the neolithic revolution from a price theoretic perspective article i nfo the adoption of agriculture during the neolithic period triggered the first demographic explosion in history when fertility returned to its original level agriculturalists were more numerous more poorly nourished and worked longer hours than their hunter gatherer ancestors we develop a dynamic price theoretic model that rationalizes these events in the short run people are lured into agriculture by the increased labor productivity of both adults and children in the long run the growth in population overrides the productivity gains and the later generations of agriculturalists end up being worse off than the hunter gatherers counter intuitively the increase in the labor productivity of children causes the long run reduction in welfare in the long run the increase in adult labor productivity only contributes to population growth 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

a model of urban demography this study develops an overlapping generations model that involves the endogenous determination of demographic and city structure to fully analyze the social and natural changes in city populations we provide conditions under which the model exhibits the spatial features of demography observed in urban areas city centres have a lower total fertility rate than suburbs and larger cities have a lower total fertility rate than smaller cities through calibration we also show that spatial factors have a significant impact on demographic characteristics and city growth resume un modele de demographie urbaine cette etude developpe un modele de generations qui se chevauchent qui genere la determination endogene de la demographie et de la structure urbaine pour analyser pleinement les changements sociaux et culturels des populations urbaines on presente les conditions qui font que le modele genere les caracteristiques spatiales de la demographie observee dans les zones urbaines le centre ville avec un taux de fecondite plus faible que les banlieues et les grandes villes arborant une fecondite totale plus faible que les petites villes a l aide de calibration on montre que les facteurs spatiaux ont un impact significatif sur les caracteristiques demographiques et la croissance des villes

natural resources curse or blessing are natural resources a curse or a blessing the empirical evidence suggests that either outcome is possible this paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources these include that a resource bonanza induces appreciation of the real exchange rate deindustrialization and bad growth prospects and that these adverse effects are more severe in volatile countries with bad institutions and lack of rule of law corruption presidential democracies and underdeveloped financial systems another hypothesis is that a resource boom reinforces rent grabbing and civil conflict especially if institutions are bad induces corruption especially in nondemocratic countries and keeps in place bad policies finally resource rich developing economies seem unable to successfully convert their depleting exhaustible resources into other productive assets the survey also offers some welfare based fiscal rules for harnessing resource windfalls in developed and developing economies

evolution of population resource dynamics models abstract this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of brander and taylor s 1998 model and its descendants from the following perspectives population growth substitutability innovation capital accumulation property rights and institutional designs and modeling approach this survey aims to contribute to a better understanding of population and resource dynamics models in general and facilitate further application of the model framework to relevant circumstances although often treated as exogenous in optimal growth models making population growth an endogenous function allows us to analyze broader effects of economic activities on population the issues of substitutability innovation and capital accumulation are intertwined allowing a model to address the effect of an endogenous technological change on substitutability between natural and man made capital facilitates our analyses of sustainability issues to address internalizing inter generational externalities in resource use incorporating property right changes and institutional designs to this type of model is a useful exercise but careful attention is needed for the consistency between such an arrangement and the mathematical representation of the depicted economy finally although the common criticism regarding convenient mathematical assumptions applies to the existing bt type models the use of computer simulation can relax such assumptions to better represent the intended relationships between the relevant variables

voracious transformation of a common natural resource into productive capital i analyze a power struggle where competing factions have private financial assets and deplete a common stock of natural resources with no private property rights i obtain a feedback nash equilibrium to the dynamic common pool problem and obtain political variants of the hotelling depletion rule and the hartwick saving rule resource prices and depletion occur too fast so substitution away from resources to capital occurs too fast and the saving rate is too high the power struggle boosts output but depresses sustainable consumption genuine saving is nevertheless zero in a fractionalized society world bank estimates may be too optimistic

