environmental regulation and u s economic growth in this article we quantify the costs of pollution controls by reporting the results of simulations of the growth of the u s economy with and without regulation for this purpose we have constructed a detailed model of the economy that includes the determinants of long term growth we have also analyzed the interaction between industries in order to capture the full repercussions of environmental regulations however we have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment we find that pollution abatement has emerged as a major claimant on the resources of the u s economy the cost of emission controls is more than 10 of the total cost of government purchases of goods and services

not all price endings are created equal price points and asymmetric price rigidity abstract we document an asymmetry in the rigidity of 9 ending prices relative to non 9 ending prices consumers have difficulty noticing higher prices if they are 9 ending or noticing price increases if the new prices are 9 ending because 9 endings are used as a signal for low prices price setters respond strategically to the consumer heuristic by setting 9 ending prices more often after price increases than after price decreases 9 ending prices therefore remain 9 ending more often after price increases than after price decreases leading to asymmetric rigidity 9 ending prices are more rigid upward than downward these findings hold for both transaction prices and regular prices and for both inflation and no inflation periods

state dependent pricing and the dynamics of money and output standard macroeconomic models of price stickiness assume that each firm leaves its price unchanged for a fixed amount of time we present an alternative model in which the pricing decision depends on the state of the economy we find a method of aggregating individual price changes that allows a simple characterization of macroeconomic variables the model produces a positive money output correlation and an empirical phillips curve in addition the impact of monetary shocks depends crucially on the current level of output which points to a natural connection between state dependent microeconomics and state dependent macroeconomics i introduction there is a long tradition in macroeconomics of attributing the real effects of nominal demand shocks to nominal price stickiness in this view if there is no change in prices when nominal demand rises then quantities must bear the burden of adjustment hence nominal price rigidity provides the friction needed for nominal demand shocks to be transmitted to the real economy standard models of this transmission mechanism such as fischer 1977 and taylor 1980 are based on the assumption that each firm leaves its price unchanged for a fixed amount of time the main reason for considering such time dependent pricing rules is their analytic tractability constraining firms to adjust their prices at prespecified times both simplifies the derivation of equilibrium strategies and allows the use of powerful time series techniques to analyze aggregate dynamics the main disadvantage of the timedependent approach is that between price adjustments firms are not allowed to respond even to extreme changes of circumstance this makes it difficult to know whether the qualitative effects of money in these models are the result of nominal rigidities per se or of the exogenously imposed pattern of price changes an alternative approach to modeling price stickiness is to allow the price setting decision to depend on the actual state of the

the behavior of prices and inflation an empirical analysis of disaggregat price data this paper analyzes the effects of inflation on the dispersion of prices as well as other aspects of price behavior using disaggregated data on prices of foodstuffs in israel during 1978 84 we find that the effect of expected inflation on intramarket price variability is stronger than the effect of unexpected inflation we show that even in times of high inflation price quotations are not trivially short and price changes are not synchronized across firms these facts taken together confirm that there is some staggering in the setting of prices we find that the distribution of real prices is far from being uniform as many menu cost based models assume or conclude in fact as inflation increases to very high levels this distribution is not even symmetric when the annual inflation rate reaches 130 percent there are equal chances of finding real prices above or below the market average but upward deviations in the real price are further away from zero than downward ones furthermore as the annu

uniform compliance costs for mineral commodities who gains and who loses changes in energy and nonfuelmineral production consumption and net export revenue that result from environmental protection are estimated by income class and geographic region unlike previous assessments of unilateral adoption of standards i assume that all producers incur equal cleanup costs adjustment is therefore accomplished through changes in prices and quantities rather than altered trade patterns the estimated magnitude of worldwide changes is not large moreover many poor countries are forecast to benefit since their terms of trade improve however the problem of obtaining foreign exchange for investment remains a financing scheme that divorces efficiency from equity is suggested

induced innovation evolutionary theory and path dependence sources of technical change the i960s to the i98os were very productive of new theory and empirical insights into the sources of technical change in the i96os and i970s major attention focused on the implications of changes in demand and relative factor prices on the rate and direction of technical change in the late i 970s and early i980s attention shifted to evolutionary models inspired by a revival of interest in schumpeter s insights into the process of economic development since the early i98os these have been complemented by the development of historically grounded path dependent models of technical change each of these models has contributed substantial insight into the sources of technical change this paper was motivated by a perception that each of the three research agendas is approaching a dead end the three models induced evolutionary and path dependent represent elements of a more general theory that has not yet been invented ruttan 1996 a in a closing comment i suggest some steps toward the development of a more general theory of the sources of technical change

