the environmental kuznets curve environmental protection policy and income distribution abstract the effect of economic growth on pollution emissions differs substantially among high income countries i address this issue by analyzing public environmental policy decisions individual heterogeneity relative income effect and the political framework in which policy decisions are taken determine the emergence of the downward sloping segment of the environmental kuznets curve ekc income inequality produces a gap between the country s ability to pay for environmental protection and a country s willingness to pay i test this result by using oecd data on public r d expenditure for environmental protection the conclusion is that contrary to the ek hypothesis moments of the income distribution function other than the mean may be important for the emergence of a virtuous path of sustainable growth in high income countries

poverty and conservation the new century s peasant question summary by issuing its millennium development goals the united nations has declared its intention to alleviate poverty and hunger at a global scale over the next decade but the perspectives and policies to achieve those goals have not addressed the failures of previous development efforts of this kind nor have the plans to meet the millennium development goals paid sufficient attention to the costs of rural development for wild nature this paper points up the absence of a new analytical framework for sustainability and an action program in favor of a poverty and conservation oriented rural development program to ensure that the benefits of multilateral development plans accrue to the truly poor and to the future of wild nature

income distribution and environmental quality in china a spatial econometric perspective abstract paying heed to a surge of concern about the serious and continuous environmental degradation that is currently being witnessed in china in this paper we investigate whether income distribution contributes to environmental deterioration environmental degradation can be linked not only to income growth we argue but also to increases in income inequality the study calculated the gini coefficient of 31 province using a data set of 403 city level data in mainland china and estimated the linkage between income distribution and environmental deterioration utilizing balanced data for 31 chinese provinces during the period 1996 2015 first the degree of environmental pollution was calculated by constructing a comprehensive index system which was formulated using the entropy method based on six environmental indicators then a spatial panel regression model was also employed in order to estimate whether income inequality is likely to be a relevant factor in environmental deterioration in china the estimation results showed that using the index and spatial analysis techniques significant spatial positive agglomeration were found existing between chinese provinces in terms of their levels of environmental degradation the influencing factors estimation results substantiated the existence of an invert u shaped relation lending support to the environmental kuznets curve theory more importantly the study found that income inequality played a significant role in preventing environmental degradation suggesting that an appropriate level of income inequality over a delimited period is beneficial to improving environmental quality it should however also be emphasized that optimizing the country s income distribution is remains an important long term task for the chinese government other factors were found to exert different types and magnitudes of impacts on environmental pollution results showed that many factors for instance energy intensity the share of secondary industry population density and foreign direct investment contribute to environmental deterioration conversely our findings also indicate that rising urbanization levels can have a positive effect on environmental quality in addition no clear evidence was found to suggest that local government expenditure is related to environmental degradation

protecting endangered species when are shoot on sight policies the only viable option to stop poaching abstract protecting endangered species that offer poachers from low income countries high economic benefits remains a policy challenge a broadly applicable economic model of poaching shows why cites international bans have not always been successful especially in situations where black markets exist and nonpoaching wages are low in these situations poachers may have nothing left to lose since low nonpoaching wages impose a practical cap on the potential economic costs of fines and imprisonment thus the model suggests shoot on sight policies as the only viable option trends in animal populations appear to support the efficacy of the shoot on sight policies which also suggests an inherent value of life traditionally not captured in value of a statistical life estimates

productivity economies and efficiency in u s agriculture a look at contracts the growing importance of production contracts especially for some livestock species and in certain regions suggests that contracts confer economic benefits on farmers this trend has however stimulated concerns about the impacts of contracting on farm structure and concentration and environmental degradation which have led to efforts by various levels of government to regulate contract production for example in the u s hog industry between 1992 and 1998 the portion of feeder pigto finish hog operations using production contracts increased from 11 to 34 while the share of output produced under contract increased from 22 to 63 key and mcbride mcbride and key recent growth in hog contracts have been particularly noteworthy in the upper midwest with 2002 contracted production accounting for 47 of the value of total farm production in iowa and minnesota compared to only about 5 in 1996 and virtually none in 1991 meanwhile production contract levels in north carolina the other center of hog production have been relatively stable production contracts offer several potential advantages over independent production that could explain their increasing prevalence such as lowering income risk for growers contracting may also raise farm productivity by improving the quality of managerial inputs speeding the transfer of technical information to growers and facilitating growers access to credit thereby permitting the adoption of newer more efficient technologies at the same time

