measuring the damages of air pollution in the united states abstract this paper measures the damages due to emissions of air pollution in the united states an integrated assessment model is used to calculate the marginal damage associated with emitting an additional ton of pollution from nearly 10 000 sources in the u s the total damage produced by a source is the marginal damage of an emission its shadow price times the total tons emitted from a specific source adding total damages across all sources yields gross annual damages gad which is a green accounting parallel to gross domestic product gdp gad in 2002 varies between 71 billion and 277 billion 0 7 2 8 of gdp the range of values depends largely on the value of health and the concentration response function relating exposures to fine particulate matter pm 2 5 to adult mortality rates source location also matters urban emissions constitute 52 of total emissions by weight yet they cause nearly three quarters of the gad

optimal and open access harvesting of multi use species in a second best world expansion of human populations and activities has caused increased conflicts between wildlife and humans as a result the distinction between resource and pest species has become blurry we propose an economically based classification of species based on a multi use bioeconomic model the classification of the steady state population of a species is shown to depend on both species density and economic factors we extend earlier work on multi use resource pest species by applying the theoretical model to a developing country context where property rights to wildlife are imperfectly enforced so that second best trade measures are often applied by the international community to promote conservation upon calibrating the model using data for the african elephant we derive three further results first when comparing the optimal stock of a multi use species to the open access stock we find that the ranking in terms of abundance is ambiguous second and consistent with existing literature on resource management in a second best world our case study supports the idea that trade bans have ambiguous effectson wildlife abundance third due to a bifurcation effect characterizing the multi use model s solution strategic and temporary subsidizing by the north may enable them to free ride on conservation efforts of the south henceforth

the perverse effects of partial employment protection reform the case of french older workers abstract french firms laying off workers aged 50 and above have to pay a tax to the unemployment insurance system known as the delalande tax we evaluate the impact of this tax on layoffs as well as on hiring taking advantage of several changes in the measure since its introduction in 1987 a legislative change in 1992 exempted firms from the tax for workers who were hired after age 50 following this change the transition rate from unemployment to employment increased significantly for workers over 50 compared to workers under 50 the difference is sizeable between one third and one half of the initial transition rate evidence on the effect on layoffs is less clear cut the impact is sizeable only for the most stringent tax schedule after 1998

to search or not to search the effects of ui benefit extension for the older unemployed abstract in finland the older unemployed can collect unemployment insurance benefits until retirement while the entitlement period for younger groups is two years in 1997 the eligibility age of persons benefiting from extended benefits was raised from 53 to 55 this paper takes advantage of this quasi experimental setting to identify the effect of extended benefits on transitions out of unemployment among the older unemployed we apply a competing risks version of a split population duration model to account for multiple exit routes and the possibility that some of the older unemployed may not be active in the labour market due to pension rules our finding is that roughly half of the unemployed with extended benefits withdraw from job search

the ivory trade ban is it effective abstract this paper examines the effectiveness of the ivory trade ban when producer and consumer states have different incentives to comply with such a ban the paper distinguishes between two types of producer states those with stable elephant population and those with declining elephant population we compare the independent enforcement level of each of these producer states and a consumer state and show the suboptimality of these levels compared to optimal enforcement level that would result from a cooperative effort the costliness and imperfectness of enforcing constraints on the private taking of elephants creates intergovernmental externalities thus in the absence of binding international law regulation would have to be supplemented with incentives

not so voluntary retirement decisions evidence from a pension reform abstract firms may encourage their workers to retire early experience rating of early retirement benefits creates incentives for firms to avoid this we use a pension reform as a natural experiment in order to evaluate the effect of this experience rating the key result is that experience rating of early retirement benefits reduces early exits of older workers

seniority wages and the role of firms in retirement in general retirement is seen as a pure labor supply phenomenon but firms can have strong incentives to send expensive older workers into retirement based on considerations about wage costs and replacement costs we discuss steep seniority wage profiles as incentives for firms to dismiss older workers before retirement conditional on individual retirement incentives e g social security wealth accrual rates or health status the steepness of the wage profile will have different incentives for workers as compared to firms to maintain the employment relationship using an instrumental variable approach to account for selection of workers in our firms and for reverse causality we find that firms with higher labor costs for older workers have on average a lower job exit age and a higher incidence of golden handshakes author s abstract

