for any mistakes in this paper iexamples include steve dowrick and duc tho nguyen 1989 robert j barro 1991 j bradford de long and lawrence h summers 1991 and n gregory mankiw et al 1992 2a series of papers by christina d romer 1986a b 1989 has already emphasized the importance of data construction techniques in another context 3there is a third effect a real acceleration effect caused by shifting consumption patterns and the reallocation of resources between sectors growth accountants such as angus maddison 1987 adjust estimates of total factor productivity for this sort of shift william j baumol et al 1989 have also referred to this phenomenon for an analysis in terms of a simple multisector solow model see nuxoll 1992a

evaluating the efficiency and equity of federal fiscal equalization abstract theoretically federal transfers that make household location decisions efficient should ignore local cost differences subsidize positive externalities and offset differences in federal tax payments and local taxes levied on non residents but not local tax revenues from residents transfers that redistribute resources equitably across regions will likely target areas with individuals of low earnings potential or low real incomes applying these criteria empirically canadian equalization policy appears neither efficient nor equitable but exacerbates pre existing inefficiencies and underfunds minorities locational inefficiencies cost canada 0 41 of income annually and cause over funded provinces to have populations of 30 beyond their efficient long run levels

healthy bodies and thick wallets the dual relation between health and economic status there is abundant evidence of a quantitatively large association between many measures of economic status including income and wealth and a variety of health outcomes such as mortality or morbidity however considerable and often heated debate remains especially across disciplines about the direction of causation and about why the association arises although medical scientists are often convinced that the dominant if not exclusive pathway is that variation in socioeconomic status produces health disparities they are increasingly debating among themselves about why low economic status might lead to poor health at least for modern industrial countries 1 the old standby arguments the less well to do have access to less or lower quality medical care or a stronger pattern of deleterious personal behaviors have been rejected as insufficient instead a series of intriguing competing theories have arisen that emphasize long term impacts of early childhood or even inter uterine environmental factors the cumulative effects of prolonged exposures to individual stressful events or reactions to macro societal factors such as rising levels of income inequality a common link is that each theory attempts to document the physiological processes through which low economic status leads to poorer health while these scientific questions are extremely important this research has taken place with little input from economists economists are now making contributions about the alternative pathway the impact poor health may have on economic resources poor health may restrict a family s capacity to earn income or to accumulate assets by limiting work or by raising medical expenses at a minimum this work should provide a caution against exaggerating the magnitude of causation from economic status to health outcomes but the potential contribution runs deeper as people age the evolving variation in individual health outcomes may offer additional statistical information to estimate parameters of household savings and consumption behavior that so far have proven to be somewhat elusive thus incorporating health uncertainty and risk into economic models should eventually enrich our understanding of basic tenets of household behavior the first section of this paper documents the size of the association between health and one prominent economic status measure household wealth section two deals with how health influences economic status by sketching out reasons why health may alter household savings and eventually wealth and then providing estimates of the empirical magnitude of these effects section three shifts attention to the alternative pathway the links between economic status and health and summarizes 2major controversies and evidence surrounding these issues

understanding gross worker flows across u s states abstract the main cross sectional and time series properties of state level gross and net worker flows wages and rents are characterized using micro data from the u s census a dynamic general equilibrium model of worker migration is introduced to explain the stylized facts in the model a location may experience simultaneous inflows and outflows of workers recent migrants choose to migrate more often than incumbent workers thus locations that attract high numbers of migrants also tend to experience high outflow rates this pattern is a robust feature of the data and cannot be explained by models of net flows only

assessing the incidence and efficiency of a prominent place based policy abstract this paper empirically assesses the incidence and efficiency of round i of the federal urban empowerment zone ez program using confidential microdata from the decennial census and the longitudinal business database using rejected and future applicants to the ez program as controls we find that ez designation substantially increased employment in zone neighborhoods and generated wage increases for local workers without corresponding increases in population or the local cost of living the results suggest the efficiency costs of first round ezs were relatively modest jel h26 h77 j31 r23 r58

regional effects of federal tax shocks this article studies the effects of federal tax changes on u s state level income utilizing an exogenous tax shock series recently proposed in the literature we find considerable variation in how federal tax changes affect regional income estimated state income multipliers range between 0 2 in utah and 3 7 in hawaii analyzing the determinants of differences in regional tax multipliers suggests that size and composition of the state tax base help explain the observed heterogeneity in the transmission of federal tax policy

richer and cleaner a study on carbon dioxide emissions in developing countries abstract the climate change debate has drawn attention to the problem of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere one of the most important issues in the policy debate is the role that should be played by developing countries in joining the commitment of developed countries to reduce ghg emissions and particularly co2 emissions this debate calls into play the relationship between energy consumption co2 emissions and economic development in this paper we use a panel data model for 110 world countries to estimate the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and to produce emission forecast the paper contains three major results i the empirical relationship between carbon dioxide and income is well described by non linear gamma and weibull specifications as opposed to more usual linear and log linear functional forms ii our single equation reduced form model is comparable in terms of forecasted emissions with other more complex less data driven models iii despite the decreasing marginal propensity to pollute our forecasts show that future global emissions will rise the average world growth of co2 emissions between 2000 and 2020 is about 2 2 yr while that of non annex 1 countries is posted at 3 3 yr