amenity values versus land constraints the spatial effects of natural landscape features on housing values when local amenities are tied to natural land use features that cannot be developed for physical or regulatory reasons the corresponding implicit price estimates from a hedonic housing model may reflect local supply constraints and confound estimation of natural amenity values using a spatial simultaneous equations model of housing values and migration we examine whether local supply constraints from natural or preserved features have influenced the housing market results indicate that constraints associated with the presence of water bodies and some types of open space preservation have contributed to higher housing prices offsetting local demand for these natural amenities jel c31 r23

environmental investment and policy with distortionary taxes and endogenous growth abstract recent studies consider public r d spending that affects abatement knowledge and endogenous growth distortionary taxes that affect capital formation pollution taxes that affect environmental degradation and regeneration that restores natural capital our model combines all those elements the combination affects prior results focusing on two parameters the need for distorting taxes and productivity of abatement knowledge relative to pollution first these two extensions can reverse prior findings that pollution tax revenue is always enough to pay for public r d second tax distortions and externalities alter prior findings that the ratio of public to private capital depends only on output elasticities third dynamics affect prior static findings about other public spending crowding out environmental public goods fourth a greater need for public spending can lead to greater increases in distorting taxes or pollution taxes fifth greater environmental regulation can mean growth is higher or lower even if welfare is higher

examining the role of economic opportunity and amenities in explaining population redistribution abstract this paper develops a model of migration integrating equilibrium and disequilibrium components in which individuals and firms form rational expectations about future opportunities levels of migration are derived as functions of variations in factors influencing migrant labor demand economic opportunity and migrant labor supply residential amenities the model is used to estimate the extent to which migration in the united states over the period 1950 1980 is determined by these two classes of exogenous factors

the effect of clean water regulation on profitability testing the porter hypothesis previous theoretical research provides opposing arguments regarding the effect of environmental regulation on profitability this study provides empirical evidence on this debated effect by testing the strong version of the porter hypothesis we employ panel data analysis to examine the effect of water regulation as measured by permitted wastewater discharge limits on the profitability of publicly held firms operating within the chemical manufacturing industries we find that tighter water regulation meaningfully lowers profitability by reinterpreting profitability in terms of sales and costs the results demonstrate that tighter water regulation increases costs conditioned on a given level of sales

analytical approximations in models of hysteresis decisions made under ongoing uncertainty and costly reversibility entail a range of the state variable where inaction is optimal which in turn produces hysteresis permanent effects of temporary shifts the range is usually defined by non linear equations that need numerical solutions in this paper a technique of analytical approximations is developed and applied to two models menu costs and investment the resulting explicit solutions help clarify why hysteresis is important even for small irreversibility in the menu cost model hysteresis is two orders of magnitude larger than under the akerlof yellen or mankiw assumptions when decisions that are costly to reverse are made under conditions of ongoing uncertainty the optimum policy usually entails a range of inertia the action should be taken only when the value of the underlying state variable becomes especially favourable and reversed only when it becomes especially unfavourable there is an intermediate range over which inaction is optimal this in turn gives rise to hysteresis starting from a value in the range of inertia if the state variable crosses the action trigger point and then returns to its original level the action will be taken but not reversed thus a temporary change will leave a permanent effect numerical solutions for models of irreversible investment show that the range of inaction is remarkably large even when the cost of reversal is small see brennan and schwartz 1985 constantinides 1986 and dixit 1989a b for examples of this unfortunately the equations tlhat determine the optimum policy are highly non linear they do not have analytical solutions therefore we lack a clearer and more general understanding of why hysteresis is numerically so important in this paper i derive analytical approximations for the solutions of more general problems of this kind when the costs of change are small the idea that small costs of change induce large amounts of inertia has been popularized in the model of akerlof and yellen 1985 mankiw 1985 and others in these models second order small costs of making price changes yield price stickiness in response to first order changes in the money supply this is a simple application of the envelope theorem but these models are static and their application to a dynamic reality must assume either permanent shocks or static expectations when there is ongoing uncertainty which is rationally expected by the decision maker the option value of the status quo enlarges the zone where inaction is optimal adding these features to the mankiw akerlof yellen may model i show that fourth order small costs of change generate first order inertia

the cost of environmental protection reported expenditures for environmental protection are often cited as an assessment of the burden of current regulatory efforts however the potential for both incidental savings and uncounted costs means that the actual burden could be either higher or lower than these reported values using a production cost model that considers the possible interaction between environmental and non environmental expenditures we directly estimate the dollar for dollar incidental savings uncounted costs arising from a one dollar increase in reported environmental expenditures although recent literature supports the idea that reported expenditures probably understate the actual burden we find no such evidence in the manufacturing sector based on a large panel of plant level data in one industry we find statistically significant overstatement in three others we find no significant deviation in either direction we conclude that although cost estimates are not overstated on average variation and uncertainty exist

