embodied hanpp mapping the spatial disconnect between global biomass production and consumption abstract biomass trade results in a growing spatial disconnect between environmental impacts due to biomass production and the places where biomass is being consumed the pressure on ecosystems resulting from the production of traded biomass however is highly variable between regions and products we use the concept of embodied human appropriation of net primary production hanpp to map the spatial disconnect between net producing and net consuming regions embodied hanpp comprises total biomass withdrawals and land use induced changes in productivity resulting from the provision of biomass products international net transfers of embodied hanpp are of global significance amounting to 1 7 pgc year sparsely populated regions are mainly net producers densely populated regions net consumers independent of development status biomass consumption and trade are expected to surge over the next decades suggesting a need to sustainably manage supply and demand of products of ecosystems on a global level

international trade of scarce water abstract recent analyses of the evolution and structure of trade in virtual water revealed that the number of trade connections and volume of virtual water trade have more than doubled over the past two decades and that developed countries increasingly import water embodied in goods from the rest of the world to alleviate pressure on domestic water resources at the same time as demand continues to increase and climate change threatens to alter hydrological cycles water scarcity is a growing problem does research into virtual water trade need to consider water scarcity and differentiate flows out of water scarce regions from flows out of water abundant regions previous studies sum and compare virtual water volumes originating in countries experiencing vastly different degrees of water scarcity we therefore incorporate water scarcity into an assessment of global virtual water flows we use input output analysis to include indirect virtual water flows we find that the structure of global virtual water networks changes significantly after adjusting for water scarcity

an empirical study on the rebound effect considering capital costs technological progress is one of the means of reducing energy usage and carbon dioxide co2 emissions however this reduction in turn leads to a reduction in the real cost of energy services per unit which results in an increase in the demand for energy services therefore a reduction in the anticipated co2 emissions caused by a technological improvement might be partially offset in response to the cost reduction previous studies have referred to this effect as the rebound effect a large amount of empirical evidence on the rebound effect exists however most of these studies assume an exogenous improvement in energy efficiency and thus capital costs that may decrease the magnitude of the rebound effect are not taken into account expressly this paper extends the scope of the research conducted by brannlund et al brannlund r ghalwash t nordstrom j 2007 increased energy efficiency and the rebound effect effects on consumption and emissions energy economics 29 1 17 in terms of two aspects i considering capital costs explicitly as additional capital costs and ii adapting an iterating procedure and estimating the rebound effect using japanese household data as a result of our empirical analysis we conclude that the rebound is approximately 27 however we also find that ignoring additional capital costs leads to an increase in the rebound effect in the case of japanese households the magnitude of the rebound effect increases to approximately 115 moreover our simulation study shows that only a one time iteration of brannlund et al brannlund r ghalwash t nordstrom j 2007 increased energy efficiency and the rebound effect effects on consumption and emissions energy economics 29 1 17 may lead to a biased result

international trade and air pollution damages in the united states abstract this paper investigates the health and economic consequences of trade due to various air pollutants embodied in exports and imports we compare the us emissions generated for us exports and those that were avoided by importing an input output framework of the us economy is employed together with a comprehensive database on damages expressed in monetary terms generated by pollutants as estimated by muller et al 2011 we find that damages associated with international trade in 2002 were considerable the net result is that damages were avoided through trade and that these avoided damages amounted to 2 7 of the us trade deficit and 3 4 of the us value added associated with trade moreover the computed damage to value added ratios differed greatly across industries exports in some industries are so hazardous that more than half of the value added gained from extra exports disappeared due to environmental damages these findings imply that the us might benefit more from trade by increasing its exports more in low damage intensive products than in high damage intensive products

trade ecologically unequal exchange and colonial legacy the case of france and its former colonies 1962 2015 abstract the role of trade in global environmental change is receiving increasing attention and there is a lively debate about ecologically unequal exchange eue little is known however about the role of colonial legacy for the evolution of physical trade patterns this study provides empirical evidence on the basis of a systematic evaluation of global trade data we quantify in physical and monetary terms the development of trade relations between france its former colonies and the rest the world from the immediate post colonial period until 2015 we use a set of physical trade indicators including physical trade balance and terms of trade to analyse differences in trade patterns and eue the results indicate that colonial ties were very strong in the 1960s but thereafter quickly diminished we find strong evidence for eue between france and its former colonies in the post colonial period and that the colonial factor explains eue between centre and peripheries better than income differences until the 1970s in recent decades colonial legacy increasingly vanished our findings corroborate that socio political factors and in particular colonial legacy play an important role for eue relations and that they deserve more attention in quantitative empirical research on trade

energy overview for globalized world economy source supply chain and sink abstract energy use of the globalized world economy is comprehensively overviewed by means of a systems input output analysis based on statistics of 2010 emphases are put on the sources of primary energy exploitation inter regional trade imbalance of energy use via global supply chains and sinks of energy use in final demand the largest final user turns out to be the united states compared with china as the leading energy exploiter the global trade volume of energy use is shown in magnitude up to about 90 of the global primary energy exploited the united states is recognized as the world s biggest energy use importer in contrast to russia as the biggest exporter approximately one third of global primary energy exploited is shown to be embodied in inter regional net trade japan and russia are respectively illustrated to be the world s leading net importer and leading net exporter of energy use for china as the leading energy exploiter about 30 of its exploited energy is for foreign regions final use and 70 for its own final use for the european union as the largest sink region nearly 80 of the energy required in its final use is from foreign regions led by russia as reflected in the results the conventional perspective based only on the direct energy consumption by region inevitably leads to inter regional energy grabbing and carbon leakage which raises a serious concern of regional decrease at the expense of global increase in current context of energy shortage and climate change this global energy overview can provide essential strategic implications at the international national and regional scales for sustainable energy policy making