intertemporal equilibria and exhaustible resources an overlapping generations approach abstract this paper presents a general equilibrium model of an abstract intertemporal economy with overlapping generations production possibilities and capital investment under the constraint of a nonreproducible natural resource the model provides for institutionally mandated asset transfers between successive generations under the assumption that each generation has perfect foresight concerning future prices and economic conditions competitive exchange supports a multiplicity of pareto efficient equilibria that correspond to particular asset transfer regimes the achievement of a desirable distribution of welfare between present and future generations requires that the asset transfer regime be chosen according to a social welfare function or explicit distributional criterion economic efficiency per se is insufficient to ensure social optimality these results have important implications for resource planning in the real world where policy makers and the public at large are often highly concerned over the potential impacts of current resource utilization on the welfare of future generations

development trajectories and new comparative advantages costa rica and the dominican republic under globalization summary this paper compares the experiences of costa rica and the dominican republic in creating new comparative advantages in manufacturing exports and its impact on economic development it makes three main arguments first the apparel sector is currently unlikely to act as an engine of economic development second high public spending in health and education and selective targeting of foreign investment have been fundamental in the creation of comparative advantages away from apparel into exports with higher technological content in costa rica third the new export sectors still lack sufficient linkages to the rest of the economy and most of their value added goes into profits for the transnational corporations

endogenous population with public goods and malthusian fixed resources efficiency or market failure a theoretical population model is developed which takes into account both the desire of a nation for a large population for political and economic reasons as well as the malthusian pressures that suggest that there is a natural tendency toward overpopulation the model assumes that parents care about both the number and well being of their children the results show that these two possible sources of externality do not lead to market failure nor to unfettered competitive individual decisions concerning childbearing that are detrimental to society annotation

who gets what in environmental policy this paper shows how anticipated impacts of environmental projects and policies can be valued in terms of money as a common denominator and costs and benefits assigned in an acceptable distribution to that effect a new mechanism design of situational contracting is introduced that generates information on willingness and ability to pay or to cooperate in a realization focused capability approach to fairness the situational contract reveals preferences and merit considerations of the relevant stakeholders and deals with market failure in a structured combination of political guidance expert opinions and co production

the aggregation of environmental benefit values welfare measures distance decay and total wtp abstract we review the literature regarding the aggregation of benefit value estimates for non market goods two case studies are presented through which we develop an approach to aggregation which applies the spatial analytic capabilities of a geographical information system to combine geo referenced physical census and survey data to estimate a spatially sensitive valuation function these case studies show that the common reliance upon political rather than economic jurisdictions and the use of sample mean values within the aggregation process are liable to lead to significant errors in resultant values we also highlight the fact that for resources with use values then we should expect overall values to reduce with increasing distance from such sites but that changes in the choice of welfare measure will determine whether such distance decay is to be expected within values stated by those who are presently non users the paper concludes by providing recommendations for future improvements to the methodology

fertility choice land and the malthusian hypothesis in a standard overlapping generations growth model with a fixed amount of land and endogenous fertility the competitive economy converges to a steady state with a zero population growth rate and positive consumption per capita the malthusian hypothesis is interpreted as a positive statement about the relationship between population growth and consumption per capita when production exhibits diminishing returns to labor and there is a fixed amount of land essential for production even when individuals care only about the number of their children and not about their children s welfare the equilibrium is such that they eventually would choose to have only one child for each adult hence if malthus s positive check on population is the result of the response of optimizing agents to competitively determined prices malthus s pessimistic conjecture is not necessarily true even though his other assumptions hold from authors

wealth and sustainability for economists in 1974 it was a live question whether the exhaustion of natural resources such as oil would necessarily lead to the decline of economic activity solow showed that constant levels of consumption could be sustained in the face of exhaustibility if there is sufficient substitutability between produced and natural factors of production hartwick then proved that underpinning this result is a saving rule set investment in produced capital equal to the value of resource depletion at each point in time a large literature has shown that a comprehensive measure of the change in real wealth net saving plays a central role in determining whether current well being can be sustained in particular current declines in real wealth signal that future well being will also decline a result that has been confirmed empirically using data for developing countries changes in wealth and sustainability are therefore joined at the hip the current composition of wealth serves to define the policy challenges that countries face in achieving sustainable development if substitution possibilities are limited between natural and other factors of production as one might expect then technical progress is a necessary complement to policies for sustainability