the energy implications of city size and density abstract this paper develops a new open city urban simulation model capable of showing the urban form and energy consumption effects of variation in city size the model is able to consider city size differences caused by wage and amenity differentials both with and without housing and land use regulation the surprising conclusion is that per capita energy use is relatively invariant to city size when growth is driven by wages but falls modestly with growth induced by rising amenity common land use policies specifically density limits and greenbelts can positively or negatively affect both city welfare and energy use

estimation of an equilibrium model with externalities post disaster neighborhood rebuilding we study the optimal design of subsidies in an equilibrium setting where the decisions of individual recipients impose externalities on one another we apply the model to the case of post katrina rebuilding in new orleans under the louisiana road home rebuilding grant program rh we estimate the structural model via indirect inference exploiting a discontinuity in the formula for determining the size of grants which helps isolate the causal effect of neighbors rebuilding on one s own rebuilding choices we find that the additional rebuilding induced by rh generated positive externalities equivalent to 4950 to each inframarginal household whose rebuilding choice was not affected by the program counterfactual policy experiments find that optimal subsidy policies bias grant offers against relocation with an inverse u shaped relationship between the degree of bias and the severity of damages from the disaster

the effect of state and local taxes on economic development a meta analysis economists and policy makers have long questioned the effect of state and local taxes on economic development according to schmenner 55 economists have long argued that taxes had little impact on business location decisions while development practitioners and elected officials ignored this advice and aggressively pursued development by using tax incentives more recent research using improved data and methodologies has begun to show that taxes can make a difference and the emerging consensus among economists now says that taxes do matter this changing view among researchers is perhaps best exemplified in a 1991 study by timothy j bartik 2 bartik examined 84 econometric studies completed since 1979 which assess the impact of state and local taxes on economic growth in the u s he concluded that the long run elasticity of business activity with respect to state and local taxes was between 10 and 60 for studies focusing on intermetropolitan or interstate business economic activity and between 1 0 and 3 0 for intrametropolitan areas however bartik s study did not control for a variety of study characteristics that may have influenced the measured elasticity this study builds upon bartik s analysis by performing a meta analysis of the studies bartik reviewed meta analysis is a method for statistically analyzing results across empirical studies though it has been little used by economists researchers in psychology education and health sciences have used meta analysis extensively this study uses a meta analytic technique suggested by stanley and jarrell 57 to analyze the studies reviewed by bartik the technique yields increased precision for our understanding of the relationship between state and local taxes and economic development the objective of this study is two fold first to derive a more precise estimate of the tax elasticity and second to determine how the inclusion and omission of key variables in the estimated equations influences the elasticity estimates

land use worker heterogeneity and welfare benefits of public goods we show that investments in public goods change the optimal land use in their vicinity leading to additional welfare benefits this occurs through two sorting mechanisms first availability of public goods leads to higher population densities second population groups sort according to their preferences for public goods we develop a structural spatial general equilibrium model that accounts for these effects the model is estimated using data on transport infrastructure commuting behaviour land use and land rents for some 3000 zip codes in the netherlands and for three levels of education welfare benefits of investments in public transport infrastructure are shown to differ sharply by workers educational attainment welfare gains from changes in land use account for up to 30 of the total benefits of a transport investment

the european union balancing between co2 reduction commitments and growth policies decomposition analyses abstract this article is an empirical study of the whole energy system development in the european union the analysis covers the years 1960 1998 the decomposition analysis of energy and co 2 intensities of the different eu countries and norway reveal large differences between the individual countries the reasons for the differences in energy intensity changes are explained by the structural changes of the economies the changes in co 2 intensities are explained by the energy intensity changes and by the changes is fuel switching the study verifies the conclusion that there are still big challenges in the harmonisation of energy and climate policy in the eu

dynamics and drivers of per capita co2 emissions in asia abstract the aim of this paper is to document recent trends in asia s co2 emissions and explore the mechanisms that drive those emissions for fourteen countries over the period 1971 to 2017 we apply a sequential method which has a strong relationship to policy indicators first an analysis of the dynamics is undertaken to identify if convergence is occurring followed by a study of the determinants of those dynamics this approach overcomes some of the limitations of previous work analyzing emission convergence by focusing on country specific characteristics such as energy mix and energy efficiency the analysis reveals per capita co2 emissions energy intensity carbonization and per capita incomes are slowly converging over the full sample yet this behavior is not uniform there were differences in transition paths prior to and after the asian financial crisis the per capita income driver was the most important driver in explaining the dynamics and variation of emissions while carbonization and energy intensity drivers were less pronounced the analysis reveals that the energy needs of the region s extraordinary economic growth favored fossil fuels and a surprising revelation is that despite having different per capita income levels china korea and vietnam all share a common convergence path this paper provides further evidence against using carbon intensity solely as a target for climate policy