ethnic unemployment rates and frictional markets the unemployment rate in france is roughly 6 percentage points higher for african immigrants than for natives in the us the unemployment rate is approximately 9 percentage points higher for blacks than for whites commute time data indicates that minorities face longer commute times to work potentially reflecting more difficult access to jobs in this paper we investigate the impact of spatial mismatch on the unemployment rate of ethnic groups using the matching model proposed by rupert and wasmer 2012 we find that spatial factors explain 1 1 5 percentage points of the unemployment rate gap in both france and the us amounting to 17 25 of the relative gap in france and about 10 17 5 in the us among these factors differences in commuting distance play the most important role in france though longer commuting distances may be mitigated by higher mobility in the housing market for african workers overall we still conclude that labor market factors remain the main explanation for the higher unemployment rate of africans

responsibility and trade emission balances an evaluation of approaches this paper compares two concepts to evaluate the international responsibility of a country with respect to its emissions using a multi regional input output model we show that the trade emission balance and the responsibility emission balance yield the same result in practical work however a lack of data availability implies that the same technology assumption has been commonly adopted in that case also a third alternative exists which simply evaluates the emissions embodied in the trade balance of the country this third alternative yields the same results as the other two approaches at the aggregate level at the level of individual products however the results are clearly different and it turns out that the third alternative answers a different question that is it is appropriate for measuring the emission content of the products that cross the border in our empirical application we consider spain in 1995 and 2000 distinguishing nine different gases co 2 ch 4 n 2 o sf 6 hfcs pfcs so 2 nox and nh 3 c 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

tracing the impacts of a northern open economy on the global environment the globalization of the world economy has increased resource flows around the planet raising pressures on the environment historically northern industrialized economies have been responsible for the majority of resource consumption while developing countries have suffered the associated social and environmental impacts this article analyzes the extra territorial responsibility of the basque economy europe to illustrate the responsibility of northern open economies towards the global environment to do this we i analyze the material and energy flows of the basque economy their source and impacts on other regions of the world ii study the impact of the economic and investment activities of basque companies abroad and iii examine together with other paradigmatic examples three case studies from latin america east africa and southeast asia that represent the liabilities of northern economies in the global south this approach allows us to connect production and consumption processes in affluent countries with associated socio ecological impacts in the extraction frontiers in order to better understand and potentially transform current economic patterns and their consequences in addition the study indicates how to bridge the gap between local and global scales creating a useful approach to raising social awareness and informing public policies in resource intensive societies

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

race and gender discrimination in bargaining for a new car more than three hundred paired audits at new car dealerships reveal that dealers quoted significantly lower prices to white males than to black or female test buyers using identical scripted bargaining strategies ancillary evidence suggests that the dealerships disparate treatment of women and blacks may be caused by dealers statistical inferences about consumers reservation prices but the data do not strongly support any single theory of discrimination copyright 1995 by american economic association

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

casting a long shadow demand based accounting of canada s greenhouse gas emissions responsibility abstract canada is the only country to have ratified the kyoto protocol and then withdrawn part of the justification for canada s reluctance to commit to greenhouse gas ghg emissions reductions is the country s status as fossil fuel exporter in this paper we use input output analysis and the world input output database wiod to ask whether canada s contribution to global ghg emissions changes when calculated using a demand based shadow emission approach that excludes ghg emissions created in the production of exports like fossil fuels but includes emissions released to produce imports to canada we find that from 1995 to 2005 canada s contribution to global emissions was lower using this demand based ghg accounting approach than a production based approach from 2006 to 2009 however increased imports from ghg intensive trading partners like china meant that canada s demand based shadow emissions were higher than its production based ghg emissions we also introduce a method of calculating sub national ghg shadows using limited data applied to canada this exercise demonstrates that fossil fuel exporting provinces such as alberta and saskatchewan have demand based shadow emissions significantly lower than their production based emissions while populous provinces such as quebec and ontario have demand based emissions that are relatively higher than their production based emissions

spatial polarization of the ecological footprint distribution abstract the international allocation of natural resources is determined not by any ethical or ecological criteria but by the dominance of market mechanisms from a core periphery perspective this allocation may even be driven by historically determined structural patterns with a core group of countries whose consumption appropriates most available natural resources and another group having low natural resource consumption which plays a peripheral role this article consists of an empirical distributional analysis of natural resource consumption as measured by ecological footprints whose purpose is to assess how strongly countries cluster together based on their ecological footprints this is the extent to which the distribution of consumption responds to polarization as opposed to mere inequality to assess this we estimate and decompose different polarization indices for a balanced sample of 119 countries over the period 1961 to 2007 our results point towards a polarized distribution which is consistent with a core periphery framework