a mixed bentham rawls criterion for intergenerational equity theory and implications abstract this paper proposes a welfare criterion that balances the need for development and the concern for the least advantaged generations and explores its implications this criterion called the mixed bentham rawls criterion moderates the effect of discounting yet permits some degree of intertemporal trade off it is a weighted average of two terms a the sum of discounted utilities and b the utility level of the least advantaged generation we derive necessary conditions to characterize growth paths that satisfy our criterion and show that in some models with familiar dynamic specifications an optimal path exists and displays appealing characteristics

savings growth and the path of utility we derive an expression relating the change in instantaneous utility to the growth of net genuine saving in an economy with multiple stocks and externalities that maxi mizes welfare in the utilitarian sense this result is then shown to hold for decentralized competitive efficient economies as well to yield an extension of the hartwick rule instan taneous utility is non declining along a development path if genuine saving is decreasing by way of example the rule is applied as a constant genuine saving rate rule in a simple dasgupta heal solow stiglitzeconomy the rule yields a path with unbounded consump tion and higher wealth than on the standard hartwick constant consumption path jel classification q01 q56 o13

the economic valuation of biodiversity as an abstract good abstract the notion of an economic valuation of biodiversity raises major philosophical and practical challenges especially due to the fact that biodiversity is an abstract good insights from political philosophy and philosophy of language can help to clarify the reliability and scope of the current economic methods that can be used for the purpose of valuing it the analogy with another abstract good justice indeed shows that thinking about abstract goods is a very specific exercise if they do not take account of this specificity applications of hedonic and contingent valuation methods can hardly claim to be relevant to value biodiversity rawls theory of justice provides for the conceptual tools to overcome this problem a reinterpretation based on the theory of counterfactuals allows generalizing this account of justice to outline a theory of thinking about abstract goods this new framework emphasizes the importance of the institutional context in determining the reliability of thinking about abstract goods it points toward substantial reforms of the methodology of economic valuation specifically it suggests reinterpreting valuation as a dynamic expressive process where initial steps aim at reinforcing the reliability of later steps through an institutional transformation and stabilization of preferences for abstract goods

intertemporal equity and efficient allocation of resources abstract competitive paths which are efficient are shown to satisfy a terminal cost minimization condition thereby providing a continuous time counterpart to the discrete time result due to malinvaud using this result competitive paths which are equitable and efficient are shown to satisfy hartwick s investment rule which states that the value of net investment is zero at each date our result indicates that hartwick s rule can help to signal inefficiency of competitive equitable paths journal of economic literature classification numbers c61 d90 o41

neoclassical natural capital theory and weak indicators for sustainability we appraise neoclassical theory of growth with natural capital for the estimation of indicators for sustainability relationships between four theoretically distinct measures are clarified hicksian change in capital stock value the hartwick net savings which excludes capital gains sustainable national income sni and environmentally adjusted net national product gnnp an overlapping generations olg general equilibrium model with depletable natural capital demonstrates the significance of model parameters determining technical feasibility and intertemporal distribution of consumption irremediable uncertainties in model specification and empirical measurement mean that the neoclassical theory is not robust for defining or estimating indicators for sustainability

on the intergenerational allocation of natural resources it is known hartwick and others that under standard assumptions a society that invests in reproducible capital the competitive rents on its current extraction of exhaustible resources will enjoy a consumption stream constant in time it is shown here that this result can be interpreted as saying that an appropriately defined stock of capital including the initial endowment of resources is being maintained intact and that consumption can be interpreted as the interest on that patrimony this seems like a useful rule of thumb for policy

the malleability of undiscounted utilitarianism as a criterion of intergenerational justice discounting future utilities is often justified by the ethically motivated objective of protecting earlier generations from the excessive saving that seems to be implied by undiscounted utilitarianism in productive economies we question this justification of discounting by showing that undiscounted utilitarianism has sufficient malleability within important classes of technologies any efficient and non decreasing allocation can be the unique optimum according to an undiscounted utilitarian criterion for some choice of utility function