do individual preferences explain the environmental kuznets curve abstract some economists maintain the optimistic view that individual preferences of rich people eventually lead to a virtuous circle relationship between rising income and environmental degradation in this article i review some of the models that establish a relationship between individual preferences and environmental quality these models provide a basis for discussion of the key role played by two factors individual preferences and technology they do not however capture the distributive conflicts that occur between different social groups in the process of defining environmental policy neither do they provide a good basis for distinguishing between environmental costs caused by the decisions of particular consumers and those which affect the same consumers this point is related to the various manners in which environmental costs are displaced displacement often occurs within a country for current costs and is even clearer and more relevant when costs are transferred across a great distance or to a remote future in such cases there are few incentives to reduce consumption or alter its composition displacement moreover can become a strategy pursued more or less consciously for maintaining high and rising levels of consumption without dealing with the associated environmental costs

cross national patterns and determinants of female retirement despite the importance of labor force status to the well being of older women in developing and developed nations retirement of females has not been studied cross nationally this article first presents hypotheses concerning the effects of 1 industrial development 2 social security growth 3 sex stratification and 4 family structure and fertility on cross national patterns of female retirement it then argues that industrial development interacts with the variables specified by the other hypotheses in determining female retirement longitudinal aggregate data for 93 nations in 1960 1965 and 1970 are used to calculate rates of withdrawal of females from the labor force during old age and to test the arguments the results show substantial female retirement that varies systematically with the economic and social characteristics of the nations studied as predicted the effects of pensions family size and sexual equality on female retirement increase with the level of industrial development

political and economic inequality and the environment abstract this paper analyzes and tests the hypothesis that political and economic equality result in lower levels of environmental degradation based on formal statements of the argument put forward by boyce r 1994 ecological economics 11 169 178 i show that equality may or may not be necessary to minimize degradation under some plausible conditions greater inequality may even be conducive to lower degradation actual results depend primarily on the intersection between the distribution of preferences across groups and the institutional rules two cross national empirical tests tend to support the contention that distributional issues do not systematically explain variations in environmental quality the results reinforce the conclusion that assumptions about the structure of preferences and workings of social choice institutions ignore complex interactions which influence the relationship between degradation and equality

nonparametric estimates of the components of productivity and profitability change in u s agriculture recent theoretical advances in total factor productivity tfp measurement mean that tfp indexes can now be exhaustively decomposed into unambiguous measures of technical change and efficiency change to date all applications of this new methodology have involved decomposing indexes that have poor theoretical properties this article shows how the methodology can be used to decompose a new tfp index that satisfies all economically relevant axioms from index theory the application is to state level data from 1960 to 2004 in most states the main drivers of agricultural tfp change are found to have been technical change and scale and mix efficiency change

climate change health care access and regional influence on components of u s agricultural productivity this article examines factors driving three components of total factor productivity change tfpc in u s agriculture technical change tc technical efficiency change tec and scale and mix e

age structure politics and cross national patterns of public pension expenditures this study examines the determinants of spending on public pensions unlike other programs pensions benefit an easily identifiable high voting group the aged and may be especially amenable to their political influence with that in mind we draw out predictions of industrialism and class theories for the explanation of public pension expenditures the explanations are tested with data on 48 nations at all levels of political and economic development for four time points 1960 1965 1970 1975 pooling the data allows multivariate analysis of appropriate determinants both within and across different groups of nations and detailed analysis of advanced industrial democracies industrialism variables such as percent aged social insurance program experience andfamily size have dominant effects however the effects of percent aged increase with political democracy suggesting that the aged wield political power in increasing pension expenditures class variables in contrast have little or no effect on pensions suggesting the importance of age politics over class politics in the spending for this program

