designing forest taxes with varying government preferences and budget targets abstract a model of forest policy design is constructed to examine how government preferences affect the choice of forest taxes government preferences are modelled by assuming that the government faces a binding revenue constraint and cares about the provision of public goods from forests the equilibrium is second best given the imposition of the revenue constraint on the government s decision making our results show that a revenue constrained government will make different choices than a government that does not face revenue constraints this has important implications for the choice of property and harvest taxes as well as pigouvian forest taxes

the effects of development constraints on forest management at the urban forest interface this article develops a model of a forest owner operating in a small open city environment where the rent for developed land is increasing concave in nearby preserved open space and is rising over time reflecting an upward trend in households income within this framework we examine how changes in nearby preserved open space and alternative development constraints affect an individual private landowner s decisions regarding both regeneration harvests and conversion dates we also examine how such policies affect development density once conversion from forestry to residential use occurs we show that when residential rents change over time the nature of the timber problem at the urban forest interface changes because it forces us to allow for the possibility of changes in land use from timber to residential use as a result the traditional faustmann setup is not suitable to study forest management decisions at this interface we also find that in the presence of rising income increases in permanently preserved open space hasten regeneration and conversion cuts of a neighboring parcel currently under forest use and leads to lower density development once conversion takes place compared to the case where income is constant we also find that both a binding development moratorium and a binding minimum lot size policy can postpone regeneration and conversion cut dates and thus help to protect open space even if only temporarily however the policies do not have the same effects on development density of converted forestland while the former leads to high density development the latter encourages low density development

individual transferable quota markets under illegal fishing the use of individual transferable quotas in fisheries has been considered an opportunity to achieve a given total allowable catch with a maximum social benefit one of the assumptions used in obtaining that result is that the system is in perfect compliance the presence of violations and the need for enforcement of tradable property rights systems in fisheries has not received much attention in the literature the incidents of non compliance however may affect the performance of transferable property rights based fisheries in unexplored ways in this paper we adapt previous literature on enforcing emissions trading programs to analyze a positive model of fisherman behavior that operates under a perfectly competitive individual transferable quota system while recognizing the opportunities for violations of quota holdings given incomplete enforcement considering a poorly enforced individual transferable quota system we are able to obtain a number of implications for the current and future equilibrium of the quota market the time paths of the fishery and the proper design of a policy rule on total allowable catch tac

quota enforcement in resource industries self reporting and differentiated inspections quotas are frequently used in the management of renewable resources and emissions however in many industries there is concern about their basic effectiveness due to non compliance we develop an enforcement model of a quota regulated resource and focus on a situation with significant non compliance and exogenous constraints on fines and enforcement budget we propose a new enforcement system based on self reporting of excess extraction and explicit differentiation of inspection rates depending on compliance history we use differentiated inspections to induce firms to self report excess extraction this system increases the effectiveness of the quota by allowing the regulator to implement a wider range of aggregate extraction targets than under traditional enforcement while ensuring an efficient allocation of extraction in addition inspection costs can be reduced without reductions in welfare

towards a knowledge based theory of the geographical cluster co located firms within related industries enhance the ability to create knowledge by variation and a deepened division of labour the interdependent development between economic activities and local institutions make the cluster attractive to some industries and hostile to others the very reasons why cognitive distance might be small within the cluster tend to make cognitive distance great between clusters and make interfirm co operation across bodies of knowledge more costly the additional value created when clustering may justify the additional cost copyright 2001 by oxford university press

production economics and optimal stock size in a north atlantic fishery this paper contains an analysis of a fishery production function and an empirical analysis of the north sea herring fishery an intertemporal profit function is defined by introducing stock dynamics and the concept of a sole resource manager some new results with respect to the relationship between the optimal stock level and production technology are derived estimates of the optimal stock level for herring are also presented

regulatory dealing revisiting the harrington paradox abstract despite the fact that i when the epa observes regulatory violations it rarely pursues the violator and ii the expected penalty faced by a violator who is pursued is small compared to the cost of compliance it is still the case that iii firms comply a significant portion of the time winston harrington harrington w 1988 enforcement leverage when penalties are restricted journal of public economics 37 29 53 provides a dynamic model consistent with this apparent paradox we offer an alternative rationalisation in a model of regulatory dealing in which the agency uses tolerance in some contexts to induce increased compliance in others the observed tolerance of the epa to non compliance may be a strategic response by the agency to a difficult enforcement environment rather than evidence that it has gone soft on pollution or been captured by industry interests we use the model to consider the impact of the growing trend towards citizen suits and ngo enforcement of regulation arriving at some unconventional conclusions we argue that the model is consistent with existing empirical analyses