characterizing sustainability the converse of hartwick s rule this note offers a general proof of the converse of hartwick s rule namely that in an economy with stationary instantaneous preferences and a stationary technology an efficient constant utility path is characterized by the value of net investments being zero at each point in time in a one consumption economy with two stocks a stock of a natural resource and a stock of man made capital this means that if consumption remains constant at the maximum sustainable level then the accumulation of man made capital always exactly compensates in value for the depletion of the natural resource

an intergenerational model of population growth the problem of population growth has been only partially formulated in an intertemporal context therefore a link between population theory and economic growth theory is still missing this paper attempts to provide such a link by analyzing an intergenerational model of optimum population growth the model accommodates the idea that decisions on increases in population should consider the new population s quality of life this concept is elaborated upon in a static framework by gary becker and gregg lewis dennis de tray and robert willis other literature on population growth such as harold votey disregards this consideration altogether 2 more explicitly this paper assumes that the utility of each generation is a function of the level of its consumption and the number and utility of the newly born people we are thus led to consider the utility of an infinite number of generations this model differs from paul samuelson s intergenerational model of pure consumption in which the utility of each generation depends only on that generation s own consumption recently philip neher 1971 analyzed a model of fertility in primitive economies it is based on the assumption that parents use children as investments to insure future consumption needs neher s analysis focuses entirely on the pension motive for having children 3 our model assumes that fertility is determined so as to balance the parents welfare derived from additional children against that derived from the children s quality of life we first outline a general model of optimum population growth in order to discuss explicitly various economic aspects of population we use a simple case in the analysis section i sets up the basic model

workers rights in open economies global production and domestic institutions in the developing world previous large n research suggests that globalization could have either positive or negative consequences for labor rights in developing nations this article examines the ways in which domestic political institutions and interests conditions the effects of economic globalization it develops several hypotheses regarding the impact of domestic factors on labor rights outcomes and uses the case of costa rica to assess these hypotheses the result is that although segments of the costa rican economy and labor force have benefited from industrial upgrading in recent years the enclave nature of the export oriented economy and the historical repression of organized labor render difficult the achievement of some internationally recognized core labor rights the article concludes by discussing some of the issues for future research that are highlighted by the costa rican case

latin america s new economic model micro responses and economic restructuring abstract this paper introduces a special issue on the microeconomics of latin america under the new economic model nem the paper reviews the rationale and policies of the nem and analyzes the impact of the reforms at the macroeconomic sectoral and microeconomic levels at the firm level the contributions to this issue demonstrate that a considerable adjustment process is taking place as sectoral structural change indices demonstrate however this has not resulted in widespread shifts of resources between sectors nor has it resulted in significant improvement in overall employment productivity and growth the authors analyze the reasons for this disjuncture and suggest policy alternatives

rawlsian intergenerational justice as a markov perfect equilibrium in a resource technology the rawlsian maximin criterion is combined with nonpaternalistic altruistic preferences in a nonrenewable resource technology the maximin programme is shown to be time inconsistent for a subset of initial conditions a solution to this intergenerational conflict is found under a given assumption as a generically unique subgame perfect equilibrium

genuine savings and sustainability genuine savings gs has emerged as the leading economic indicator of sustainable economic development at the country level it derives from the literatures on weak sustainability wealth accounting and national income accounting we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of gs focusing on the relationship between changes in a nation s extended capital stock and the future path of consumption the indicator has entered widespread use propelled by the world bank s publications despite its varying performance as a predictor for future consumption notwithstanding the extensive body of literature reviewed promising future research avenues are identified

