the housing market impacts of shale gas development using data from pennsylvania and an array of empirical techniques to control for confounding factors we recover hedonic estimates of property value impacts from nearby shale gas development that vary with water source well productivity and visibility results indicate large negative impacts on nearby groundwater dependent homes while piped water dependent homes exhibit smaller positive impacts suggesting benefits from lease payments results have implications for the debate over regulation of shale gas development jel l71 q35 q53 r31 technological improvements in the extraction of oil and natural gas from unconventional sources have transformed communities and landscapes and brought debate and controversy in the policy arena shale gas plays underlying the populated northeastern united states were thought to be uneconomical less than ten years ago but now contribute a major share of us gas supply 1 natural gas has been hailed as a bridge to energy independence and a clean future because of its domestic sourcing and compared with coal and petroleum derivatives its smaller carbon footprint and reduced emissions of other pollutants e g particulates sulfur dioxide car

the impact of spatial patterns in road traffic externalities on willingness to pay estimates studying traffic related externalities in the city of gent belgium we find little to no evidence that observed spatial dependencies in actual objective externality levels play a direct role in determining spatial dependencies in the willingness to pay wtp for changes in the city s mobility policy investigating alternative factors that can influence wtp estimates however reveals that higher stated subjective externality levels are positively correlated with higher wtp for reducing exposure to noise air and odor pollution our results suggest complex interactions between housing decisions perceived externality levels and wtp estimates thus allowing for subjective perceptions sorting behavior and patterns in individuals characteristics can result in wtp estimates that are not spatially correlated even though the underlying externalities are spatially correlated

progress along the path evolving issues in the measurement of genuine saving more than 10 years since a practical linkage between sustainable development and a measure of national wealth expanded to include natural and environmental resources was first posited the empirical estimation of adjusted net savings dubbed genuine saving has evolved considerably in this paper we take stock of both progress achieved and the challenges that remain we begin by recalling the key points made in pearce and atkinson 1993 ecol econ 8 103 which presented the first cross country estimates of savings rates adjusted to reflect depletion and degradation of the environment we then briefly summarise the evolution of the theoretical argument linking savings and sustainability however the main focus of this paper is an aspect that concerned david pearce greatly namely the evolution of the measurement of genuine savings we identify and consider the empirical evidence with regard to two particular measurement issues the valuation of exhaustible resources and environmental degradation common to the both issues are concerns about measuring changes in national wealth in real world economies

valuing english primary schools this paper provides the first empirical evidence for the uk on the effect of primary school performance on property prices we find that on average a one percentage point increase in the neighbourhood proportion of children reaching the government specified target grade pushes up neighbourhood property prices by 0 67 at 2000 property prices we calculate the social valuation of a sustained 1 improvement in primary school performance to be up to 90 per child per year our instrumental variable and semi parametric approach avoids the problems of school quality endogeneity and omitted neighbourhood variables that occur in typical property value models

an alternative to the standard spatial econometric approaches in hedonic house price models omitted misspecified or mismeasured spatially varying characteristics are a cause for concern in hedonic house price models spatial econometrics or spatial fixed effects have become popular ways of addressing these concerns we discuss the limitations of standard spatial approaches to hedonic modeling and demonstrate the spatial generalized additive model as an alternative parameter estimates for several spatially varying regressors are shown to be sensitive to the scale of the fixed effects and bandwidth dimension used to control for omitted variables this sensitivity reflects the uncertainty associated with the estimates when the appropriate spatial scale of the controls is unknown

the amenity cost of road noise this article reports a complete two stage hedonic analysis for road noise for the estimation of the hedonic price function i develop a spatial research design which simultaneously reduces the risk of omitted variable bias and the risk of measurement error in the noise measure the preference parameters are identified following the approach developed in bajari and benkard 2005 by using a simple functional form for utility preferences are very heterogeneous and observable demographic characteristics explain 30 percent of the variation in taste for quiet results are used to discuss willingness to pay for noise reductions from two policy measures

welfare measurement for environmental improvements using the hedonic model the case of nonparametric marginal prices abstract research in environmental and natural resource economics frequently requires the use of hedonic models because of the differentiated products involved this is true for studies of the relationship between environmental quality and property values or wages or between the characteristics of a recreation site and the demand for its services an obvious use of such studies is in estimating willingness to pay for improvements with differentiated products there are usually nonlinear hedonic price schedules and thus nonlinear budget constraints this makes welfare analysis difficult because standard duality results no longer hold this paper develops a technique for estimating a psuedo demand system that can be used to derive exact measures of consumer welfare change similar techniques are developed for producers with a psuedo profit function that can be converted to an exact measure of the change in quasi rents or rents the paper also shows that the distance function can be used to develop an ex ante measure of welfare change