remediation and self reporting in optimal law enforcement abstract many environmental laws encourage firms to self report their violations to government regulators rather than subject themselves to probabilistic enforcement this paper studies self reporting enforcement regimes when there are ex post benefits of remediation or clean up remediation benefits are shown to impart two advantages to the use of self reporting beyond those identified elsewhere firstly whereas non reporting firms only engage in costly clean up when they are caught by an enforcement authority self reporting firms always engage in efficient remediation secondly with self reporting the government can costlessly impose stiffer non reporter penalties that reduce the government enforcement effort required to achieve a given level of violation deterrence

the ecology of organizational mortality american labor unions 1836 1985 this research analyzes the disbanding rates of the full population of american national labor unions for the period 1836 1985 it tests the hypothesis drawn from population ecology theory that di

itqs firm dynamics and wealth distribution does full tradability increase inequality concerns over the re distributive effects of individual transferable quotas itq s have led to restrictions on their tradability we consider a general equilibrium model with firm dynamics to evaluate the redistributive impact of changing the tradability of itqs a change in tradability would happen for example if permits are allowed to be traded as a separate asset from ownership of an active firm if the property right is associated with ownership of an active firm the permit can be leased in each period but it is not possible to exit the industry and keep the right however allowing the permits to be traded as a separate asset has two effects first it leads to a greater concentration of production in the industry second it directly converts a non tradable asset into a tradable one and this is equivalent to giving a lump sum transfer to all firms the first effect implies a concentration in revenues while the second implies a redistribution of wealth we calibrate our model to match the observed increase in revenue inequality in the northeast multispecies groundfish u s fishery we show that although observed revenue inequality measured by the gini coefficient increases by 12 wealth inequality is reduced by 40

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

enforcement leverage when penalties are restricted in the united states empirical studies of the enforcement of continuous compliance with environmental regulations especially air and water pollution regulations have repeatedly demonstrated the following i for most sources the frequency of surveillance is quite low ii even when violations are discovered fines or other penalties are rarely assessed in most states iii sources are nonetheless thought to be in compliance a large part of the time the evidence for the apparently low level of enforcement activity is found in a number of case studies of state and local enforcement of air and water quality regulations conducted jointly by the environmental protection agency epa and council on environmental quality ceg together with periodic surveys of implementation of air and water quality legislation conducted by the general accounting office gao these surveys show

information as regulation the effect of community right to know laws on toxic emissions abstract there is growing academic and policy level interest in the use of information as quasi regulatory mechanisms such as toxic release inventory tri and green labels mandatory disclosure requirements have been touted as market based incentives that may affect firm behavior we provide new evidence on the effectiveness of disclosure requirements by examining firm behavior in response to disclosures of tri emissions we find that firms with the largest stock price decline on the day this information became public subsequently reduced emissions more than their industry peers this is consistent with the view that financial markets may provide strong incentives for firms to change their environmental behavior

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

taxation and rotation age under stochastic forest stand value abstract the paper uses both the single rotation and ongoing rotation framework to study the impact of yield tax lump sum tax and tax on interest rate earnings on the privately optimal rotation period when forest stand value is stochastic and forest owners are risk averse or risk neutral under risk aversion the optimal harvesting threshold is lower and therefore the expected rotation period shorter than under risk neutrality both in the single and ongoing rotation cases whether the forest owner is risk averse or risk neutral a higher yield tax a higher lump sum tax or a higher tax on interest rate earnings raise the optimal harvesting threshold numerical results indicate that the optimal harvesting threshold increases less rapidly under risk aversion than under risk neutrality with an increase in either a yield tax or the volatility of forest stand value

long term evolutionary change in organizational populations theory models and empirical findings in industrial demography organizational ecology is a theoretical perspective on organizations that attempts to explain long term social evolution especially the rise and fall of organizational populations this artist review the most sustained demographic research program of the perspective one based on the density dependent model of legitimation and competition it discusses the theoretical model and evidence from industrial demography that has been offered in its support as well as criticisms that have been registered unresolved research problems of the program are identified and three major models in progress attempting to address these open questions are discussed and compared copyright 1997 by oxford university press

the enforcement of pollution control laws inspections violations and self reporting targeting is the practice of inspecting firms most likely to violate a regulation this paper provides empirical evidence on the role of targeting in regulatory compliance i propose that self reporting by a firm is used to demonstrate that firms are willing to cooperate the results indicate that there is a one quarter penalty period following a violation inspections are also determined by the economic situation of the surrounding community demonstrating that targeting opens the door to interest group influence inspections that detect violations encourage self reporting showing that firms demonstrate their desire to cooperate with regulators by disclosing violations