intergenerational competitive equilibria under technological uncertainty and an exhaustible resource constraint abstract this paper presents a model of competitive intertemporal equilibrium in a finite horizon overlapping generations economy facing technological uncertainty and an exhaustible resource constraint individuals form rational expectations regarding future prices and economic conditions and income is redistributed from one generation to the next through government mandated lump sum transfers under uncertainty the relationship between resource price appreciation and the interest rate is mediated by consumers risk aversion with respect to consumption in alternative states of nature the intuitively appealing proposition that the expected resource price rises at the expected rate of interest holds only as a special case if future generations are taken to be state contingent in the sense that their composition depends on the states of nature prevailing when they are born then equilibria are generally pareto efficient but if future generations are state independent so that the set of individuals born at a given date is independent of the prevailing state of nature then equilibria may be inefficient because markets do not exist where successive generations may equilibrate their marginal rates of substitution across consumption in alternative contingent states such inefficiencies may be remedied through the implementation of appropriate intergenerational transfers an optimal intergenerational welfare distribution may be supported as a competitive equilibrium if the income transfer regime is properly selected and enforced the social optima that result for a simple version of the model under the maximin welfare criterion indicate that greater sacrifices are required on the part of the present generation when future generations are taken to be state contingent than when they are regarded as state independent this finding provides a possible explanation for the extreme risk aversion of conservationists with respect to the welfare of future generations

the problem of population and growth a review of the literature from malthus to contemporary models of endogenous population and endogenous growth abstract this paper deals with the evolution of the literature on the problem of population and growth from the classical period to the recent literature on endogenous growth and development the problem concerns two distinct issues 1 how to explain the observed covariation of the levels and rates of growth of per capita income and population size over time and space and 2 how to improve the human condition represented by these variables through an accommodating social policy the evolution of the literature we survey is reflected by the progressive treatment of key variables as endogenous rather than exogenous to the growth process it is also reflected by a shift from the historical concern about population explosion and its implications for growth to the more recent concern about the association between growth and population implosion in many developed countries

sustainable development the hartwick rule and optimal growth defining sustainable development as non declining utility the consistency of this concept with the hartwick rule and optimal growth is explored when resources are exhaustible a simple proof that a generalized hartwick rule is necessary and sufficient for constant consumption is derived the existence of a maximal constant consumption path is shown to depend critically on the elasticity of substitution if this is less than 1 consumption declines if it is greater than 1 then consumption is not maximal if it is equal to 1 the cobb douglas case then existence is proved consumption can increase along an optimal path if the pure rate of time preference is 0 if it is non zero then consumption declines

hartwick s rule and maximin paths when the exhaustible resource has an amenity value abstract this paper studies the maximin paths of the canonical dasgupta heal solow model when the stock of natural capital is a direct argument of well being besides consumption hartwick s rule then appears as an efficient tool to characterize solutions in a variety of settings we start with the case without technical progress we obtain an explicit solution of the maximin problem in the case where production and utility are cobb douglas when the utility function is ces with a low elasticity of substitution between consumption and natural capital we show that it is optimal to preserve forever a critical level of natural capital determined endogeneously we then study how technical progress affects the optimal maximin paths in the cobb douglas utility case on the long run path of the economy capital production and consumption grow at a common constant rate while the resource stock decreases at a constant rate and is therefore completely depleted in the very long run a higher amenity value of the resource stock leads to faster economic growth but to a lower long run rate of depletion we then develop a complete analysis of the dynamics of the maximin problem when the sole source of well being is consumption and provide a numerical resolution of the model with resource amenity the economy consumes produces and invests less in the short run if the resource has an amenity value than if it does not whereas it is the contrary in the medium and long runs however and without surprise the resource stock remains for ever higher with resource amenity than without

bringing the firm back in local decision making and human capital development in mexico s maquiladora sector summary the recent decline in mexico s maquiladora sector provides an opportunity to reassess the sustainability of basing national economic competitiveness on low wages 1 focusing on human capital as an important component of equitable growth the authors argue that models of its development which consider market factors alone are inadequate combining their own case study with a review of other studies over the past 20 years the authors propose a management centered as opposed to a market centered model of human capital development as a basis for discussing the relative merits of in bond industrial programs and considering measures to improve levels of human capital

towards an ecological economics of sustainability abstract persistent disagreement both as to the interpretation to be given to sustainability and as to the relation between ecological and economic sustainability has hindered the development of an ecological economics of sustainable resource use this paper identifies the main concepts of sustainability deriving from the two disciplines in order to explore the difference implied by an ecological approach to the problem it is argued that present economic and ecological approaches are largely disjoint and that they address basically different phenomena by combining the efficiency requirements of what is usually thought of as economic sustainability with the stability requirements of an ecological approach it is shown that an intertemporally efficient allocation of resources that satisfies the conditions for constant levels of consumption is not necessary to assure ecological sustainability ecological sustainability requires that the allocation of economic resources should not result in the instability of the economy environment system as a whole