beyond implicit prices recovering theoretically consistent and transferable values for noise avoidance from a hedonic property price model using a two stage hedonic pricing methodology we estimate a system of structural demand equations for different sources of transport related noise in the first stage we identify market segments using model based clustering techniques and estimate separate hedonic price functions hpfs for each segment in so doing we show how a semiparametric spatial smoothing estimator outperforms other standard specifications of the hpf in the second stage we control for non linearity of the budget constraint and identify demand relationships using techniques that account for problems of endogeneity and censoring of the dependent variable our estimated demand functions provide welfare estimates for peace and quiet that we believe to be the first derived from property market data in a theoretically consistent manner

comparative statics for utility maximization models with nonlinear budget constraints this paper investigates the properties of demand functions generated by nonlinear budget constraints and relates them to those of demand functions generated by linear budget constraints the analysis shows that the properties of nonlinear and linear demand functions in some respects are similar but in other respects differ substantially the study gives conditions under which properties of the linear demand functions carry over to the nonlinear ones the implications for the nonlinear demand functions of various separability assumptions are also studied copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

willingness to pay for car safety evidence from sweden this study estimates a marginal willingness to pay wtp function for a road mortality risk reduction observed marginal wtp from the swedish car market is used and found to be positively correlated with the baseline risk of the cars no statistically significant relationships between examined owner attributes e g wealth and background risk and marginal wtp are found when comparing the estimated monetary value of a non marginal risk reduction derived from the integral of the marginal wtp function with an estimate based on marginal wtp we find in line with expectations that the difference between the estimates is negligible for smaller risk reductions and small 4 10 also for relatively large risk reductions

paying for quietness the impact of noise on geneva rents using the hedonic approach this paper analyses housing market data to infer the impact of noise on rents in geneva switzerland using three different databases including a geographical information system gis structural accessibility and environmental variables were obtained for a large proportion of apartments rented in geneva the paper is thus in line with the new generation hedonic models which exploit the vast potential of gis to obtain large databases including detailed characteristics of the apartments in addition different and original measures of noise were used in order to assess possible differences of the noise impact on rents while existing studies typically refer to a single noise index this paper assesses the impacts of noise related to all sources but also to airport noise only while existing studies usually refer to road or aircraft noise the results can be summarised as follows first it is shown that the impact of all sources of noise on rents at the level of the whole ca

estimating the demand for protecting freshwater lakes from eutrophication in any discussion of the valuation of public goods particularly environmental amenities contingent valuation travel cost and hedonics are commonly cited as methods for estimating hicksian or marshallian welfare freeman while contingent valuation and travel cost are widely employed we know of very few applications where hedonic demand functions have been estimated palmquist 1984 and parsons estimated second stage hedonic demands for characteristics of housing units both used the approach of estimating separate hedonic price functions for different real estate markets to identify demand parameters for housing characteristics the research reported here is the first to use separate real estate markets to identify demand parameters for an environmental amenity the specific application is water clarity in selected lakes in maine reduced water

valuing local environmental amenity with discrete choice experiments spatial scope sensitivity and heterogeneous marginal utility of income using discrete choice experiments we examine preferences for the spatial provision of local environmental improvements in the context of regeneration policies amenities we consider are improvements to areas of open space recreation facilities and other public spaces street cleanliness restoration of derelict properties and the provision of paths dedicated to cycling and walking we include the spatial scope of the policy as an attribute making the trade off between environmental amenity and its spatial provision explicit we employ a novel estimator for average willingness to pay wtp for mixed logit models with a random cost coefficient which is robust to the presence of price insensitive respondents and performs well relative to mixed logit estimation in wtp space we find that the spatial scope of the policy affects both the intensity and heterogeneity of preferences and that these effects are of statistical and economic significance

change in energy related co2 carbon dioxide emissions in portuguese tourism a decomposition analysis from 2000 to 2008 abstract tourism is an activity with great potential in portugal at a time of economic crisis tourism is seen as an opportunity to boost the economy and provide sustainable economic growth this strategic path based on tourism has to be accomplished in order to make better use of the economic advantages but at the same time respecting the environment and environmental goals to which portugal is committed so it becomes important to analyze what effects contribute more to emissions in this sector as well as which tourism subsectors are more responsible for the increase of emissions the objective of this work is to identify the effects in which co2 carbon dioxide emissions in tourism can be broken down and analyzed as well as their evolution and which of them has more importance in determining emissions for that in this study a decomposition technique based on logarithmic mean divisia index was used in the 2000 2008 period for five tourism subsectors in portugal in general tourism activity is the most important effect energy mix carbon intensity and energy intensity effects also proved important

