business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

measuring resource inequalities the concepts and methodology for an area based gini coefficient abstract although inequalities in income and expenditure are relatively well researched comparatively little attention has been paid to date to inequalities in resource use this is clearly a shortcoming when it comes to developing informed policies for sustainable consumption and social justice this paper describes an indicator of inequality in resource use called the ar gini the ar gini is an area based measure of resource inequality that estimates inequalities between neighbourhoods with regard to the consumption of specific consumer goods it is also capable of estimating inequalities in the emissions resulting from resource use such as carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and solid waste arisings from material resource use the indicator is designed to be used as a basis for broadening the discussion concerning food deserts to inequalities in other types of resource use by estimating the ar gini for a wide range of goods and services we aim to enhance our understanding of resource inequalities and their drivers identify which resources have highest inequalities and to explore trends in inequalities the paper describes the concepts underlying the construction of the ar gini and its methodology its use is illustrated by pilot applications specifically men s and boys clothing carpets refrigerators freezers and clothes washer driers the results illustrate that different levels of inequality are associated with different commodities the paper concludes with a brief discussion of some possible policy implications of the ar gini

inequality at birth some causes and consequences recent research shows that health at birth is affected by many factors including maternal education behaviors and participation in social programs in turn endowments at birth are predictive of adult outcomes and of the outcomes of future generations exposure to environmental pollution is one potential determinant of health at birth that has received increasing attention a large literature outside of economics advocates for environmental justice and argues that poor and minority families are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards i provide new evidence on this question showing that children born to less educated and minority mothers are more likely to be exposed to pollution in utero and that white college educated mothers are particularly responsive to changes in environmental amenities i estimate that differences in exposure to toxic releases may explain 6 of the gap in incidence of low birth weight between infants of white college educated mothers and infants of black high school dropout mothers this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

does air pollution aggravate income inequality in china an empirical analysis based on the view of health abstract given the rapid development of the chinese economy especially its accelerated urbanization air pollution and income inequality as two of the most important global issues have also become hot topics in china however limited attention has been devoted to understanding their joint evolution in the literature in this study we thus investigate the relationship between them using a multi level nested data model which enables us to estimate the long run distribution effect of air pollution on individuals of different socioeconomic statuses based on china s city level pm2 5 emissions and individual level income we further examine the mechanisms behind the evolution using a 3sls model the estimation results reveal that the increase in air pollution concentration has short term positive production effects and long term negative impacts on individual income and will exacerbate the income inequality across socioeconomic statuses individuals of lower socioeconomic status have disadvantages in achieving efficient avoiding knowledge and measures the results of 3sls model confirm the existence of the health channel through which air pollution exerts influence on income inequality these results provide a roadmap for policymakers first a comprehensive assessment of the health burden distribution from air pollution on individuals of different socioeconomic statuses should be considered for environmental policymaking second the regional disparities and differences among income groups should also be considered during this process third equal access to basic public services should be the primary target of environmental regulations moreover compensation and assistance for the health issues caused by environmental pollution could be an important supplement to these regulations future study could do further analysis of the specific level of health burden due to different types of pollutants and their relationship with income inequality

distribution of income and toxic emissions in maine united states inequality in two dimensions abstract ecological distribution refers to inequalities in the use of environmental sinks and sources this article explores one such dimension of ecological distribution that of toxic air emissions using data from the risk screening environmental indicators model and the united states census bureau i analyze the distribution of both environmental risk and income at the block group level in the state of maine the state of maine was chosen for its historical dependence upon natural resources as well as its economic and spatial heterogeneity results clearly indicate that the toxic air emissions are distributed much more unequally than is income and that those inequalities are reinforcing while not in itself an indication of environmental injustice such analyses may help us to rethink the assumption that there is a tradeoff between income and pollution

environmental inequality and economic valuation i study how the economic value of a heterogeneously distributed environmental public good depends on how the endowment with this good and income are distributed i find that the effect of environmental inequality on the societal willingness to pay wtp for the environmental good is determined both by its substitutability and by the correlation of its provision with income specifically environmental inequality decreases societal wtp for substitutes but this effect is reversed if the environmental good is a complement or distributed strongly in favour of richer households moreover i show that richer households living in places where environmental good endowment is high increases decreases societal wtp if and only if the environmental good is a substitute for complement to consumption goods i propose novel adjustment factors for structural benefit transfer to control for differences in the spatial distribution of environmental goods using forest preservation in poland as an empirical example i find that societal wtp is up to 4 higher for equal access to forests and up to 8 higher for an equal distribution of both income and access to forests