constant savings rates and quasi arithmetic population growth under exhaustible resource constraints in the dasgupta heal solow stiglitz dhss model of capital accumulation and resource depletion we show the following equivalence if an efficient path has constant gross and net of population growth savings rates then population growth must be quasi arithmetic and the path is a maximin or a classical utilitarian optimum conversely if a path is optimal according to maximin or classical utilitarianism with constant elasticity of marginal utility under quasi arithmetic population growth then the gross and net of population growth savings rates converge asymptotically to constants

constant per capita consumption paths with exhaustible resources and decaying produced capital abstract we introduce decay in produced capital and exogenous technical progress to the recent solow model of asheim et al with population growth and observe the possible collapse of the economy given too high a rate of decay enough technical progress can restore sustainable per capita consumption

intertemporal equity and hartwick s rule in an exhaustible resource model in a standard exhaustible resource model it is known that if along a competitive path investment in the augmentable capital good equals the rents on the exhaustible resource known as hartwick s rule then the path is equitable in the sense that the consumption level is constant over time in this paper we show the converse of this result if a competitive path is equitable then it must satisfy hartwick s rule

a general approach to welfare measurement through national income accounting a framework is developed for analyzing national income accounting using a revealed welfare approach that is sufficiently general to cover both the standard discounted utilitarian and maximin criteria as special cases we show that the basic welfare properties of comprehensive national income accounting previously ascribed only to the discounted utilitarian case extend to this more general framework in particular under a wider range of circumstances it holds that real nnp growth or equivalently a positive value of net investments indicates welfare improvement we illustrate the applicability of our approach in the dasgupta heal solow model of capital accumulation and resource depletion

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

the quantification and valuation of ecosystem services article i nfo article history received 7 august 2010 accepted 16 october 2010 this paper explores differences between economic and ecological criteria for identifying measuring and evaluating ecosystem services it argues that economic stakeholders user groups generally do well in identifying these services and assigning prices to them these prices arise spontaneously in and serve to coordinate market activity related to the environment the relevant ecological information which markets gather and apply tends to be dispersed contingent particular local transitory and embedded in institutions and practices ecologists and other scientists in contrast often seek to understand how ecosystems work and which populations and processes provide ecosystem services the knowledge science seeks unlike the information markets gather tends to be centralized collaborative collective and consensus based science pursues concepts and principles that are timeless and general rather than ephemeral and site specific the paper contrasts the dispersed and decentralized information organized by markets with the collective and centralized knowledge characteristic of science the paper argues that the conceptual distance between market based and science based methods of assembling information and applying knowledge defeats efforts to determine the value of ecosystem services in any integrated sense

maquila economic reform and corporate strategies abstract corporate strategies in maquila have changed over time while they were originally geared only to the exploitation of low paid low skilled labor nowadays firms are upgrading human capital and increasing the scope and technological complexity of production processes the adoption of the new economic model in host countries aimed precisely at this type of strategy change but cannot solely be credited for it in addition policies regarding maquila under the nem did not achieve all the stated goals regarding corporate strategy change trends in local procurement and technology transfer are still unsatisfactory strengthening of local supply and absorption capabilities is required

unjust intergenerational allocations abstract an intergenerational allocation is defined to be unjust if there is a feasible allocation with more total consumption and less relative inequality unjust allocations are characterized in technologies satisfying certain regularity conditions after ruling out unjust allocations the consequences of letting generations choose according to a standard form of altruistic preferences are explored in to particular classes of technologies a connection between excluding unjust allocations and maximizing the welfare of the worst off generation is established in these technologies