the effects of the unemployment insurance payroll tax on wages employment claims and denials abstract following a 13 year period when all employers in washington paid the same unemployment insurance ui tax rate washington was forced to adopt an experience rated tax system in 1985 we use this natural experiment to explore both tax incidence and the effects of experience rating we find that industry average tax rates are largely passed on to workers through lower earnings however our estimates imply that a firm can shift much less of the difference between its tax rate and the industry average rate our results also indicate that experience rating reduces turnover and ui claims and increases claim denials

your money or your life green growth policies and welfare in 2050 this paper proposes a simple index of economic progress that weighs in the monetary cost induced by climate change mitigation policies as well as the health benefits arising from the reduction in local air pollution the shadow price of pollution is calculated indirectly through its impact on life expectancy taking into account the health benefits of mitigation policies significantly reduces their monetary cost in china and india as well as in countries with large fossil based energy producing sectors australia canada and the united states

a bio economic model of community incentives for wildlife management under campfire this paper formulates a bio economic model to analyze community incentives for wildlife management under benefit sharing programs like the communal areas management programme for indigenous resources campfire in zimbabwe three agents influence the wildlife stock a parks agency determines hunting quotas outside poachers hunt illegally and a local community may choose to protect wildlife by discouraging poaching wildlife generates revenues from hunting licenses and tourism it also intrudes on local agriculture we consider two benefit sharing regimes shares of wildlife tourism rents and shares of hunting licenses resource sharing does not necessarily improve community welfare or incentives for wildlife conservation results depend on the exact design of the benefit shares the size of the benefits compared with agricultural losses and the way in which the parks agency manages hunting quotas

resource utilization property rights and welfare wildlife and the local people abstract the paper analyses the conflict between wildlife conservation and the costs and benefits obtained from it in an east african context in the model there are two agents a park agency managing a national park of fixed size and a group of agropastoralists living in the vicinity of the park the park authority produces tourism services and sells hunting licences whereas the agropastoralists produce livestock products wildlife and livestock interact with each other and wildlife is a nuisance for livestock production the conflict is analysed under different market solutions as the agropastoralists to various degrees are given profit shares from the park activities it is demonstrated that a market solution where they are given property rights in the form of a fixed share of the harvesting profit will increase the nuisance on their production and therefore generally give no clear welfare gain for the local people on the other hand if they also receive a profit share from the tourist activity above that of the hunting benefit the nuisance from the roaming wildlife will decrease as this scheme gives incentives for the park manager to increase the offtake and thereby decrease the wildlife stock in the long term there will therefore be more livestock and a clear welfare gain for the agropastoralists compared to the situation where they have no property rights under certain conditions the stock sizes will also be closer to what is optimal from an overall point of view

experience rating of unemployment insurance and the incidence of unemployment among workers who are laid off from their previous jobs more than 70 percent collect benefit payments from the unemployment insurance ui system these benefits are widely asserted to reduce the rate at which unemployed individuals find new jobs so that measured unemployment is increased by unemployment insurance a large body of empirical evidence now exists that shows this effect on the duration of unemployment spells 2 far less attention both in policy debate and in research has been paid to the fact that the unemployment insurance system encourages persons to become unemployed in this paper i focus on the empirical structure and the effects of these incentives the results show that unem

conservation and human welfare economic analysis of ecosystem services the importance of the links between well functioning ecosystems and human well being are clearly evident in our age of rapidly changing environmental and socio economic conditions and yet the role ecosystems play in supporting and sustaining human welfare has been only a marginal area of study to date in the field of economics dasgupta 2010 but this is starting to change millennium ecosystem assessment 2005 and the burgeoning literature on ecosystem services that has followed largely instigated by work in ecology has begun to percolate into economics the number of articles by economists on various aspects of ecosystem services including the benefits of conserving ecosystems and biodiversity tradeoffs among services payments for ecosystem services pes and other incentive mechanisms has risen dramatically in the past several years still the economics literature on ecosystems and biodiversity is nowhere near as prominent as the economics literature on climate change economists have played a central role in defining the key elements of the debate on climate change following publication of the stern review stern 2007 and the ensuing debates e g nordhaus 2007 sterner and persson 2008 weitzman 2007 economists have yet to play such a central role in ecosystem services and biodiversity ecosystems provide a wide range of benefits from the water and climate regulation roles of forests the waste assimilation and storm regulation capacities of wetlands to the cultural and aesthetic benefits derived from savannas ecosystems processes and raw materials are