entrepreneurial strategy and the presence of small firms a model is presented hypothesizing that the level of small firm presence in any given industry emanates from the exogenous stock of entrepreneurial talent a stochastic element of managerial and entrepreneurial talent entry deterrence and the entrepreneurial strategy deployed by small firms using data newly released by the u s small business administration the hypothesis is tested for a sample of 247 four digit standard industrial classification industries spanning the entire spectrum of firm sizes we find that consistently for all the measures of small firm size and for all of the time periods used the existence of entry deterrence and reliance upon innovative strategy explains a significant proportion of the variation in the presence of small firms

measuring development with inequality how should aggregate indicators of development account for inequality abstract the paper analyzes how inequality is accounted for in aggregate indicators of development and whether and how it should be used the motivation behind the study stems from the renewed interest in inequality in academia public discourse and in global policy first we argue that inequality should be considered when constructing development indicators the role of distribution in development is important both because people generally prefer lower inequality and inequality tends to have negative effects on development outcomes second we analyze how ten selected development indicators account for inequality in terms of justification type of inequality measure of inequality and method of incorporation and what the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches are we found considerable diversity especially for inequality measures and methods of incorporation as for the type of inequality inequality of opportunities is considered marginally and overlapping inequalities not at all increasing data availability opens the door for inclusion especially for the latter aspect as most indicators suffer from insufficient methodological substantiation we argue for increased clarity regarding why and how inequality is accounted for in development indicators the analysis is complemented by a detailed review of treatment of inequality by the analyzed indicators annex

reducing global environmental inequality determining regional quotas for environmental burdens through systems optimisation abstract reducing inequality is essential for sustainable development yet our understanding of its many dimensions and driving forces is still limited here we study the global distribution of 25 environmental burdens encompassing natural resources water materials and land use and air emissions all related to activities underpinning human welfare we find large disparities in inequality levels across burdens and a general yet slow decline in inequality in the period 1995 2009 explained mostly by the faster economic growth of emerging economies acknowledging that allocation issues may hamper greater equality we propose a framework for an optimal allocation of quotas for environmental burdens respecting a maximum allowable inequality limit while ensuring a safe operation within the earth s ecological capacity our results shed light on the global distribution of environmental burdens and provide a roadmap for achieving a greater environmental equality using systems optimisation it is hoped that this work will trigger further discussion on the need to address environmental inequality currently missing in the sustainable development goals and open up new research avenues on the use of whole systems approaches in solving global sustainability problems

regional variations in us consumer response to price changes in home heating fuels the northeast and the south 1987 regional variations in us consumer response to price changes in home heating fuels the northeast and the south applied economics vol 19 no 9 pp 1261 1268

future inequality in co2 emissions and the impact of abatement proposals this paper analyzes future carbon emissions inequality using a group decomposition of the gini index business as usual projections to the year 2100 for 135 countries show inequality in per capita emissions declines slowly next the impact on emissions levels and inequality of the kyoto protocol and other abatement proposals for annex ii countries in 2010 are measured with a focus on the gap narrowing and reranking effects substantial reranking of per capita emissions between annex ii and non annex ii countries will not occur unless the former reduce their emissions by at least 50 versus 1990 levels and the latter continue growing unabated

do markets differ much this essay reports the results of a crosssection study of differences in accounting profitability that sheds light on some basic controversies in industrial economics most previous cross section studies in this field have been concerned with testing hypotheses about structural coefficients in models meant to apply to essentially all markets as we have learned more about the difficulties of constructing such general models and of performing tests on their structural parameters properly structural cross section analysis has fallen out of fashion in contrast to most of the cross section literature the analysis reported here is fundamentally descriptive it does not attempt directly to estimate or to test hypotheses about structural parameters i hope to show by example that one can perform illuminating analysis of cross section data without a host of controversial maintained hypotheses cross section data can yield interesting stylized facts to guide both general theorizing and empirical analysis of specific industries even if they cannot easily support full blown structural estimation one can view the sort of search for stylized facts conducted here as either a replacement for or an input to interindustry structural estimation depending on one s feeling about the long run potential of that research approach this study also departs from much of the cross section literature by being fundamentally concerned with the importance of various effects not just with coefficient signs and t statistics in particular this essay provides estimates of the relative importance of firm market and market share differences in the determination of business unit divisional profitability in u s manufacturing using 1975 data from the line of business program of the u s federal trade commission ftc i find support neither for the existence of firm effects nor for the importance of market share effects moreover while industry effects apparently exist and are important they appear to be negatively correlated with seller concentration in these data section i relates firm market and share effects to current issues and controversies in industrial economics and thus supplies the motivation for our empirical analysis the remainder of the essay treats the data and