global income distribution from the fall of the berlin wall to the great recession we present an improved panel database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008 in 2008 the global gini index is around 70 5 having declined by approximately 2 gini points china graduated from the bottom ranks changing a twin peaked global income distribution to a single peaked one and creating an important global median class 90 of the fastest growing country deciles are from asia while almost 90 of the worst performers are from mature economies another winner was the global top 1 hence the global growth incidence curve has a distinct supine s shape with gains highest around the median and top

desire to acquire powerlessness and compensatory consumption three experiments examine how power affects consumers spending propensities by integrating literatures suggesting that a powerlessness is aversive b status is one basis of power and c products can signal status the authors argue that low power fosters a desire to acquire products associated with status to compensate for lacking power supporting this compensatory hypothesis results show that low power increased consumers willingness to pay for auction items and consumers reservation prices in negotiations but only when products were status related the link between powerlessness and compensatory consumption has broad implications both for consumers health and well being and for understanding the psychological state of power

explaining international and intertemporal variations in income inequality this paper explores the propositions that income inequality is relatively stable within countries and that it varies significantly among countries a new and expanded data set provides broad support for both propositions drawing on a political economy and capital market imperfection arguments to explain the intertemporal and international variation in inequality the empirical analysis shows that the predicted variables associated with the first argument a measure of civil liberties and the initial level of secondary schooling and the second argument a measure of financial depth and the initial distribution of land are indeed important determinants of inequality this paper explores two propositions regarding income inequality they are first income inequality is relatively stable within countries and second it varies significantly across countries to illustrate note that the gini coefficient in india remained almost constant for forty years 1951 92 with mean 32 6 and standard deviation 2 0 2 in contrast the variation in gini coefficients across countries is large 61 9 in honduras in 1968 compared with 17 8 in bulgaria in 1976 if substantiated these propositions have potentially significant implications for poverty the significance of the first is obvious barring any fundamental socio political change poverty reduction will depend crucially on the rate of economic growth given this the significance of the second is that in inegalitarian economies the poor will enjoy a smaller share of any national increment in income than in more egalitarian ones drawing on a new and expanded data set on inequality deininger and squire 1996a the first of the paper s three sections conducts standard statistical tests of the two propositions the sample comprises 573 observations on the most common measure of inequality the gini coefficient for 49 developed and developing countries covering the period 1947 94 the results broadly confirm our two propositions specifically analysis of variance anova shows that about 90 of the total variance in the gini coefficients

consistent estimates of the elasticity of substitution between land and non land inputs in the production of housing abstract this paper reports new estimates of the elasticity of substitution between land and non land inputs in the production of housing errors in the measurement of land value may have biased existing estimates of the substitution elasticity downward leading to the conclusion that the substitution elasticity is less than one the data analyzed in this study consist of observations on the transaction prices of both the lot and the house obtained by tracking the development of residential subdivisions the results indicate that the substitution elasticity is higher than indicated in previous studies and may not differ significantly from one

federal tax policies congressional voting and natural resources can abundance of natural resources affect legislators voting behavior over federal tax policies we construct a political economy model of a federalized economy with district heterogeneity in natural resource abundance the model shows that representatives of natural resource rich districts are more less willing to vote in favor of federal tax increases decreases this occurs because resource rich districts are less responsive to federal tax changes due to the immobile nature of their natural resources we test the model s predictions using data on roll call votes in the u s house of representatives over the major federal tax bills initiated during the period of 1945 2003 in conjunction with the presence of active giant oil fields in u s congressional districts our identification strategy rests on plausibly exogenous giant oil field discoveries and exploitation and narrative based aggregate federal tax shocks that are exogenous to individual congressional districts and legislators we find that i resource rich congressional districts are less responsive to changes in federal taxes ii representatives of resource rich congressional districts are more less supportive of federal tax increases decreases controlling for legislator congressional district and state indicators our results indicate that resource richness is approximately half as dominant as the main determinant namely party afiliation in driving legislators voting behavior over federal tax policies

commuting and taxes theory empirics and welfare implications we examine the effect of interstate differences in income taxes on commuting times our theoretical model introduces a border into a model of an urban area and shows that differences in average tax rates distort commuting patterns but the sign of the effect depends on whether taxes are residence based or employment based empirically tax differentials have a large effect on commuting times for affluent households and mobile households we show that commuting times are a sufficient statistic to measure the spatial welfare effects of tax policy the model and empirical design can be used by economists to study other policy differences this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

decomposition of aggregate carbon intensity for freight trends from 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1993 abstract historical patterns of aggregate carbon intensity from freight are different than those from other sectors while aggregate carbon intensity declined for all other sectors aggregate carbon intensity for freight increased the adaptive weighted divisia rolling base year index specification is applied to carbon emissions from the freight sector of 10 oecd countries for the period 1970 1993 increases in aggregate carbon intensity for nine of the countries range from less than 20 to over 150 and may be primarily attributed to shifts in modal structure toward more carbon intensive modes these increases in aggregate carbon intensity are driven primarily by an increase in activity which parallels the growth in gdp furthermore changes in fuel price and vehicle purchase taxes do not appear to be effective instruments for reducing energy consumption for this end use alternative policy options including less carbon intensive fuels and technologies and reduced congestion appear to be better choices