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

caloric unequal exchange in latin america and the caribbean the existence of an unequal exchange between rich and poor countries has been well studied in the literature explained by differences in labour costs that were reflected in the prices of traded goods research has also demonstrated that the failure to include environmental impacts in prices of traded goods concealed an ecologically unequal exchange this paper contributes to the discussion with the newly coined concept of caloric unequal exchange that defines the deterioration of terms of trade in food in units of calories exports and imports to and from latin america and the caribbean are analysed for the period 1961 through 2011 in volume value and calories for different groups of products the study concludes that although calories exported by the region to the rest of the world are more expensive than those imported the ratio is deteriorating over time this trend is found to be dependent of the trading partner involved the region is helping the rest of the world in supplying their diets at a lower cost a side result is that globalisation is homogenising diets over time concentrating most food consumption in a reduced number of products and therefore increasing interdependency among countries and affecting food security

differences in work conditions between natives and immigrants preferences vs outside employment opportunities abstract immigrants are disproportionately employed in agriculture and construction sectors with relatively high injury rates what pushes immigrants to accept riskier and more strenuous work conditions we propose a circular model and show that differences in average work conditions borne by natives and immigrants are driven by both preferences and unearned income using french data we find that in line with the model s predictions i rigid wages are associated with a larger immigrant native gap in work conditions ii high unearned income individuals benefit on average from better work conditions iii for immigrants and natives with high unearned income differences in demographic characteristics explain part of the immigrant native gap in work conditions in contrast the gap largely persists among low unearned income people even once we have imposed identical demographic composition among them this suggests that there must be other factors that influence preferences over work conditions and that are missing in our empirical analysis

towards sustainability of energy systems a primer on how to apply the concept of energy services to identify necessary trends and policies virtually all goods and services that characterize modern societies welfare depend on the provision of commercial energy the core objective of this paper is to identify necessary changes in trends for achieving a transition towards more sustainable energy systems and development paths the major conclusions of this analysis are i a rigorous rethinking process has to take place to identify which level of energy services per capita lead to enhancing human welfare and quality of life ii a significant increase in energy conversion efficiency has to be triggered to finally provide energy services with far less input of energy than today iii a continuous increase in the share of renewable energy sources and other low emission options has to be brought about iv however as history has shown this process of technological learning has to be accompanied by proper energy price and regulatory policies otherwise it is very likely that energy conservation gains due to technical efficiency improvements will be outweighed again by increases in energy service demand and straightforward energy consumption and co 2 emissions

economic indicators of resource scarcity a critical essay abstract the theoretical arguments of the conceptual and empirical literature on economic indicators of long run resource scarcity are logically flawed if resource allocators were informed of the nature of resource scarcity their behavior and the economic indicators it generates would reflect the scarcity but if they were so informed we could simply ask them if resources were scarce if they are not informed their behavior and economic indicators are as likely to indicate their ignorance as the reality unfortunately there is no way of knowing whether they are informed or not unless we already know whether resources are scarce

embodied pollution in trade estimating the environmental load displacement of industrialised countries abstract the present paper sets out to aid in the development of environmental load displacement indicators developing the notion of the environmental memory of physical flows we estimated embodied pollution in trade of 18 industrialized countries with a the rest of the world and b developing countries from 1976 to 1994 we found that in the last years of analysis total imports of japan usa and western europe have entailed in general larger air pollutant emissions than local exports the balance of embodied emissions in trade beet seems to follow an inverted u shape across time in japan and western europe and an n shape in the us in the period of analysis japanese and european environmental terms of trade with developing countries improved from the japanese and european point of view whereas american environmental terms of trade with developing countries deteriorated over time although there is no statistical trend between income and embodied emissions in imports in a cross section analysis there does seem to be a positive relationship between both variables at a national level the results suggest that despite many shortcomings this type of assessment may shed useful insights on the international aspects of sustainable development

living up to expectations estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for uk households this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement by uk households in contrast to most studies of this topic we base our estimates on cross price elasticities and therefore capture both the income and substitution effects of energy efficiency improvements our approach involves estimating a household demand model to obtain price and expenditure elasticities of different goods and services utilising a multiregional input output model to estimate the ghg emission intensities of those goods and services combining the two to estimate direct and indirect rebound effects and decomposing those effects to reveal the relative contribution of different mechanisms and commodities we estimate that the total rebound effects are 41 for measures that improve the efficiency of domestic gas use 48 for electricity use and 78 for vehicle fuel use the primary source of this rebound is increased consumption of the cheaper energy service i e direct rebound and this is primarily driven by substitution effects our results suggest that the neglect of substitution effects may have led prior research to underestimate the total rebound effect however we provide a number of caveats to this conclusion as well as indicating priorities for future research

wage competition with heterogeneous workers and firms we study imperfect competition in the labor market when both workers and firms are heterogeneous when firms cannot observe workers skill firms pay workers equal wages but workers absorb training costs when firms can identify worker types firms pay different net wages to different workers voters select the level of general education that is financed by a lump sum tax workers are on average better off when firms can observe workers skill for a given level of general human capital but the median voter prefers a higher level of general human capital when firms cannot observe worker types

where have all the funds gone multiregional input output analysis of the european agricultural fund for rural development abstract the new european agricultural fund for rural development eafrd was purposely established to contribute to the promotion of sustainable rural development throughout the eu community this paper addresses the sustainability of the eafrd from a triple bottom line perspective in a multiregional input output model this framework allows us to study both the trade relations within the eu target regions and also the relations of the eu with some other regions in the world additionally the model allows us to determine the losses leakages or gains boosts and feedbacks of a wide range of effects on the other hand this framework allows a simultaneous consideration of socioeconomic and environmental fund effects to identify their causes and flows and to clarify and reallocate benefits and responsibilities across levels and regions the estimation of direct and indirect impact effects in an eu country clarifies the following a how the leakages to other regions generate a final economic impact that redistributes the prior fund distribution b how relevant the countries participation in global production chains are and c how the potential existence of an ecological unequal exchange is assessed the main data originate from the wiod database and the european network for rural development