international trade and environmental quality a survey abstract international trade has been incorporating various aspects of environmental issues since 1970 the extent to which environmental problems might affect many facets of trade or vice versa has been the subject of considerable debate over these years in this article we have attempted to establish some of the links between international trade and environmental quality by performing a comprehensive literature review we discuss issues such as establishing direct and indirect effects of international trade on environmental quality effects of trade on economic development environmental quality and energy and their relation with each other and finally the role of governments and international organizations in this context studies have so far revealed some linkages between trade and environment through conventional trade theory however interactions between international trade and types of pollution their sink and assimilative capacity need to be analyzed using a general equilibrium approach currently very little knowledge and agreement on the nature of interactions between trade theories development process and environmental quality exist existing studies have shown that the structure of environmental regulations should be modified to reflect the existence of trade under imperfect competition therefore further research on the interaction between new trade theory and environmental regulation is needed also theoretical and quantitative analysis regarding the effects of environmental regulations on competitiveness and location decision is needed the intensity and type of environmental measures vary across issues and countries therefore harmonizing environmental measures creates an inefficient atmosphere and to assume that trade restrictions will either improve or reverse the environmental damages is a serious mistake given the dynamic and intricate nature of the problem trade and environment debate continues despite vast research and poses a challenge for researchers and policy makers in the foreseeable future

public conservation land and employment growth in the northern forest region we quantify the effect that public conservation lands have on employment growth in the northern forest region of the united states a model of simultaneous employment and net migration growth is estimated with data on non metropolitan counties from 1990 to 1997 exogenous variables include the 1990 share of the land base in public conservation uses we find that net migration rates were higher in counties with more conservation lands but the effects are relatively small no significant effect on employment growth is detected as well variables measuring changes in public timber harvests have no effect on employment growth

the economic costs of environmental regulation in u s dairy farming a directional distance function approach analyses of the costs of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy production which could be used to assess the effectiveness of alternative policy measures is a missing link in the literature this article addresses this gap by establishing the economic impact associated with a hypothetical greenhouse gas environmental regulatory regime across major dairy producing counties in the united states in doing so the article makes three important contributions to the literature first it develops a comprehensive pollution index based on environmental protection agency methodologies which contrasts with previous studies that rely on partial measures based only on surplus nitrogen stemming from the over application of fertilizer second the article uses a directional output distance function an approach that has not been employed previously to evaluate polluting technologies in the u s dairy sector third the article incorporates a four way error approach that accounts for unobserved county heterogeneity time invariant persistent technical efficiency time varying transient technical efficiency and a random error the results indicate that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from dairy farming would induce a 5 percentage point increase in average technical efficiency in addition the economic costs of implementing this hypothetical regulatory framework exhibit significant spatial variation across counties in the united states

market based systems for reducing chemical use in agriculture in the united states this study uses a computable general equilibrium cge model of the u s economy to estimate the economic effects of agricultural fertilizer and pesticide input reductions on individual farm sectors and on the economy as a whole the costs of reducing agricultural chemicals using a market based approach and a command and control approach are compared the real cost to society of restrictng fertilizer and pesticide use by 20 percent across all uses is estimated to be 2 3 billion a market based approach that would provide incentives to reduce chemical use in the most cost efficient manner would be about 10 percent less costly

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

integration of inventory and pricing decisions with costly price adjustments motivated by the widespread adoption of dynamic pricing in industry and the empirical evidence of costly price adjustments in this paper we consider a periodic review inventory model with price adjustment costs that consist of both fixed and variable components in each period demand is stochastic and price dependent the firm needs to coordinate the pricing and inventory replenishment decisions in each period to maximize its total discounted profit over a finite planning horizon we develop the general model and characterize the optimal policies for two special scenarios namely a model with inventory carryover and no fixed price change costs and a model with fixed price change costs and no inventory carryover finally we propose an intuitive heuristic policy to tackle the general system whose optimal policy is expected to be very complicated our numerical studies show that this heuristic policy performs well

inflation price competition and consumer search technology abstract this paper studies an s s pricing model in the presence of inflation and price competition in search markets i present a model in which consumers search technologies can influence firms price setting price dispersion and the market structure the result obtained shows that although price competition among firms is intensified in markets where consumers search technologies are more efficient price inflation is counter intuitively more likely to increase the monopoly power and stimulate entry of firms in these markets the model also provides new empirical implications for firms price setting behaviors