post war productivity patterns in u s agriculture influences of aggregation procedures in a state level analysis annual data for forty eight states are used to account for changes in the composition of input and output aggregates over space and time and thereby to obtain new evidence on changes in inputs outputs and productivity in u s agriculture the measures change significantly when we use state specific rather than national prices and when we allow for changes in the composition of the aggregates especially of labor and capital inputs we compare our estimates and those reported by ball et al american journal of agricultural economics 81 1999 164 79 the national estimates are similar but substantial differences are found in state level productivity growth

inequality as a cause of environmental degradation abstract this paper advances two hypotheses first the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners who derive net benefits from the activity and the losers who bear net costs second greater inequalities of power and wealth lead all else equal to more environmental degradation

agricultural productivity revisited this paper describes production accounts for agriculture output is defined as gross production leaving the farm as opposed to real value added inputs are not limited to capital and labor but include intermediate inputs as well we derive index numbers of gross output capital labor and intermediate inputs these data are used to construct indexes of total factor productivity we then compare the contributions of input growth and productivity growth to economic growth the important role of productivity growth in agriculture becomes immediately apparent

why european banks are less profitable than u s banks a decomposition approach abstract the low profitability of european banks relative to their u s counterparts has recently raised concerns among policy makers and researchers this paper attempts to shed light on this issue by using the o donnell 2012 decomposition approach this approach enables us to decompose the relative profitability of european banks into an output input price index and a total factor productivity index with the former further decomposed into two price indexes and the latter further into four productivity and efficiency measures our results show that european banks profitability was not only weak but also deteriorated over time our further analysis shows that the decline in the output input price index was due to declines in relative lending rate and relative return on securities and an increase in funding costs while the decline in the productivity index was driven by declines in technical efficiency scale efficiency and residual mix efficiency

analyzing components of productivity growth using the bennet lowe indicator an application to welsh sheep farms this article introduces the bennet lowe total factor productivity tfp indicator the proposed measure is difference based additively complete and transitive we also develop a general nonparametric framework to exhaustively decompose all bennet type tfp indicators including the one introduced here into technical change technical efficiency change scale efficiency change and mix efficiency change this decomposition provides a powerful tool for policy makers to guide financial decisions on research and development extension subsidies and price support the empirical application focuses on the welsh sheep sector for the years 2001 2014 the results show that in this 14 year period welsh sheep farms increased their tfp by 30 28 on average 2 33 p a however the exhaustive decomposition shows that tfp growth is not distributed equally across all farms with an increasing divergence between front runners and laggards the negative values of scale efficiency change and mix efficiency change cast doubt on the current subsidy policies

economic development pension policies and the labor force participation of aged males a cross national longitudinal approach the decline in labor force participation of aged males experienced by all developed countries can be seen as the result of two kinds of change 1 economic growth and the need for a young recently trained labor force has affected the educational system and occupational structure in ways that give young workers a competitive advantage and force older workers out of the labor force at mandatory retirement ages and 2 government policies have been developed to make retirement more attractive financially and to induce older workers to leave the labor force voluntarily this paper examines the additive and interactive influence of these two groups of variables using a sample of fix time points every five years from 1950 to 1975 for 18 relatively developed nations models are estimated by using generalized least squares which relate labor force participation of males aged 65 and over to such variables as the size of the agricultural labor force the old age dependency ratio government revenues social in