valuing the non use benefits of marine conservation zones an application to the uk marine bill abstract this paper presents the results of a stated preference choice experiment designed to estimate the non market benefits derived by uk residents from the conservation of ecosystem goods and services resulting from implementation of proposed marine conservation zones under the uk marine and coastal access bill 2008 the results inform an impact assessment that compares benefits to projected policy costs as demonstrated in a paper by hussain et al 2010 ex ante benefit estimation is complicated by the scientific uncertainty and data gaps that hinder the development of a bottom up valuation of the ecosystem goods and services provisioned by the policy a choice experiment approach provides an alternative top down valuation by approximating policy outcomes which are spatially remote from beneficiaries and therefore arguably only appreciated passively or in terms of non use or existence value for broadly defined attributes of the policy the choice experiment shows preferences for both halting the loss of or increasing marine biodiversity and the provision of other environmental services relative to current trajectories of decline survey respondents were indifferent to the levels of restrictions on activities needed to achieve these outcomes as a top down estimate of policy benefits the study suggests that welfare improvements from the marine bill significantly outweigh projected regulatory costs

economic geography fertility and migration abstract this paper analyzes the relationship among economic geography fertility and migration the empirical evidence presented reveals that persistent regional variations in fertility exist within a country and that regional total fertility rates are negatively related to regional population density a two period overlapping generations model of endogenous fertility incorporating n regions agglomeration economies and congestion diseconomies is constructed to explain this negative relationship while agglomeration economies have both positive income and negative substitution effects on fertility congestion diseconomies have a negative income effect on it combined with the mobility of people interaction among these effects generates the negative relationship as a steady state equilibrium outcome it is also shown that net migration from regions with lower population density to regions with higher population density occurs in an equilibrium which in turn maintains the regional variations in fertility

combining export processing zones and regional free trade agreements lessons from the mexican experience abstract export processing zones epzs and regional trade agreements are two common initiatives utilized by developing country governments in order to increase the wealth creation effects of today s international trade and investment system in this paper we argue that these two initiatives are driven by somewhat incompatible economic rationales based on the north american experiment in combining a major epz mexico s maquiladoras within the terms of a regional free trade agreement the north american free trade agreement we test to determine whether the logic of a regional integration initiative or that of the epz is dominate our results suggest that the competitive dynamics of mexico s epz industry have not been fundamentally altered by nafta s regional incentives we conclude with recommendations for policy makers in other developing countries that might be considering attempting to impose regional development schemes on the large and politically powerfully tncs that tend to dominate the global epz industry

justifying social discounting the rank discounted utilitarian approach the popular discounted utilitarian criterion for infinite horizon social choice has been criticized on the ground that it treats successive generations unfairly i propose to evaluate intergenerational welfare with a rank discounted utilitarian rdu criterion instead the criterion amounts to discounted utilitarianism on non decreasing paths but it treats all generations impartially discounting becomes the mere expression of intergenerational inequality aversion i show that more inequality averse rdu societies have higher social discount rates when future generations are better off i apply the rdu approach in two benchmark economic growth models and i prove that it promotes sustainable policies maximizing discounted utility

resource depletion and sustainability in small open economies abstract exogenous price changes affect the amount that a small country exporting natural resource commodities must invest to sustain its consumption level the necessary amount is given by the difference between hotelling rent and the discounted sum of future terms of trade effects capital gains the latter term is found to be large relative to the former in the case of petroleum depletion in indonesia this suggests that resource rich countries will need to invest more than previously expected to sustain their consumption levels if natural resource prices continue their long term historical decline

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

endogenous fertility and optimal population size pareto optimality which is the standard criterion of efficiency in general equilibrium models takes population size as given and therefore cannot be directly applied to analyze the question of optimal population size the criterion then for optimal population size must be based on a more restrictive definition of optimality this paper extends peter diamonds 1965 golden golden rule growth model by assuming that individuals derive utility from their own consumptionand from their own children offspring are assumed to consume resources before reaching adulthood the authors show that the optimal steady state utility yields a higher population growth rate when it converges to the golden rule allocation they then demonstrate that a voluntary social security program in which the size of the transfer to a particular agent is directly tied to his own fertility leads the competitive allocation to be identical to the allocation corresponding to the maximum of the steady state utility of the representative individual