an economic analysis of forest taxation s impact on optimal rotation age because of the tax cutting mood of the general public current interest in forest taxation by legislators is high many states including washington oregon california montana north carolina georgia arkansas and texas have either recently revised or are considering changing their forest taxation laws the response from academicians however is mixed many articles by forest taxation specialists klemperer 1974 1976 1977a 1977b olson and haney 1980 pasour and holley 1976 sutherland and tedder 1979 tedder and sutherland 1979 and the published proceedings of a forest taxation symposium haney and gunter 1978 have appeared in recent years yet general tax economists have largely ignored the problem of forest property taxation as evidenced by aaron s recent study of property taxes in which forest taxation is not even mentioned 1975 at present a rigorous analysis of the impact of forest taxation on the optimal management of timber has yet to appear in the literature because of the profound influence of forest taxation on many state and local economies and on forest productivity it is important that the impact of the various taxation schemes be well understood during the process of revising the forest taxation laws this paper examines the economic impact of various forest taxation schemes on the optimal rotation age under the assumptions of both tax capitalization and tax shifting general tax economists should find taxation of forest property of interest for two reasons first commercial forest land in private ownership comprises more than 15 of the nation s total land area williams 1974 second the results of forest taxation studies apply readily to taxation of renewable resources in general currently the major types of taxes that can be imposed on a forest property may be divided into annual property taxes and harvest taxes the former include the unmodified property tax and the site value tax every year the unmodified property tax takes a percentage of the value of the land plus the value of the trees and the site value tax takes a percentage of the value of the land only still a third type of property tax called the timber tax takes a percentage of the value of the trees only every year although this tax is rarely used it is included in this study because of its theoretical importance harvest taxes include yield taxes and severance taxes at the time of harvest the yield tax takes a percentage of the stumpage value of timber and the severance tax imposes a charge per unit of timber volume harvested past studies of forest taxation have

the spatial evolution of the british automobile industry does location matter this article aims to describe and explain the spatial evolution of the automobile sector in great britain from an evolutionary perspective this analysis is based on a unique database of all entries and exits in this sector during the period 1895 1968 collected by the authors cox regressions show that spinoff dynamics agglomeration economies and time of entry have had a significant effect on the survival rate of automobile firms during the period 1895 1968

optimal design of forest taxation with multiple use characteristics of forest stands the paper studies optimal forest taxation under uncertainty about future timber price when private forest owners value amenity services of forest stands and forest stands have public goods characteristics it is assumed that preferences of forest owners can be described by a quasi linear intertemporal utility function which reflects risk aversion in terms of consumption and constant marginal utility in terms of amenity services the comparative statics of current and future harvesting in terms of timber price risk site productivity tax and yield tax are first developed it is shown that given the optimal site productivity tax which is independent of the timber harvested and thus non distortionary it is desirable to introduce the yield tax at the margin it both corrects externality due to the public goods characteristic of forest stands and serves as a social insurance device the optimal yield tax is less than 100 and depends on the social value of forest stands timber price risk and properties of compensated timber supply in the general case the inverse elasticity rule according to which the optimal yield tax is negatively related to the size of the substitution effects may not hold under certainty the desirability of the yield tax given the optimal site productivity tax depends only on the existence of public goods characteristic and is thus a pure pigouvian tax

optimal taxation timber and externalities abstract the paper presents a model of the relationship between timber taxation and externalities optimal pigouvian taxation formulas are derived within this framework for common taxes a simulation model of douglas fir is used to estimate the size and direction of these effects the results show that taxation policy can have a marked impact on the production of externalities depending on tree species and land productivity

self reporting and the design of policies for regulating stochastic pollution abstract existing environmental regulations frequently require firms to self report their compliance status to regulatory agencies using a principal agent framework i derive and compare incentive compatible regulatory policies with and without self reporting i find the firm needs to be audited less often when self reporting is required but punished more often the sign and magnitude of the gains from self reporting depend on the relative size of audit and sanction costs the accuracy of the regulator s monitoring technology and the desired level of abatement effort