can private motor vehicle augmenting technical progress reduce household and total fuel use abstract this paper demonstrates the importance of modelling energy intensive household services in general and private transportation in particular as combinations of energy and other inputs initially a partial equilibrium approach is used to analyse private transport consumption as a self produced commodity formed by household vehicle and fuel use we particularly focus on the impact of private vehicle augmenting technical progress in this framework we show that household fuel use will fall if it is easier to substitute between vehicles and fuel in the household production of private transport services than it is to substitute between private transport and the composite of all other goods in overall household consumption the analysis is then extended through computable general equilibrium simulation to investigate the wider implications of similar efficiency improvements when intermediate demand prices and nominal income are endogenous the subsequent reduction in the price of private transport service not observable in market prices allows the wage measured relative to the cpi to rise whilst the wage relative to the price of foreign goods falls this simultaneously increases uk international competitiveness encouraging increased exports and reduced import penetration whilst allowing employment to rise this provides an additional supply side stimulus to production employment and household income

recent trends in the size distribution of household wealth based on the survey of consumer finances the distribution of wealth in the united states became much more unequal in the 1980s and that trend continued albeit at a slower pace in the 1990s the only households that saw their mean net worth rise in absolute terms between 1983 and 1995 were those in the top 20 percent and the gains were particularly strong for the top one percent all other groups were particularly strong for the top one percent all other groups suffered real wealth losses including the median household and declines were particularly precipitous at the bottom racial disparities widened and young households also lost out over this period

unemployment vs mismatch of talents reconsidering unemployment benefits we develop an equilibrium search matching model with risk neutral agents and two sided ex ante heterogeneity unemployment insurance has the standard effect of reducing employment but also helps workers to get a suitable job we show through calibrations how the mere difference on unemployment insurance when countries experience a common skilled biased technological shock may result in differences in unemployment productivity growth and wage inequality these results are consistent with the contrasting performance of the labour market in europe and the united states in the last twenty five years the model is used to address some political economy issues

economic gains and environmental losses from international trade a decomposition of pollution intensity in china s value added trade abstract based on a multi regional input output model this study explores the temporal changes and driving forces of china s environmental losses relative to its economic gains from international trade with each of its 45 trading partners from 1995 to 2015 we find that china suffered larger environment losses per us value added through exports than almost all of its trading partners over time the environmental losses paid by china declined quicker than that of its bilateral trading partners the decomposition results of our research further show that the technology effect played a dominant role in this decline moreover the phenomenon that developed economies have outsourced dirty intermediate production stages to emerging economies via trade in intermediate goods has led to the emerging economies suffering greater environmental losses over time for certain economic gains from international trade

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

informal job search and black youth unemployment in this paper i analyze how young black and white unemployed jobseekers use various methods of search and the employment outcomes which result from their use the focus is on distinguishing informal search methods i e friends and relatives or direct application without referral from more formal ones in analyzing racial differences the results show that the two informal methods of search account for about 90 of the difference in employment probabilities between white and black youth this also accounts for 57 71 of the difference in unemployment rates between the two furthermore most of these results reflect differences in the ability of these methods to generate job offers as opposed to differences in search effort or job acceptance rates however our ability to explain these differences through personal family and household characteristics was generally quite limited this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

ecological economics marxism and technological progress some explorations of the conceptual foundations of theories of ecologically unequal exchange abstract almost regardless of ideological persuasion the seemingly self evident concept of technological progress inherited from early industrialism is resorted to as an article of faith serving to dispel the specter of truncated growth the increasingly acknowledged threats of peak oil and global warming are thus generally countered with visions of a future civilization based on solar power i discuss this technological scenario as a utopia that raises serious doubts about mainstream understandings of what technology really is technological utopianism raises difficult but fundamental analytical questions about the relation between thermodynamics and theories of economic value while marxism and some ecological economics share the ambition of grounding notions of economic value in physical parameters notions of economic value and physical processes should be kept analytically distinct

does ecologically unequal exchange occur the hypothesis of ecologically unequal exchange posits that low and middle income developing nations maintain an ecological deficit with wealthy developed nations exporting natural resources and high impact commodities thereby allowing wealthy economies to avoid operating ecologically impactful industries at home in this survey we assess the footprint of consumption of 187 countries using eight indicators of environmental pressure in order to determine whether or not this phenomenon occurs we use input output analysis with a new high resolution global multi region input output table to calculate each trading pair s balance of trade in biophysical terms of ghg emissions embodied water and scarcity weighted water content air pollution threatened species human appropriated net primary productivity total material flow and ecological footprint we test three hypotheses that should be true if ecologically unequal exchange occurs one the inter regional balance of trade in biophysical terms is disproportional to the balance of trade in financial terms we find this is true though not strongly so two exports from developing nations are more ecologically intensive than those from developed nations we find this is true three high income nations disproportionately exert ecological impacts in lower income nations we find this is false high income nations are mostly exporters not importers of biophysical resources

car ownership employment and earnings abstract we assess whether the positive relationship between car ownership and employment outcomes reflects a causal effect of auto ownership we match state level data on car insurance premiums and gas taxes to a microdata sample containing information on car ownership and employment outcomes in ols regressions that control for observable covariates we find large differences in employment rates weekly hours worked and hourly earnings between those with and without cars instrumenting for car ownership with insurance and gas taxes yields estimates of the employment and hours effects that are quite close to the ols estimates concerning wages instrumenting eliminates the positive impact of auto ownership

how does income redistribution affect households material footprint abstract this paper presents a study of the evolution of spanish households material footprint for the period 2006 to 2013 the method proposed combines the multiregional input output model with spanish national data on household consumption according to social group material footprint has been affected by the 2008 economic crisis in relative terms the share of spanish households material footprint with respect to total material footprint decreased drastically from 70 7 in 2006 to 50 8 in 2011 this reduction can be mainly attributed to the construction sector crash 34 4 of the reduction is due to construction materials followed by biomass 29 metals 27 1 and fossil fuels 26 1 by type of household the material footprint exhibits a scale effect while consumption and income levels grow and this is accompanied by a global teleconnection effect which varies from 62 for biomass to 64 for metals to 82 for construction materials to 95 for fossil fuels given the context of increasing income inequality we perform one redistribution simulation from high to middle and low income households finding a material footprint increase in all cases the most materialized consumer basket is that corresponding to households with incomes between 1500 and 1999 euros above that income level the growing weight of expenditures on services reduces the use of materials importantly social income redistribution and environmental material footprint sustainability will become incompatible if responsibility is transferred only to households