hedonic price indexes for residential housing a survey evaluation and taxonomy every house is different it is important that house price indexes take account of these quality differences hedonic methods which express house prices as a function of a vector of characteristics such as number of bedrooms and bathrooms land area and location are particularly useful for this purpose i consider here some developments in the hedonic methodology as it is applied in a housing context that have occurred in the last three decades a number of hedonic house price indexes are now available however it is often difficult to see how these indexes relate to each other for this reason i attempt to impose some structure on the literature by developing a taxonomy of hedonic indexes and then show how existing indexes fit into this taxonomy also discussed are some promising areas for future research in the hedonic field in particular greater use needs to be made of spatial econometric and nonparametric methods to exploit the increased availability of geospatial data the main criticisms of the hedonic approach are evaluated and compared with those of the repeat sales and stratified median methods the overall conclusion is that the advantages of the hedonic approach outweigh its disadvantages

identifying hedonic models economic models for hedonic markets characterize the pricing of bundles of attributes and the demand and supply of these attributes under different assumptions about market structure preferences and technology see jan tinbergen 1956 sherwin rosen 1974 and dennis epple 1987 for contributions to this literature while the theory is well formulated and delivers some elegant analytical results the empirical content of the model is under debate it is widely believed that hedonic models fit in a single market are fundamentally underidentified and that any empirical content obtained from them is a consequence of arbitrary functional form assumptions the problem of identification in hedonic models is a prototype for the identification problem in a variety of economic models in which agents sort on unobservable to the economist characteristics models of monopoly pricing michael mussa and sherwin rosen 1978 robert wilson 1993 and models for taxes and labor supply james heckman 1974 sorting is an essential feature of econometric models of social interactions see william brock and steven durlauf 2001 in this paper we address the sorting problem in hedonic models nesheim 2001 extends this analysis to a model with peer effects in this paper we note that commonly used linearization strategies made to simplify estimation and justify the application of instrumental variables methods produce identification problems the hedonic model is generically nonlinear it is the linearization of a fundamentally nonlinear model that produces the form of the identification problem that dominates discussion in the applied literature linearity is an arbitrary and misleading functional form when applied to empirical hedonic models our research establishes that even though sorting equilibrium in a single market implies no exclusion restrictions the hedonic model is generically nonparametrically identified instrumental variables and transformation model methods identify economically relevant parameters even 1 without exclusion restrictions multimarket data widely viewed as the most powerful source of identification achieves this result only under implausible assumptions about why hedonic functions vary across markets

a framework to account for the tourism carbon footprint at island destinations abstract given concerns over greenhouse gases and the role of tourism in generating such environmental externality a consistent carbon measurement framework is needed this paper combines principles derived from production and consumption accounting measures to better allocate the responsibility for carbon emissions utilizing a boundary that includes domestic tourism expenditure inbound tourism expenditure and local spending associated with outbound travel this paper a proposes a framework to measure the domestic total carbon effect and foreign sourced effect and b applies the analytical framework to taiwan the empirical study indicates that the carbon emissions for domestic tourism industries international aviation and imports accounted for 47 28 and 25 of the tourism carbon footprint it is suggested that an island s dependence on both aviation and international trade leads to a larger share of emissions outside their geographic territory with respect to tourism development

decomposition of tourism greenhouse gas emissions revealing the dynamics between tourism economic growth technological efficiency and carbon emissions abstract this study proposes an analytical framework for decomposing the national tourism carbon footprint and carbon efficiency to identify the dynamics between economic growth technological efficiency and environmental externality using the environmentally extended input output model and decomposition methods tourism carbon changes are decomposed into the economic factors of total consumption and purchasing patterns and the production factors of industry input structure and technological improvement this macro level approach provides a basis for 1 assessing whether total tourism emissions increase in direct proportion to tourism consumption over time 2 tracing the underlying determinants and their effects on tourism emissions expansion and eco efficiency performance and 3 comparing the carbon performance of the tourism industry against the national average based on the example of taiwan the results demonstrate that we are a long way from the goal of using the technological efficiencies of production to offset tourism based carbon emissions