conservationist government policies and intergenerational equity in an overlapping generations model with renewable resources abstract this paper shows that in overlapping generations models incorporating renewable natural resources competition may lead to perpetually declining living standards in environments in which it is technically feasible to achieve intergenerationally equitable distributions of consumption first and second best conservationist government policies are examined these include forced nationalization of the entire stock of natural capital government open market purchases and sales of natural capital taxation of industrial use of resources and subsidies to private investments in natural capital

the u s westward expansion the u s economic development in the 19th century was characterized by the westward movement of population and the accumulation of productive land in the west this article presents a model of migration and land improvement to identify the quantitatively important forces driving these phenomena the conclusion is that the decrease in transportation costs induced the westward migration whereas population growth was responsible for the investment in productive land

on sustainability and social welfare abstract this paper proposes to define sustainability in terms of leaving it possible for future generations to sustain certain defined targets it is shown that variants of genuine savings and the ecological footprint can then serve as indicators of sustainability the link between sustainability and intergenerational welfare is examined and it is shown how to incorporate indicators of sustainability into a social welfare measure including risk in the analysis

regulatory taxation of fossil fuels theory and policy abstract research on energy taxation is often based on purely theoretical deductions this paper stays closer to the real world using empirical data and interpreting results in a political economic setting of risk and uncertainty economic growth in developing countries will boost energy demand increasing the risk of shortages of oil and natural gas half way through the next century and of coal towards the year 2100 furthermore there is mounting evidence that emissions of co 2 trigger harmful climate changes a timely introduction of regulatory taxes will reduce demand for fossil fuels and accelerate the introduction of sustainable technology the empirical results presented show moreover that such taxes may claim a substantial part of the rent on energy extraction for the energy importing countries it is argued that optimal control and the avoidance of displacement effects require a tax affecting marginal use with exceptions to safeguard competitive positions exceptions may be scaled down as the jurisdiction is enlarged

export processing zones in the dominican republic schools or stopgaps summary the following paper explores the variable consequences of offshore manufacturing in the dominican republic while foreign transplants have been treated as tenants in most of the country and have thereby made transitory contributions to export and employment growth they have been treated as tutors in the cibao valley and have thereby made more lasting contributions of skill and technology what accounts for the variation i find that the agro commercial elites who have traditionally dominated the cibao valley are simultaneously more tolerant of foreign investment than the import competing industrialists found in the capital of santo domingo and more likely to diversify into manufacturing than the absentee landlords found elsewhere in the country

intergenerational transfers and demographic transition abstract this paper presents an analysis of demographic transition based on the endogenous evolution of intergenerational transfers along an economy s endogenous path of development two period lived agents belonging to overlapping generations choose optimally their desired levels of consumption and fertility together with their desired sizes of transfers to both parents and children parents are more efficient than children in producing output but some parental time must be devoted to child rearing at low levels of development fertility is high and the flow of net intergenerational transfers is from the young to the old at high levels of development fertility is low and the flow of net transfers is from the old to the young these results accord strongly with empirical observations and the analysis may be seen as formalising for the first time a long standing and well respected hypothesis in the demographic transition literature

the hartwick rule myths and facts we shed light on the hartwick rule for capital accumulation and resource depletion by providing semantic clarifications and investigating the implications and relevance of this rule we extend earlier results by establishing that the hartwick rule does not indicate sustainability and does not require substitutability between man made and naturalcapital we use a new class of simple counterexamples i to obtain the novel finding that a negative value of net investments need not entail that utility is unsustainable and ii to point out deficiencies in the literature

message contingent delegation abstract the paper studies the role of delegation and authority in a principal agent relation in which a non contractible action has to be taken the agent has private information relevant for the principal but has policy preferences different from the principal consequently an information revelation problem arises i consider a partially incomplete contracting environment with contractibility of messages and decision rights and with transferable utility i contribute to the literature by allowing for message contingent delegation and by deriving the optimal partially incomplete contract it is shown that message contingent delegation creates incentives for information revelation and may outperform unconditional authority and unconditional delegation