information access income distribution and the environmental kuznets curve abstract recent empirical studies have tested the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc focusing primarily on the relationship between per capita income and certain types of pollutant emissions given the stock nature of many pollution problems emissions only partially account for the environmental impacts moreover almost all of the studies have given consideration to little more than income levels as explanatory variables this paper empirically tests the hypothesis of the ekc existence for a stock sensitive indicator that is the percentage of protected area pa within national territory it does theorize that economic growth is a necessary condition in order to better address environmental issues but it also stresses that other variables income distribution education information accessibility may play a fundamental role in determining environmental quality contrary to other studies that mainly focus on the calculation of the income level corresponding to the transition point this paper is more concerned with the calculation of environmental quality corresponding to that transition point that is the minimum level of environmental quality that a country is willing to accept this paper highlights the idea that if the transition point is determined primarily by income level social policies determine the level of environmental quality corresponding to that point

can payments for environmental services help reduce poverty an exploration of the issues and the evidence to date from latin america summary this paper examines the main ways in which payments for environmental services pes might affect poverty pes may reduce poverty mainly by making payments to poor natural resource managers in upper watersheds the extent of the impact depends on how many pes participants are in fact poor on the poors ability to participate and on the amounts paid although pes programs are not designed for poverty reduction there can be important synergies when program design is well thought out and local conditions are favorable possible adverse effects can occur where property rights are insecure or if pes programs encourage less labor intensive practices 2004 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

identifying the impacts of income inequality on co2 emissions empirical evidences from oecd countries and non oecd countries abstract the emergence of environmental quality challenges is rooted in social problems which mainly come from income inequality and power gap income inequality and climate change have been highlighted as hindering the achievement of sustainable development and environmental protection globally though existing literature has estimated the influences of income inequality on co2 emissions relatively little is known about the long run and short run effects from a cross national perspective therefore the aim of this study is to shed light on the long run and short run relationships between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions based on balanced country level panel dataset for 78 countries from 1990 to 2017 in order to understand how a country s economic level affects the link between inequality and co2 emissions this study classified the sample countries into three groups oecd countries low income non oecd countries and high income non oecd countries the fmols and dols model is applied to examine the relationship between the income inequality and per capita co2 emission meanwhile the estimates of an ardl model revealed the long run and short run effects our empirical results indicate that there is a long term cointegration relationship between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions higher income inequality promotes emission reductions in oecd countries and high income non oecd countries while the influences are insignificant in low income non oecd countries in the long run per capita income carbon intensity population size and urbanization were also considered in this study the estimates of an ardl model indicate that whilst income inequality does not have a significant impact on co2 emissions in the short run per capita national income positively affects co2 emissions meaning that income growth will accelerate emissions carbon intensity positively affects co2 emissions in the long term indicating that increased income facilitates increased energy use and emissions but that progress in co2 recycling technology may ultimately reduce emissions neither population size nor urbanization rate exerted any obvious effects on per capita co2 emissions from a policy perspective governments have an onerous task ahead of them in balancing economic efficiency and distributary justice lastly we provide insights for policy makers that in order to realize the goal of emission reductions in the long run it may be best to proceed by making reasonable national income redistribution policies and by adjusting the welfare system

income distribution and co2 emission a comparative analysis for china and india abstract the aim of this paper is to test whether income inequality contributes to environmental degradation in china and india where both countries are giving a great concern about the implications of their unsustainable energy consumption to the environment not only to themselves but also to the global environmental sustainability by applying the bounds test approach to cointegration we found in both countries a long run but not a statistically significant relationship between income inequality and co 2 emissions both in the long run and in the short run the robustness of our cointegration results is also ascertained by using three different long run tests furthermore applying the variance decomposition analysis to examine the dynamic causal relationship between the gini coefficient of income distribution and co 2 emissions we found that income inequality was the least important factor in determining co 2 emissions and that there was no causality running in any direction between co 2 emissions and income inequality in both countries still income and energy consumption are the major determinants of co 2 emissions in both countries nevertheless even though the evidence is not statistically significant in the case of china it indicates that reducing income inequality can have a positive impact on environmental quality while in india redistributing income to improve environmental degradation may not be effective