the lmdi approach to decomposition analysis a practical guide in a recent study ang energy policy 32 2004 compared various index decomposition analysis methods and concluded that the logarithmic mean divisia index method is the preferred method since the literature on the method tends to be either too technical or specific for most potential users this paper provides a practical guide that includes the general formulation process summary tables for easy reference and examples

the impact of child care costs on the labour supply of married mothers evidence from canada this paper provides estimates for canada of the impact of childcare costs on the labor supply of married mothers this is done by linking two microdata sources the 1988 canadian national child care survey and the 1988 labour market activity survey the key results show that the market wage and childcare costs have respectively a significant positive and negative impact on both hours of work and the labor force participation decision by married mothers the childcare cost elasticities for labor force participation and hours of work are reported to be 0 38 and 0 32 respectively

how property markets determine welfare outcomes an equilibrium sorting model analysis of local environmental interventions this paper examines the pivotal role played by property markets in determining the magnitude and distribution of welfare changes resulting from localised environmental change we address that issue using an equilibrium sorting model esm calibrated by way of example to the circumstances of a road infrastructure project in the english town of polegate previous esm research has tended to assume that all households rent property from a fixed property stock the narrative that arises from those models concerns environmental gentrification wherein access to environmentally improved locations is appropriated by the relatively wealthy through their ability to out compete the less wealthy in the rental property market our research shows that to be only part of a much more complex story we develop a model that extends the sophistication with which esms replicate property market dynamics allowing for households to choose whether to rent or purchase their home and introducing greater realism into housing supply responses to changing market conditions our research shows that property markets redistribute welfare gains across the population in complex ways in which tenure choice and housing supply constraints play central roles

monetary valuation of aircraft noise a hedonic analysis around amsterdam airport in densely populated countries and in particular in large metropolitan areas the presence of so much human activity causes all sorts of negative externalities for example traffic noise disturbance these externalities call for corrective measures by the government economists have developed a number of procedures that provide reasonable estimates on the monetary value of some amenities and externalities in this paper we develop a spatially explicit hedonic pricing model for house prices in order to quantify the social cost of aircraft noise disturbance in monetary terms while focusing on aircraft noise around amsterdam airport in the urban fringe of the amsterdam region a key point in our analysis is that we account for background noise we do this by taking multiple sources of traffic noise i e road railway and aircraft noise into account simultaneously and by setting threshold values for all three sources of noise above which sound is generally experienced as nuisance based on our regression results we conclude that a higher noise level means ceteris paribus a lower house price air traffic has the largest price impact followed by railway traffic and road traffic these model outcomes can subsequently be used to estimate the marginal and total benefits of aircraft noise reduction in the studied area around amsterdam airport we find a marginal benefit of 1 db noise reduction of 1 459 euro per house leading to a total benefit of 1 db noise reduction of 574 million euros

joint labor supply and childcare choice decisions of married mothers this paper examines the impact of childcare prices and wage rates on the joint employment and childcare mode center sitter relative and husband choice decisions of married mothers by estimating both a mixed logit and universal logit choice model data are drawn from the 1988 canadian national child care survey and the 1988 labour market activity survey the estimation results show that wages have a positive impact on the probability of choosing any of the working states and that childcare prices for center sitter and relative care reduce the probability of working and using each respective mode of care sensitivity analyses reveal that the wage elasticity for employment is fairly robust across model specifications while the own price elasticity of childcare is sensitive to model specification differing identifying assumptions in the estimation of childcare price equations and sample selection the simulation results show that differences exist in the degree to which government subsidies in the form of wage subsidies targeted childcare subsidies or unconditional childcare subsidies impact on labor supply decisions and decisions to substitute across different modes of care by those mothers already in the labor market

the demand for child care quality an hedonic price theory approach i use an hedonic price theory approach to estimate the demand for child care quality two complementary surveys the national child care survey 1990 nccs and the profile of child care settings study pcs allow me to derive an implicit price for staff to child ratio i use this price as an explanatory variable in a demand equation for this quality attribute direct purchase of service contracts or voucher programs by subsidizing only those providers that satisfy state regulatory requirements effectively lower the implicit price of regulated attributes such as staff to child ratio results of this study suggest that such tied subsidies have almost no influence on the demand for child care quality

managing transportation externalities in the pyrenees region measuring the willingness to pay for road freight noise reduction using an experimental auction mechanism abstract the estimation of the noise impact caused by road freight transportation is critical to have acknowledgment of the ambiance pollution caused by road traffic crossing geographical areas containing important natural resources thus our work proposes a within subject survey where a contingent valuation method cvm is combined with a laboratory economic experimental auction our study objective is to measure the willingness to pay wtp for reducing traffic noise nuisances due to freight transportation in the region of navarre spain a special focus is made regarding the measurement of the hypothetical bias when a comparison is done between hypothetical wtp coming from the cvm study with real incentivized one as the outcome of the economic experiment additionally statistical analyses are conducted in order to find explanation factors for these outcomes results suggest a strong evidence for an upward hypothetical bias from 50 to 160 indicating the income the educational level the gender and the age as the main factors which explain that bias