measuring environmental inequality abstract this study presents alternative measures of environmental inequality in the 50 u s states for exposure to industrial air pollution we examine three methodological issues first to what extent are environmental inequality measures sensitive to spatial scale and population weighting second how do sensitivities to different segments of the overall distribution affect rankings by these measures third how do vertical and horizontal inter group inequality measures relate to each other we find substantive differences in rankings by different measures and conclude that no single indicator is sufficient for addressing the entire range of equity concerns that are relevant to environmental policy instead multiple measures are needed

collusion versus differential efficiency testing alternative hypotheses the predictions of collusion and efficiency based static equilibrium explanations of interindustry profitability differences are formally developed and tested using appropriate econometric techniques with intraindustry data on seventy u s internal revenue service minor manufacturing industries in 1963 and 1972 none of the explanations has much explanatory power the 1963 data are consistent with collusion based models while the 1972 data are inconsistent with all non null hypotheses considered patterns of profitability are sharply different in the two years in complex ways apparently unrelated to cyclical forces or the phase ii price controls implications of these results are discussed copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

seasonal variation in residential electricity demand evidence from survey data in this paper we estimate twelve monthly electricity demand equations for households using a detailed microdata set the microdata are based largely on a detailed 1975 survey of us households and incude variables enabling us to measure block price schedules family income socio demographic variables appliance stocks housing characteristics and heating and cooling degree days of single family units we find that price elasticities are higher in absolute value during peak periods of demand income elasticity estimates show no discernible seasonal pattern our disaggregated data also allow us to estimate the seasonal usage patterns of several electricity using appliances the estimates follow expected patterns

measuring the energy savings from home improvement investments evidence from monthly billing data an important factor driving energy policy over the past two decades has been the energy paradox the perception that consumers apply unreasonably high hurdle rates to energy saving investments we explore one possible explanation for this apparent puzzle that realized returns fall short of the returns promised by engineers and product manufacturers using a unique data set we find that the realized return to attic insulation is statistically significant but the median estimate 9 7 is almost identical to a discount rate for this investment implied by a capm analysis we conclude that the case for the energy paradox is weaker than has previously been believed

the demand for electricity and natural gas in the northeastern united states the demand for natural gas and electricity for the residential commercial and industrial sectors was estimated using a combination of the error components model and seemingly unrelated regressions the estimated demand models showed both natural gas and electricity to be price elastic in the long run and price inelastic in the short run in all sectors except the commercial sector in which electricity demand is unresponsive to its own price natural gas had negligible income elasticities in the residential and commercial sectors and a long run income elasticity of 2 86 in the industrial sector electricity had an insignificant income effect in all sectors but the industrial where its long run elasticity was unitary only in the residential demand for natural gas is the cross price elasticity substantial with the price of electricity having a long run cross elasticity of 1 70 fuel oil prices generally had a negative impact probably indicating a large income effect the elasticities of adjustment were higher for natural gas than electricity indicating a faster adjustment to change either in response to greater instability in energy availability or reflecting more alternative fuels or both 16 references 4 tables

firm size distribution and price cost margins in dutch manufacturing industrial economists surmise a relation be tween the size distribution of firms and performance usually attention is focused on the high end of the size distribution the widely used four firm seller concentration ratio c4 ignores what happens at the low end of the size distribution we investigate to what extent the level and the growth of small business presence influence price cost margins in dutch manufacturing we use a large data set of 66 industries for a thirteen year period this allows the investigation of both small business influences within a framework in which that of many other market structure variables is also studied evi dence is shown that price cost margins are influenced by large firm dominance growth in small business presence capital intensity business cycle international trade and buyer con centration