forest taxation and rotation age under private amenity valuation new results abstract this paper studies the impact of harvesting property and profit taxes on private rotation age in an ongoing rotations model where the private landowner is interested not only in the present value of harvest revenue but also in the private amenity services provided by the forest stand the main finding of the paper is that conventional wisdom about the rotation effects of forest taxes distilled from the faustmann model predominantly ceases to hold this is because forest taxes distort the relative profitability of timber and amenity production in a way that is sensitive to the precise nature of amenity valuation therefore the design of forest tax policy necessitates good knowledge of the landowner s objective function concerning the type of amenity services

the validity of environmental benefits transfer further empirical testing this paper provides further empirical evidence of the validity of environmental benefits transfer based on cv studies by expanding the analysis to include control factors which have not been accounted for in previous studies these factors refer to differences in respondent attitudes traditional population characteristics were taken into account but these variables do not explain why respondents from the same socio economic group may still hold different beliefs norms or values and hence have different attitudes and consequently state different wtp amounts the test results are mixed the function transfer approach is valid in one case but is rejected in the 3 other cases investigated in this paper we provide further evidence that in the case of statistically valid benefits transfer the function approach results in a more robust benefits transfer than the unit value approach we also show that the equality of coefficient estimates is a necessary but insufficient condition for valid benefit function transfer and discuss the implications for previous and future validity testing

truth or consequences enforcing pollution standards with self reporting abstract evidence suggests that a surprisingly large fraction of firms comply with pollution emission standards even though expected penalties for noncompliance are low we offer an explanation of this puzzle by extending the standard model of enforcement to include a self reporting requirement and enforcement power these extensions are enough to challenge the conventional result that higher fines lead to higher compliance rates we find that under plausible conditions higher compliance rates are achieved with lower fines for noncompliance and the cost of enforcing a given level of aggregate pollution is minimized by setting the fine for noncompliance equal to zero

land tenure differences and investment in land improvement measures theoretical and empirical analyses this article develops a theoretical framework to examine the relationship between land tenure arrangements and households investment in soil improving and conservation measures it then analyzes this relationship with a multivariate probit model based on detailed plot level data from villages in the brong ahafo region of ghana a major hypothesis tested is that investment in productivity enhancing and conservation techniques are influenced by land tenure arrangements the theoretical analysis and empirical results generally reveal that land tenure differences significantly influence farmers decisions to invest in land improving and conservation measures the findings also show that tenure security does affect farm productivity

a behavioral model of timber supply abstract a dynamic behavioral model of timber supply is developed the diverse motivation of forest owners is recognized and the implications for optimal harvest patterns is explored this model is particularly relevant for the non industrial private forest nipf sector and has possible uses for public forest management properties of the optimal nipf timber supply curve are established and the effects of various taxes are examined to explore a more structured model simulations are conducted based upon data from a typical redwood region the projections provide indicative results for tax and other timber land policies these results are seen to depend crucially on the forms of the landowner s utility function and upon the function relating standing timber to non income outputs of the forest directions for needed empirical research are then indicated

avoiding tax avoidance a repeated game theoretic approach abstract we propose an optimal auditing scheme for the tax authorities who face a given tax and penalty functions and a given budget constraint under our proposed strategy individuals can be classified into one of three groups each group is characterized by two parameters i the probability of being audited in that group and ii into which group will an individual move if ii a he reported truthfully ii b he cheated it is then shown that there is a choice of these parameters so that in equilibrium i e when every individual maximizes his payoff given the auditing strategy the percentage of individuals that cheat is arbitrarily small

location patterns of us industrial research mimetic isomorphism and the emergence of geographic charisma appold s j 2005 locational patterns of us industrial research mimetic isomorphism and the emergence of geographic charisma regional studies39 17 39 the emergence of new industrial spaces over the past several decades that have radically altered the economic geography of the usa raises questions about the mechanisms responsible for their formation existing theories predict either continued concentration or spatial dispersion none predicts the rise of new geographic agglomerations of establishments a behavioural theory of agglomeration formation explains the emergence of regionally dispersed local agglomerations by means of mimetic behaviour a method for detecting social influence in cross sectional data is applied to data on the 1985 locations by county of over 10 000 privately owned research laboratories to show that the theoretical model accurately reproduces a key aspect of the existing spatial pattern the results suggest that laboratories are to a significant extent reacting to each o

optimal governing instrument operation level and enforcement in natural resource regulation the case of the fishery most regulation studies have used industry output or inputs as the control variable s but these are only indirectly controlled by government action through its choice of governing instrument enforcement procedure and penalty structure and the operational level of each a model is developed which demonstrates how profit maximizing firms will react to these control variables taking into account the benefits extra production and costs possible penalties of noncompliance and the ability to avoid detection of noncompliance the optimal operation level for two sets of control variables is derived and discussed