price quality and income in child care choice recent legislation may substantially expand federal assistance in paying for child care this paper examines the potential effects of three aspects of federal assistance reducing child care price through vouchers or grants to providers improving its quality through incentives or regulation and increasing family income through tax credits on the child care choices employed mothers make the data come from the 1985 wave of the national longitudinal survey of youth ohio state university both multinomial and universal logit models are used the results suggest that price is a critical variable in child care choice the higher the price the lower the probability a mode of care will be chosen parents do not consistently select high quality care although overall quality improvements may increase the use of family day care mothers who earn more per hour and families who have higher incomes other than the mother s earnings are more likely to select center care over other modes consequently subsidizing child care expenditures directly through vouchers and reduced fees or increasing other family income through tax credits consistently increases the use of center based programs all else equal

property prices and exposure to multiple noise sources hedonic regression with road and railway noise this study examines the effect of road and railway noise on property prices it uses the hedonic regression technique on a swedish data set that contains information about both road and railway noise for each property and finds that road noise has a larger negative impact on the property prices than railway noise this is in line with the evidence from the acoustical literature which has shown that individuals are more disturbed by road than railway noise but contradicts recent results from a hedonic study on data of the united kingdom

international tourism energy consumption and environmental pollution the case of turkey abstract this study investigates the long run equilibrium relationship between tourism energy consumption and environmental degradation as proxied by carbon dioxide co 2 emissions in turkey which attracts more than 30 million tourists per year making it the sixth most visited country in the world the study results reveal that tourism and energy consumption are in a long term equilibrium relationship with co 2 emissions in the tourism induced model co 2 emissions converge to the long term equilibrium path by a 91 01 percent speed of adjustment every year through the channels of tourism energy consumption and aggregate income further the results of the impulse response and variance decompositions reveal that the reaction of energy consumption and therefore co 2 emissions to changes in tourism development is positive and gains strength in the longer periods this implies that tourism development in turkey has resulted not only in considerable increases in energy use but also considerable increases in climate change as demonstrated by the econometric analysis of this study

analysis of electricity consumption in the tourism sector a decomposition approach abstract index decomposition analysis ida has become a common tool for studying the evolution of energy consumption in its initial form it comprises three contributions namely activity structure and intensity effects various sectors of activities were studied in the literature by employing ida approach and the present work proposes its application to the electricity consumption in the tourism sector the proposed decomposition analysis is developed on the basis of seven indexes grouped in three macro contributions namely energy intensity economic structure and industrial structure the decomposition is performed in the period 1995 2017 and italy was used as test case for the methodology the analysis highlights that overall the changes in electricity intensity and in the industrial structure were responsible for an increase of the electricity consumption of 5 581 gwh whereas the economic structure was responsible for a decrease of 1 337 gwh their contemporary effect determined a total variation of electricity consumption between 1995 and 2017 of 4 244 gwh results demonstrated that the proposed ida equation specifically tailored for the tourism sector allows to provide a detailed analytical explanation of the factors affecting electricity consumption in the italian tourism sector the same framework can be applied to any other country and source of energy

extended divisia index decomposition of changes in energy intensity a case of korean manufacturing industry abstract this study aims to examine the energy efficiency of the manufacturing industry of korea by using the extended divisia index decomposition of choi and ang 2012 first we applied the sato vartia index decomposition to the energy intensity of the manufacturing industry in korea second we attributed the growth rate of aggregate energy intensity to 10 sub manufacturing industries through two channels real energy intensity and structural change the result of the decomposition illustrates that the aggregate energy intensity index decreased in the period 1981 2010 the index decomposition analysis demonstrates that real energy intensity decreased by 85 85 whereas structural change increased energy intensity by 69 37 over the same period of time the negative effect of structural change is partly a result of the increasing portion of energy intensive industry in manufacturing the result reflects that industrial structure in korea can be an important aspect for improving energy efficiency