heterogeneity in the rebound effect further evidence for germany rebound effects measure the behaviorally induced offset in the reduction of energy consumption following efficiency improvements using both panel estimation and quantile regression methods on household travel diary data collected in germany between 1997 and 2009 this study investigates the heterogeneity of the rebound effect in private transport with the average rebound effect being in the range of 57 to 62 our results are in line with a recent german study by frondel peters and vance 2008 but are substantially larger than those obtained from other studies furthermore our quantile regression results indicate that the magnitude of estimated fuel price elasticities from which rebound effects can be derived depends inversely on the household s driving intensity households with low vehicle mileage exhibit fuel price elasticities and hence rebound effects that are significantly larger than those for households with high vehicle mileage

labor heterogeneity in an urban labor market abstract we construct a model of agglomeration economies in a labor market with friction and heterogeneity of both workers and firms with friction matches between workers and firms are random we show that with random matches an increase in the number of workers brings improvements in worker firm match quality and agglomeration economies emerge if and only if the technology of search exhibits increasing returns to scale we then discuss how to find out empirically whether this condition is satisfied furthermore we investigate properties of the agglomeration economies here and the relation between the city size and states of a labor market

city structure search and workers job acceptance behavior abstract this paper develops a stochastic search model having a monocentric city structure and investigates how city structure affects workers job acceptance behavior and a labor market in the model workers reside in a city and commute to the central business district cbd to work when employed and to be interviewed when unemployed when a job searcher contacts a firm having a vacant job he she observes the level of training costs necessary for employment and decides whether to accept the job it is shown that there exists a unique market equilibrium in which the employed live close to the cbd and the unemployed reside far away from the cbd analysis shows that 1 improvement of commuting technology induces job searchers to accept more costly jobs and lowers the unemployment rate in the city 2 growth of the city makes job searchers less tolerant of training and raises the unemployment rate and 3 as job searchers search more intensively they become choosier if commuting costs are sufficiently small efficiency properties of the equilibrium are also explored

rates for vehicle loans race and loan source a household s vehicle purchases are among its largest expenditure outlays moreover unlike housing purchases which a typical household may make once or twice over a lifetime a house hold may well buy several cars over the same interval the magnitude and relative frequency of vehicle purchases suggest that differential treatment by race in the vehicle market may have important implications for differences in wealth and financial well being by race yet whereas a robust literature in economics has studied virtu

input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation abstract energy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers using the environmental input output analysis framework it is well known that both sector aggregation and spatial aggregation affect the results obtained in such studies with regard to the latter past studies are often conducted at the national level irrespective of country or economy size for a large economy with the needed data studies may be conducted at different levels of spatial aggregation we examine this problem analytically by extending the work of su et al su b huang h c ang b w zhou p 2010 input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation energy economics 32 1 166 175 on sector aggregation we present a numerical example using the data of china and by dividing the country into eight regions it is found that the results are highly dependent on spatial aggregation our study shows that for a large country like china it is meaningful to look into the effect of spatial aggregation

racial and ethnic differences in wealth in the health and retirement study this paper examines wealth data in the health and retirement study hrs in comparison with asset data in other major surveys the quality of hrs asset data is high missing asset data does remain a problem however to which future hrs analysts must remain sensitive evidence is presented showing that it is no accident that asset data are missing and solutions for imputing missing data are developed finally racial and ethnic wealth disparities are large these minority wealth disparities are due in part to differential inheritances and desired bequests as inequities perpetuate themselves across generations the disparities are also due to lower minority incomes poorer health and an excessively narrow definition of wealth that excludes social security and employer pensions authors

unequal raw material exchange between and within countries galicia nw spain as a core periphery economy abstract a global multi regional input output model with sub national resolution for galicia north west spain was used to study physical and value added trade balances between galicia the rest of spain and the world within the framework of ecologically unequal exchange theory we argue that a region such as galicia can play a twofold role as core and periphery in the global division of extractive activities we show that galicia is a sink i e net importer of natural resources from middle and low income economies and that the lower the income of the trade partner the more raw material intensive the imports measured as upstream kg per usd imported value added however this physical deficit is less accentuated than for the rest of spain and galicia s material footprint is significantly lower 14 2 compared with 24 5 t capita moreover galicia is a source i e net exporter of raw materials compared with more thriving european union economies and even for some key trade partners such as germany uk and the rest of spain it is a net importer of value added

is the netherlands sustainable as a global scale inner city intenscoping spatial sustainability is the netherlands sustainable or not the answer inherently involves addressing the issues of system boundaries statistical units and a vision of sustainability as an analytical answer we offer the intenscope is a two dimensional graphical tool based on dimensionless percentages of triple rate ratios which overcomes several limitations of sustainability analyses first it is not sensitive to the size of statistical units so an area with twice the amount of resources of another with double the population and double the total consumption would have the same triple ratio of population biocapacity consumption second the is is sensitive to anomalies which may originate either from the use of arbitrary statistical units e g the boundaries of a city or those which may indicate truly unsustainable practices to judge spatial sustainability we use ecological footprint data from which we construct a plausible country plot based on the is despite the relative nature of is analyses the employed consumption biocapacity ratio inherently refers to the absolute limit of sustainability we cannot continually use more resources on a global scale than nature provides us with the analysis introduces some associations of human preferences and attributions of settlement types which may help to elaborate sustainability policies based on voluntary action