inequality democracy and the environment a cross national analysis abstract this paper joins the debate on the relationship between inequality and the environment departing from the past contributions which focused either on the theories of environmental behavior or on economic interests this paper develops arguments about political choice mechanisms that help explain the linkages between inequality and national policymaking related to the establishment of protected areas a cross national analysis of the interactions between inequality democracy and the legal designation of protected areas in a global sample of 137 countries shows that ceteris paribus the effects of inequality vary depending on the strength of democracy in relatively democratic countries inequality is associated with less land in protected areas whereas in relatively undemocratic countries the reverse is true the highly significant effects of inequality undermine the democratic dividend in the arena of nature conservation

mechanisms explaining the impact of economic inequality on environmental deterioration abstract rising economic inequality often considered intrinsically harmful is increasingly being viewed as having a number of secondary impacts as well including impacts on health and economic growth the ongoing nature of today s environmental crisis also raises questions about inequality s role in environmental deterioration despite the large number of papers that have been written on this topic no theoretical or empirical consensus presently exists firstly our article identifies that authors conclusions in this area depend on their hypotheses regarding 1 the relationship between individual income and individual environmental pressure 2 the impact of inequality on the social norms that influence individual environmental pressure 3 the interests that social groups have in degrading or protecting the environment 4 how these interests play out in terms of political demands and 5 how these political demands translate into political decisions secondly the study shows that despite enabling a general test of the causal relationship between inequality and the environment the empirical methods utilised do not account for the full range of theoretical mechanisms in play hence the suggestion that a research programme be launched to conduct empirical studies of the five aforementioned hypotheses by applying a recursive approach

a translog cost function analysis of u s agriculture 1939 77 over the past four decades major changes have occurred in u s agriculture a new era in agricultural production in the united states began in 1939 world war ii gave a boost to agriculture still bogged in the depression productivity increases over the period 1939 77 have been quite impressive measured crudely by the ratio of the indices of output and input the productivity index 1967 100 increased from 59 in 1939 to 119 in 1977 to study this phenomenon a multi input translog cost function incorporating hicks neutral technical change hntc was specified annual timeseries data for the united states was used to estimate the model neoclassical duality theory provides an approach for computing the pairwise elasticities of substitution between inputs for each year as well as the annual own and cross price elasticities of demand for inputs

input demands and inefficiency in u s agriculture markov chain monte carlo mcmc methods are used to estimate a seemingly unrelated regression sur system of input demand functions for u s agriculture our demand functions have flexible forms and allow for nonrandom technical inefficiency concavity constraints are imposed at individual data points and the distributions of measures of relative technical efficiency are constrained to the unit interval results are evaluated in terms of characteristics of the posterior distributions of parameters measures of relative technical efficiency and other nonlinear functions of the parameters

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

theoretical production restrictions and agricultural technology in the united states agricultural production studies are usually conducted using classical econometrics that make it difficult if not impossible to impose conditions derived from economic theory on flexible functional forms therefore such conditions need not hold in estimation we apply bayesian econometrics to estimate a flexible production function using u s agricultural data under alternative restrictions dictated by theory including a fully theoretically consistent model that satisfies all restrictions at each point of the data the probability density functions of parameters output elasticities scale elasticity and productivity gains vary substantially across models output elasticities from the fully theoretically consistent model suggest that agricultural production in the united states has typically been more responsive to land than to other factors of production however output became more responsive over time to changes in materials and less responsive to changes in land and labor by the early 2000s the elasticity of output to materials was very similar to the elasticity of output to land the elasticity of output to capital remained relatively stable over the entire sample the estimates from the fully theoretically consistent model also show a slight increase in the average rate of productivity gains between the 1960s and the 1970s a relative slowdown in the 1980s and 1990s and a relative stabilization afterwards all inputs are substitutes in production all the elasticities of substitution have increased through the decades though at different rates