childcare quality and pricing evidence from wisconsin childcare prices vary dramatically both between and within states we identify the effects of demographic and provider characteristics on childcare pricing but focus primarily on whether unique government provided information on childcare quality has an effect on pricing using provider level observations across three adjacent counties in southern wisconsin we find that this government provided information on childcare quality does not significantly affect pricing recognizing that information asymmetry may be the root cause of the insignificant relationship we test the relationship further within multiple subsamples and with alternative models only the lowest quality childcare providers are significantly associated with lower prices in areas that we hypothesize suffer from greater information asymmetry

visitor attractions and events responding to seasonality seasonality is a protracted problem for the tourism sector due to the uneven nature of demand and the relatively fixed nature of the supply of capacity and resources particularly in the attraction sector managing the demand and supply at an individual business level poses many challenges for attraction infrastructure that is fixed in time and space and has a finite capacity this paper explores how attraction managers develop and use special events as a tool to address issues of seasonality at a country level the results show that 70 of businesses remained open throughout the year albeit with reduced opening hours to attract more visitors 39 of attractions that stay open host special events the local community is a key source market for special events the periodicity of events and themes engage visitors most effectively business responses to seasonality are a more complex issue than conventional tourism research has recognised

estimation of tourism induced electricity consumption the case study of balearics islands spain tourism has started to be acknowledged as a significant contributor to the increase in environmental externalities especially to climate change various studies have started to estimate and compute the role of the different tourism sectors contributions to greenhouse gas ghg emissions these estimations have been made from a sectoral perspective assessing the contribution of air transport the accommodation sector or other tourism related economic sectors however in order to evaluate the impact of this sector on energy use the approaches used in the literature consider tourism in its disaggregated way this paper assesses the electricity demand pattern and investigates the aggregated contribution of tourism to electricity consumption using the case study of the balearic islands spain using a conventional daily electricity demand model including data for daily stocks of tourists the impact of the different population growth rate scenarios on electricity loads is also investigated the results show that in terms of electricity consumption tourism cannot be considered a very energy intensive sector

revisiting the role of tourism and globalization in environmental degradation in china fresh insights from the quantile ardl approach abstract ascertaining sustainable development is a major issue across the globe and the economic growth pattern achieved is a predominant reason behind this the globalization led economic growth achieved by the emerging economies might not be ecologically sustainable as globalization might not have been utilized as a policy tool moreover a sound policy calls for considering the entire data spectrum for the analysis which is largely ignored in the literature this research contributes to the literature by proffering a policy framework for the emerging economies by analyzing the impact of globalization and tourism on environmental degradation by considering the chinese context as a sample following the quantile autoregressive distributed lag model the impact of economic growth globalization and tourism on greenhouse gas emissions carbon dioxide emissions and the ecological footprint in china over 1978q1 2017q4 are analyzed the results demonstrate that economic growth stimulates environmental degradation while the presence of environmental kuznets curve is also validated moreover tourism has been found to exert positive environmental externalities while globalization exerts negative environmental externalities based on the outcomes of the research a comprehensive policy framework has been suggested following which the chinese economy might be able to attain the objectives of sustainable development goals 7 8 and 13

valuing air quality with hedonic and discrete choice models environmental economists have been using property values in attempts to measure the value residents place on air quality as far back as the 1960s however in the years since then we have learned a great deal about how complex valuing nonmarginal changes in air quality is rosen presented a hedonic model that is still extremely influential today but the estimation strategy he outlined in that paper had some shortcomings many of these identification and endogeneity issues were corrected subsequently in papers such as palmquist 1984 parsons and bartik but none of these papers concentrated on environmental issues a central issue in estimating the demand or marginal willingness to pay functions for characteristics of housing is the identification of those behavioral functions as distinct from

an analysis of the decoupling relationship between co2 emission in power industry and gdp in china based on lmdi method abstract china predominantly relies on thermal power generation to meet its power requirement which has led to a major increase in total co2 emission and poses a huge threat to the development of power industry in order to reduce co2 emission in power industry and develop economy simultaneously it is necessary to study how to achieve the strong decoupling relationship between co2 emission in power industry and gdp in china however such studies are relatively limited so far thus this paper mainly inquiries the major driving factors on the decoupling during the period of 1985 2016 first the decoupling state in china is quantified by using the tapio decoupling indicator then this paper carries out the decomposition of the decoupling index to explore the driving factors affecting the decoupling by the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method and kaya identity equation finally energy consumption in power generation thermal power structure power generation structure transmission and distribution loss electrification energy intensity and economic scale are explored to discuss the decoupling relationship with respect to the co2 emission reduction the results show that the decoupling relationship is in an alternating state between weak decoupling and expansive negative decoupling in 1985 2016 and the influences of seven factors on the decoupling relationship are of difference wherein energy intensity as well as energy consumption in power generation promotes the decoupling while both the economic scale and electrification are the two main factors that inhibit the decoupling the other three factors have relatively weak effects therefore based on the empirical results this paper puts forward some policy suggestions to effectively promote the decoupling between china s electric co2 emission and economic growth