on the job search mismatch and efficiency this paper characterizes the equilibrium for a large class of search models with two sided heterogeneity and on the job search besides the well known congestion externalities we show that on the job search in combination with monopsonistic wage setting without commitment creates a business stealing externality in the absence of congestion effects this leads to excessive vacancy creation under wage setting with commitment this externality is absent because when posting a wage firms take into account the expected productivity of future workers in their current jobs if firms are able to make and respond to counteroffers then they will not have to pay no quit premia and this also leads to excessive vacancy creation

india s biophysical economy 1961 2008 sustainability in a national and global context india s economic growth in the last decade has raised several concerns in terms of its present and future resource demands for materials and energy while per capita resource consumption is still extremely modest but on the rise its sheer population qualifies india as a fast growing giant with material and energy throughput that is growing rapidly if such national and local trends continue the challenges for regional national as well as global sustainability are immense in terms of future resource availability social conflicts pressure on land and ecosystems and atmospheric emissions using the concepts of social metabolism and material flow analysis this paper presents an original study quantifying resource use trajectories for india from 1961 up to 2008 we argue for india s need to grow in order to be able to provide a reasonable material standard of living for its vast population to this end the challenge is in avoiding the precarious path so far followed by industrialised countries in europe and asia but to opt for a regime shift towards sustainability in terms of resource use by building on a host of promising examples and taking opportunities of existing niches to make india a trendsetter

car ownership and the labor market of ethnic minorities we show how initial wealth differences between low skilled minorities and white workers can generate differences in their labor market outcomes this even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against ethnic minorities or exogenous differences in distance to jobs because of the initial wealth difference minorities cannot afford to buy a car while whites can car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time which gives them a better bargaining position in the labor market as a result in equilibrium ethnic minorities end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites furthermore we also show that it takes more time for minorities to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles when employed those predictions are consistent with the data better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes

spatial mismatch search effort and urban spatial structure abstract the aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism for the spatial mismatch hypothesis spatial mismatch can here be the result of optimizing behavior on the part of the labor market participants in particular the unemployed can choose low amounts of search and long term unemployment if they reside far away from jobs they choose voluntary not to relocate close to jobs because the short run gains low land rent and large housing consumption are big enough compared to the long run gains of residing near jobs higher probability of finding a job

temporal change of china s pollution terms of trade and its determinants abstract based on the world input output database wiod this study employed a revised pollution terms of trade ptt indicator to investigate the temporal change of china s environmental cost relative to its economic gains from international trade from 1995 to 2009 the results show that china has ptt larger than 1 indicating that china emits more emissions to obtain each unit of value added from exports than its trade partners over the period china s ptt first decreased from 1995 to 2001 and then increased from 2001 to 2009 the further decompositions show that improving technology is the leading driving force to decrease ptt while the change in global trade pattern is the leading force increasing ptt especially after 2001 we further decomposed the temporal change of china s ptt by income group of the trading partners the results show that the change in the global trade pattern is the crucial driving force behind the different changes of ptt by income group

spatial mismatch transport mode and search decisions in england abstract we develop a theoretical model in which whites mainly use private vehicles to commute whereas nonwhites use public transportation we show that for both whites and nonwhites higher time distance to jobs leads to lower search effort because of different transport modes we also show that at exactly the same time distance to jobs white unemployed workers search more intensively than nonwhites because it is less costly for them to gather information about jobs we then test this model using english sub regional data we find that for each race indeed living in areas where distance to jobs is higher yields the unemployed to search less than in areas with better job access we also find that having access to a car increases search intensity for both whites and nonwhites finally closing the racial gap in car access and distance to jobs would considerably narrow the difference in search intensities between whites and nonwhites

the added value from a general equilibrium analysis of increased efficiency in household energy use this paper investigates the economic impact of a 5 improvement in the uk household energy efficiency focussing specifically on total energy rebound effects the impact is measured through simulations using models that have increasing degrees of endogeneity but are calibrated on a common data set moving from a basic partial equilibrium approach to a fully specified general equilibrium treatment the size of the rebound effect is shown to depend on changes in household income aggregate economic activity and relative prices that can only be captured through a general equilibrium model

the transition to home ownership and the black white wealth gap this paper analyzes differences in the likelihood that black and white families become homeowners by following a sample of black and white renters over time we are able to separately study racial differences in the likelihood of applying for a mortgage and in the likelihood that a mortgage application is accepted although its effect on the race gap in housing transitions is small we find strong evidence that black applicants are almost twice as likely as comparable white households to be rejected even when credit history proxies and measures of household wealth are accounted for we show that the housing transition gap exists primarily because blacks are less likely to apply for mortgages in the first place the analysis suggests that differences in income family structure and in the ability and willingness of parents to provide down payment assistance are the primary reasons for this applications gap we speculate that the portion of the gap that remains unexplained after controlling for income d

spatial mismatch in search equilibrium we construct a search equilibrium model for a city with central and suburban labor markets that is consistent with the set of empirical regularities commonly associated with the spatial mismatch hypothesis a higher rate of unemployment for central city residents than suburban residents a higher job vacancy rate for suburban firms and reverse commuting and higher suburban wages the effectiveness and welfare implications of public policy programs that might be used to remedy the underlying mismatch are examined