voluntary and involuntary early retirement an international analysis recent literature makes a distinction between voluntary and involuntary early retirement where involuntary early retirement results from employment constraints rather than from a preference for leisure relative to work this article analyses voluntary and involuntary early retirement based on international microdata covering 19 industrialized countries the results show that involuntary early retirement is particularly widespread in continental europe countries facing economic recessions and having strict employment protection legislation have higher shares of involuntary retirements among early retirees generous early retirement provisions of the social security system do not only make voluntary early retirement more attractive for individuals but also induce firms to push more employees to retire early

social spending and automatic stabilizers in the oecd the macroeconomic literature on automatic stabilization tends to focus on taxes and dismiss the relevance of government expenditure except for unemployment compensation our results go sharply contrary to this view we engage in an empirical analysis of 21 oecd countries from 1982 to 2003 and find that age and health related social expenditure as well as incapacity and sick benefits all react to the cycle in a stabilizing manner while possibly new in the macro literature this conforms to many results in studies in labour economics the policy implications are broad since much previous analysis of discretionary fiscal policy rests on official figures for automatic stabilization there are also major implications for efforts to incorporate automatic fiscal policy in simulation models julia darby and jacques melitz

regulating endangered species endangered species timothy swanson one important issue at the earth summit in rio de janeiro was the preservation of diverse biological resources or biodiversity to date the regulation of endangered species has been based on the premise that over exploitation is the principal problem this diagnosis has led to a wide range of attempts to destroy demand for wildlife by means of bans on trade and consumption of the products of endangered species this approach misses the fundamental cause of the problem terrestrial species compete for land land use primarily reflects human decisions about its allocation even over exploitation is the result of human allocation decisions species that are overexploited are those for which society chooses not to invest in their management species that survive are thus those in which humans chose to invest whilst extinction should be interpreted as disinvestment in species or their ancillary resources habitat management trade bans do not address this fundamental cause of extinction the paper sets out how demand should be constructively managed to encourage continuing investment in endangered species

hiring older employees do the age limits of early retirement and the contribution rates of firms matter we examine the effects of a finnish pension reform on firms incentives to hire older employees the reform restricted the eligibility ages for early retirement and changed the size related contribution rates of firms according to our theoretical model the positive effect on the values of new hires extends to age groups younger than those directly affected by the reform and the effects are strongest in the largest firms these model predictions were confirmed in a difference in difference in differences analysis on the probability of the hiring of workers of different ages in firms of different sizes

the cost effectiveness of conservation payments international donors invest billions of dollars to conserve ecosystems in low income nations the most common investments aim to encourage commercial activities such as ecotourism that indirectly generate ecosystem protection as a joint product we demonstrate that paying for ecosystem protection directly can be far more cost effective although direct payment initiatives have imposing institutional requirements we argue that all conservation initiatives face similar challenges thus conservation practitioners would be well advised to implement the first best direct payment approach rather than a secondbest policy option an empirical example illustrates the spectacular cost savings that can be realized by direct payment initiatives

depletion of the environmental basis for renewable resources the economics of interdependent renewable and nonrenewable resources abstract this paper synthesizes familiar theories of nonrenewable and renewable resource economics in a two sector partial equilibrium analysis of efficient trade offs between renewable resource production and environmental development the irreversible impacts of coastal zone development provide a motivating example while development proceeds the efficient harvest of renewable resources may exceed the sustainable rate while development may involve several periods of growth and decline once development begins it proceeds without significant interruptions if a profitable renewable sector survives development ceases before exhausting all profitable opportunities interdependent stocks reduce distinctions between resource types because each sector exhibits features of the other

social security benefits and employer behavior evaluating social security early retirement benefits as a form of unemployment insurance employers often shed older workers by encouraging them to take early retirement an implicit contract model suggests that this behavior will be influenced by the social security early retirement program when demand is weak and layoffs are necessary social security benefits can act like a form of unemployment insurance effectively subsidizing workforce reductions by lowering the cost to the firm of shedding older workers since social security benefits are not subject to experience rating the result is an inefficiently high level of early retirements this paper concludes with a discussion of policies for restoring early retirements to efficient levels