willingness to pay and willingness to accept how much can they differ comment i agree with the point made by edoh y amiran and daniel a hagen 2003 that there can be a substantial or even infinite divergence between the wta and wtp for a public good even where there is a nonzero elasticity of substitution between market goods and the public good provided that the indifference curves are asymptotically bounded with respect to market goods in the manner they describe this is an important point they are also correct to point out that the elasticity of substitution is a local concept whereas their asymptotic boundedness condition applies also for discrete changes my 1991 paper used a local analysis because it was following the structure of the analysis in robert d willig 1976 and alan randall and john r stoll 1980 i wanted to show that while randall and stoll appeared to extend willig s local result on wta versus wtp from price changes to changes in the quantity of a public good the relevant elasticity was in fact different and involved the substitution elasticity as well as the income elasticity i view these points by amiran and hagen as not two separate results but essentially the same result their asymptotic boundedness condition generalizes my zero elasticity of substitution condition to discrete changes the asymptotic boundedness condition can be expressed as follows assuming a bivariate utility function u x q and given a reference point x q associated with a reference utility level u u x q there exists some q q such that for all q q there exists no x such that u x q u in other words no amount of x can substitute for the reduction in public good from q to q q in the case of a zero elasticity of substitution q q but as amiran and hagen show in their theorem 1 this is unnecessarily restrictive when dealing with a discrete reduction in q furthermore their theorem 2 can be viewed as a special case of their theorem 1 in which q 0 which makes q an essential commodity it is well known in consumer theory that the wta to avoid the loss of an essential market good is infinite their theorem 2 extends this result to the case of an essential nonmarket good but as their theorem 1 shows essentialness is not necessary for an infinite wta the boundedness condition is the key and this implies a fundamental lack of substitutability between money market goods and the public good

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

valuing aircraft noise stated choice experiments reflecting inter temporal noise changes from airport relocation the relocation of athens airport provided a rare experimental context in which residents experienced significant changes in noise levels due to the introduction or removal of aircraft noise this paper reports the results from surveys around both airport locations using stated choice experiments to estimate values for aircraft noise the respondents were offered actual inter temporal noise change scenarios rather than hypothetical variations which is uncommon in the literature incorporating the presence or absence of an airport and other relevant transport attributes that also changed with the airport relocation whilst there is some variation in the valuation of the airport closure and opening when these values are adjusted to reflect the actual change in decibels there is remarkably little difference between the old and new airports however a significant variation in aircraft noise values is identified between different areas with respect to education and to a lesser extent income our preferred estimate of the monthly household willingness to pay for terminating aircraft noise exposure is 13 12 and for avoiding the onset of aircraft noise is 9 53

landscape amenities and local development a review of migration regional economic and hedonic pricing studies abstract with rapid urban expansion and loss of open space attractive local landscapes will continue to gain importance in location decisions and on political agendas the present study reviews the evidence on the local economic role of landscape amenities from two major strands of empirical research migration and regional economic models and hedonic pricing models following common amenity definitions we identify 71 relevant peer reviewed studies and systematically assess the reported effects of the landscape amenity variables the migration and regional economic studies suggest that migrants are attracted by amenities nearly as often as by low taxes reported effects of amenities on income and employment are less consistent the hedonic studies suggest that nature reserves and land cover diversity have mostly open space and forest often and agricultural land rarely positive effects on housing prices studies at larger geographic scales and studies involving urban areas were more likely to identify significant amenity effects some limitations of the evidence may be overcome with better datasets and modeling approaches however in line with other recent work the limitations also highlight the need for complementary information from the analysis of political preferences for land use management

the demand for quality in child care we estimate a model of demand for quality related attributes of child care group size staff child ratio and provider training the model is estimated jointly with equations for mode expenditure on and hours of care and the mother s labor supply the results show that a lower price of child care in a particular mode leads to substitution toward that mode and an increase in the use of paid child care a decrease in the price of care causes an increase in hours of care demanded and a decrease in the demand for qualityrelated attributes income effects on demand for quality are small