the effects of social networks on employment and inequality we develop a model where agents obtain information about job opportunities through an explicitly modeled network of social contacts we show that employment is positively correlated across time and agents moreover unemployment exhibits duration dependence the probability of obtaining a job decreases in the length of time that an agent has been unemployed finally we examine inequality between two groups if staying in the labor market is costly and one group starts with a worse employment status then that group s drop out rate will be higher and their employment prospects will be persistently below that of the other group

search method use by unemployed youth this article presents a search model which shows that search method choices should be related to their costs and expected productivities as well as to nonwage income and wage offer distributions the empirical evidence then shows that the most frequently used search methods i e friends and relatives and direct applications without referral are also the most productive in generating offers and acceptances the number of methods used is affected by factors that presumably reflect opportunities as well as income sources and needs specific methods are chosen in a manner that generates positive average effects on outcomes for those using them

the mechanisms of spatial mismatch the spatial mismatch hypothesis smh argues that low skilled minorities residing in us inner cities experience poor labour market outcomes because they are disconnected from suburban job opportunities this assumption gave rise to an abundant empirical literature which is rather supportive of the smh surprisingly it is only recently that theoretical models have emerged which probably explains why the mechanisms of spatial mismatch have long remained unclear and not properly tested this article presents relevant facts reviews the theoretical models of spatial mismatch confronts their predictions with available empirical results and indicates which mechanisms deserve further empirical tests

space and unemployment the labor market effects of spatial mismatch the aim of this article is to analyze the effects of housing discrimination on the wages and unemployment rates of black workers the unemployment effect is first analyzed using a simple minimum wage model an efficiency wage model is then adopted in order to endogenize both unemployment and wages under both models suburban housing discrimination leads to a higher unemployment rate for blacks in the central city than in the suburbs under the efficiency wage model black wages are also lower in the center the analysis thus generates a link between unemployment and a seemingly unrelated phenomenon racial discrimination in the housing market

income class modal choice and urban spatial structure abstract this paper analyzes the impacts of urban transportation system changes and income changes on the welfare of people and on the urban spatial structure in a setting where the income level differs between two groups and two transportation modes compete with each other in a city it is demonstrated that an improvement in some transport facility will not necessarily increase the welfare level of every household and at times decreases the welfare of some households it also is argued that under particular situations an improvement in a particular transport mode may produce a contraction in the city size rather than an expansion similarly an increase in income of one group might have an adverse effect on the welfare of another income group as a result of competition in the land market

local labor markets job matching and urban location we present a new way of modeling local labor markets by linking the space of workers skills and the physical space of cities the key lesson of our analysis is that firms exploit workers in these two spaces by setting wages that are below the competitive level the degree of monopsony power depends on the elasticity of the firm s labor pool which is inversely related to the costs workers incur in commuting and acquiring skills our analysis thus shows how socioeconomic ghettos emerge as workers with poor skill matches are also those who incur the highest commuting costs

can eemrio analyses establish the occurrence of ecologically unequal exchange abstract in a recent article moran et al 2013 find that high income nations are mostly net exporters not importers of natural resources which would seem to contradict the occurrence of ecologically unequal exchange we take issue however with the theoretical conclusions as well as the empirical basis for their conclusions not only may a net export of embodied land be contingent on a net import of energy but a renewed assessment of an updated database even contradicts their empirical findings by suggesting that high income nations are indeed net importers of embodied land we challenge the theoretical and methodological assumptions involved and raise the question whether environmentally extended multi regional input output eemrio analyses are sophisticated and reliable enough to draw such conclusions and if they are able to prove or disprove the occurrence of ecologically unequal exchange current research on eemrio based flows of embodied materials energy land and labor in international trade confirms rather than questions the theory of ecologically unequal exchange

nitrogen tax and set aside as greenhouse gas abatement policies under global change scenarios a case study for germany the ambitious climate policy objectives of the cop21 agreement require the design and the implementation of effective and efficient policy instruments the effectiveness and efficiency of agricultural abatement options depend on regional climate and natural conditions changes in the global economy global agricultural markets and regional agricultural production thus the assessment of abatement options requires consideration of the global scale the market scale and the regional producer scale we investigate two abatement options discussed controversially in literature both have been partially applied to reduce environmental pollution from agriculture a tax on nitrogen and the obligatory set aside of agricultural land our study provides an assessment of the ecological effectiveness and the economic efficiency of both abatement options under different global scenarios in our policy analysis we combine three applied policy simulation models to develop an integrated economic model framework this model framework considers the global the national and the regional scale and consists of the global general equilibrium model dart bio the partial equilibrium model capri and the regional supply model raumis in the different global scenarios the results show that both abatement options create relatively high marginal abatement costs and that the maximally reached abated greenhouse gas emissions represent only 15 of the quantity required to fulfill the policy targets compared to the obligatory set aside option the nitrogen tax is in both scenarios the more efficient policy with respect to impacts on production and environment a nitrogen tax is less forecastable than the obligatory set aside option our study illustrates the relevance of considering global economic and market change in the assessment of producer targeting environmental policies

trading spaces calculating embodied ecological footprints in international trade using a product land use matrix plum abstract nations import and export biophysical resources with many ecosystems worldwide under mounting stress countries may be increasingly interested in knowing the extent and origin of their ecological imports and dependencies in this paper the ecological footprint is used as a tool to measure the biophysical as opposed to financial value of international trade flows this paper attempts to answer the following question how large of an ecological footprint does a given country exert inside the borders of each of its trading partners records in the un comtrade bilateral trade database are multiplied by a matrix of per product footprint yield coefficients to translate from values in dollars and tonnes to units of hectares the results show that the largest interregional flows are from latin to north america and from north america to asia pacific grouping countries by gdp high and middle income countries appear in footprint terms to trade predominantly with other high and middle income countries and much less with low income countries