hedonic valuation of odor nuisance using field measurements a case study of an animal waste processing facility in flanders in this paper we estimate the external cost caused by odor from an animal waste processing facility in flanders using new odor measures based on field measurements we compare three different ways of incorporating odor nuisance indicators into the model distance to the odor source continuous odor measures and a dummy variable approach comparable to the standard procedure in hedonic price analysis of noise pollution we argue that the dummy variable approach is best suited to estimate the external costs and we test these specifications for a dataset of about 1400 observations of house sales transaction between 2004 and 2008 results show that houses subject to moderate and severe odor nuisance sell at a discount of about 5 and 12 respectively compared to houses without odor nuisance the overall capitalized external cost of the odor exposure for the area of the case study was estimated to range between 6 and 56 million euro with a central estimate of about 31 million euro this estimate proves to be very stable over different model specifications compared to 1991 the external cost has almost been cut by half as a result of odor emission reducing measures taken by the facility

harnessing the political economy of environmental policy david pearce s contribution to oecd during 34 years david pearce made major contribution to oecd work on environmental economic issues with a particular focus on cost benefit analysis economic instruments biodiversity and distributive issues this article provides a brief review of david pearce s contributions this work was particularly useful in enhancing the political economy of environmental policy which is at the core of oecd work

lmdi decomposition approach a guide for implementation since it was first used by researchers to analyze industrial electricity consumption in the early 1980s index decomposition analysis ida has been widely adopted in energy and emission studies lately its use as the analytical component of accounting frameworks for tracking economy wide energy efficiency trends has attracted considerable attention and interest among policy makers the last comprehensive literature review of ida was reported in 2000 which is some years back after giving an update and presenting the key trends in the last 15 years this study focuses on the implementation issues of the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition methods in view of their dominance in ida in recent years eight lmdi models are presented and their origin decomposition formulae and strengths and weaknesses are summarized guidelines on the choice among these models are provided to assist users in implementation

limits to cba in uk and european environmental policy retrospects and future prospects this paper reviews the contemporary debate and the now long standing role of cba in uk and european environmental policy appraisal epa and looks forward to possible future applications the position taken is that despite its limitations cba still has an important part to play in epa however with the increasingly contested nature of environmental and related public policies and outcomes its role will become less prescriptive and its findings more constrained by social justice and ethical imperatives future cba is more likely to continue to flourish as a component in a wider policy analysis and decision support system whatever decision support system is eventually adopted its value will be judged on how well it aids real policymakers operating iteratively in the non linear real world political economy

making a difference how environmental economists can influence the policy process a case study of david w pearce can environmental economists influence policy if so how this paper addresses these two questions using the late david pearce s career as a case study influence can be exercised but pearce s career shows that certain conditions must be met the first is desire he wanted to influence policy and directed a high proportion of his efforts to doing so he focused particular attention on the power centres of his time the oecd world bank european commission un uk government his influence was aided by his status and location as a professor in a prestige university ucl in a major global city london his messages were consistent and clear theory is important and can be used to frame most environmental challenges as regards both explanation and solution externalities can be valued assessing benefits and costs of options is important market signals taxes etc and incentives generally are powerful shapers of behaviour stock of capital human built natural is a key measure of sustainability he communicated simply and clearly in words and phrases that ministers for finance and journalists could understand all of the broadsheet newspapers in england financial times guardian independent telegraph times were grist to pearce s mill of advocacy for environmental economics he provided the blueprint books that could be read on a commute and summaries to the media that they could fit into a 1 000 word piece he didn t seek out but neither did he shirk controversy he worked with various interest groups and politicians but never to the point were he was co opted he initiated and directed the msc in environmental and resource economics that created an ever widening and influential pool of advocates for his ideas finally he achieved a prodigious academic output that ensures a sort of immortality and provided the intellectual ballast the enabled his policy influence

automobiles and implicit markets an estimate of a structural demand model for automobile characteristics economists have always found it difficult to investigate the demand for the automobile good due to its heterogeneity in this paper the automobile is treated as a differentiated product and a two step approach is used to estimate a system of structural demand equations for automobile attributes the obtained results are statistically sound and in conformity with theoretical expectations this should be taken as an indication of the validity and robustness of the procedure used in this analysis

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

what do property values really tell us a hedonic study of underground storage tanks hedonic property value models are widely used but are susceptible to potentially invalid conjectures based on the assumed measure of environmental quality this paper focuses on an application where this is of particular concern leaking underground storage tanks i estimate a hedonic model using quasi experimental and spatial econometric techniques similar to previous studies i examine how house prices vary with distance to the disamenity this approach yields little evidence that prices are adversely impacted however to better measure risks i utilize home specific data on groundwater well tests and correspondence from regulators and find an 11 depreciation when households are well informed