global inequities and emissions in western european textiles and clothing consumption abstract rising demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in western europe is well documented as are changes in the textiles and clothing industry s globalised production structure we apply a sub systems global multi regional input output accounting framework to examine the sustainability implications of meeting western european demand for textiles and clothing goods between 1995 and 2009 our framework estimates environmental and socio economic impacts of consumption in a consistent manner and shows where these occur both geographically and in the value chain the results demonstrate that western european textiles and clothing consumption remains dependent on low cost labour from brazil russia india and china bric principally in the textiles and clothing and agricultural sectors conversely we show that the wage rate for bric workers in the global value chains serving western european textiles and clothing consumption has risen over time but remains low relative to the wage rate paid to western european workers likewise we find that profits are increasingly generated within bric and that they are now at comparable levels to those generated in western europe we find a slight overall decrease in the amount of carbon emitted in the production of textiles and clothing goods for western europe between 1995 and 2009 however the trend is not linear and the importance of different underlying drivers varies over the timeseries we conclude by discussing the implications of these results for a more sustainable future for western european textiles and clothing consumption

economic modelling of energy services rectifying misspecified energy demand functions abstract although it is well known that energy demand is derived since energy is required not for its own sake but for the energy services it produces such as heating lighting and motive power energy demand models both theoretical and empirical often fail to take account of this feature in this paper we highlight the misspecification that results from ignoring this aspect and its empirical implications biased estimates of price elasticities and other measures and provide a relatively simple and empirically practicable way to rectify it which has a strong theoretical grounding to do so we develop an explicit model of consumer behaviour in which utility derives from consumption of energy services rather than from the energy sources that are used to produce them as we discuss this approach opens up the possibility of examining many aspects of energy demand in a theoretically sound way that have not previously been considered on a widespread basis although some existing empirical work could be interpreted as being consistent with this type of specification while this formulation yields demand equations for energy services rather than for energy or particular energy sources these are shown to be readily converted without added complexity into the standard type of energy demand equation s that is are typically estimated the additional terms that the resulting energy demand equations include compared to those that are typically estimated highlight the misspecification that is implicit when typical energy demand equations are estimated a simple solution for dealing with an apparent drawback of this formulation for empirical purposes namely that information is required on typically unobserved energy efficiency indicates how energy efficiency can be captured in the model such as by including exogenous trends and or including its possible dependence on past energy prices the approach is illustrated using an empirical example that involves estimation of an aggregate energy demand function for the uk with data over the period 1960 2011

workforce location and equilibrium unemployment in a duocentric economy with matching frictions this article examines unemployment disparities and efficiency in a duocentric city where workers are non uniformly distributed between the two job centers we introduce commuting costs and search matching frictions to deal with the spatial mismatch between workers and firms in a decentralized economy job seekers do not internalize a composition externality they impose on all the unemployed with symmetric job centers a change in the distribution of the workforce can lead to asymmetric equilibrium outcomes we calibrate the model for los angeles and chicago metropolitan statistical areas simulations suggest that changes in the workforce distribution have non negligible effects on unemployment rates wages and net output but cannot be the unique explanation of a substantial mismatch problem

decoupling global environmental pressure and economic growth scenarios for energy use materials use and carbon emissions in recent decades economic growth and increased human wellbeing around the globe have come at the cost of fast growing natural resource use including materials and energy and carbon emissions leading to converging pressures of declining resource security rising and increasingly volatile natural resource prices and climate change we ask whether well designed policies can reduce global material and energy use and carbon emissions with only minimal impacts on improvements in living standards we use a novel approach of combined economic and environmental modelling to assess the potential for decoupling for 13 world regions and globally we apply a production territorial and consumption approach to discuss regional differences in natural resource use and carbon emissions across three stylized policy outlooks a reference case with no significant changes to environment and climate policies a high efficiency outlook involving a global carbon price rising from 50 to 236 constant price per tonne of co2 between 2010 and 2050 and improvements in resource efficiency rising from 1 5 historically to between 3 5 and 4 5 in the scenarios and a medium efficiency outlook midway between the no change and high outlooks we find that global energy use will continue to grow rapidly under all three scenarios from 17 billion tonnes of oil equivalent toe in 2010 to between 30 and 36 billion toe carbon emissions would be considerably lower with a global carbon price less than half the level of the reference case 29 37 billion tonnes of co2 instead of 74 billion tonnes and also material use would grow much more slowly under a carbon price and significant investment to increase resource efficiency 95 instead of 180 billion tonnes of materials we find that oecd economies have significant potential to reduce their material throughput and carbon emissions with little impact on economic growth and that developing economies such as china could expand their economies at much lower environmental cost globally the effects of very strong abatement and resource efficiency policies on economic growth and employment until 2050 are negligible our study suggests that decarbonization and dematerialization are possible with well designed policy settings and would not contradict efforts to raise human wellbeing and standards of living the research demonstrates the usefulness of scenarios for unpacking environmental and economic outcomes of policy alternatives the findings have important implications for future economic opportunities in a highly resource efficient and low carbon global economy to set human development and achieving the sustainable development goals on a more resilient path

distributional effects of alternative vehicle pollution control policies abstract previous work shows that policies that subsidize new vehicles and tax size miles or gasoline efficiently reduce pollution less is known about their distributional effects this paper examines distributional effects by estimating the joint demand for vehicles and miles using the consumer expenditure survey greater price responsiveness among low income households enhances progressivity of gas or miles taxes across lower incomes and mitigates regressivity across upper incomes taxes on engine size or subsidies to new vehicles are significantly more regressive than gas or miles taxes