an econometric model of production with endogenous improvement in energy efficiency 1970 1995 the purpose of this paper is to introduce a modification of a standard four input production process where energy is used in an inefficient way due to partly unnecessary waste of energy in this production process r d investment is an additional input in order to improve energy efficiency it closes the gap between energy purchased and energy used effectively the more is invested the less is the waste of energy with the cost and benefit of r d investment incorporated in our model of the firm we analyze the impact of an energy tax on r d effort on output and on the waste of energy the model is implemented empirically by choosing a translog cost function and a set of first order conditions using data for the german chemical industry 1970 1995 in a simulation study based on higher energy prices we found outsourcing as the consequent reaction of the firm more material is used and less of energy labor and capital given the unchanged output level there is no indication of a double dividend in terms of environmental improvement as well as higher demand for labor on the industry level calling for a computable general equilibrium approach in order to answer this open question

natural versus manufactured capital win lose or win win a case study of the finnish pulp and paper industry abstract the effect of investments on environmental variables has been discussed through the win win rhetoric specifically in micro level analysis on the macro level the win win rhetoric has been replaced by the arguments for and against the substitutability of natural and manufactured capital here these two concepts belonging to different levels of analysis are linked by looking at the environmental and economic effects of chosen investment strategies in a traditionally capital intensive industry over time the paper shows that rather than generalise the existence of win win situations or the substitutability of capital these positions are determined by purely situational factors as a result in the assessment of substitutability the specific operating context of the industry needs to be taken into account this implies also that environmental policy needs to be designed to be adaptive and responsive to those situational factors to create beneficial outcomes for the economy and for the environment

oil consumption and economic efficiency a comparative analysis of advanced developing and emerging economies abstract this paper investigates the economic efficiency oil consumption relationship in 42 countries during the period 1986 2006 in a first stage by using dea window analysis countries economic efficiencies are obtained in a second stage an econometric analysis based on robust gmm estimators reveals an inverted u shape relationship between oil consumption and economic efficiency in order to capture heterogeneities among countries development stages the analysis has been separated into two groups advanced economies and developing emerging economies the results show that advanced economies have much higher turning points compared to emerging and developing economies it appears that oil consumption increases countries economic efficiency in addition the consumption patterns of oil products and its derivatives have changed through years and among countries the different turning points from the econometric analysis indicate the dependence of oil consumption in advanced economies higher turning points is driven mainly by household purchasing activities and their standards of living transport housing and water food etc finally it appears that oil consumption is the main driver behind the progress of industrialization and urbanization regardless of the country s development stage

sectoral and macroeconomic impacts of the large combustion plants in poland a general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper analyses the final incidence of direct costs of implementation of the eu directive on so 2 and no x emission limits for large combustion plants in poland first we simulate a model from a power sector perspective where compliance with the directive appears to be associated only with direct costs second a more realistic market wide perspective is modeled where abatement costs borne by the power sector become the revenues of the sectors supplying abatement technologies and services simulations indicate that if environmental benefits of implementation are unaccounted for the directive would seem to cause a deadweight loss in the economy the overall impact however is likely to be less negative than what the interest groups claim

the role of policy in energy transitions lessons from the energy liberalisation era the aim of this paper is to discuss the period of energy privatisation and liberalisation which began in the 1980s within its wider historical context the key issues are what has been learned from this recent period and how significant is it in the light of an energy transition to low carbon energy system by 2050 energy liberalisation has led to positive and globally widespread but modest efficiency gains but a lack of clearly visible direct benefits to households in many countries it has significantly improved the governance of monopoly utilities via independent regulators the prospects for competition and innovation and the quality of policy instruments for environmental emissions control through the emergence of trading mechanisms we conclude that it is not liberalisation per se that will determine the movement towards a low carbon energy transition but the willingness of societies to bear the cost which will be significant no matter what the extent of liberalisation

tightening environmental standards the benefit cost or the no cost paradigm ms ff ichael porter and claas van der linde have written a paper that is interesting and to us at least somewhat astonishing it is a defense of environmental regulation indeed an invitation to more stringent regulation that makes essentially no reference to the social benefits of such regulation this approach contrasts starkly with the methods that economists and other policy analysts have traditionally used when assessing environmental or other regulatory programs the traditional approach consists of comparing the beneficial effects of regulation with the costs that must be borne to secure these benefits for environmental regulation the social benefits include the reductions in morbidity or premature mortality that can accompany cleaner air the enhanced recreational opportunities that can result from water quality improvements the increased land values that might attend the cleanup of a hazardous waste site the enhanced vitality of aquatic ecosystems that might follow reductions in agricultural pesticide use or any of the other potentially significant benefits associated with tighter standards from this benefit cost approach emerges the standard tradeoff discussed in virtually every economics textbook porter and van der linde deny the validity of this approach to the analysis of environmental regulation claiming it to be an artifact of what they see as a static mindset in their view economists have failed to appreciate the capacity of

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

menu costs and the neutrality of money a model of endogenous price adjustment under money growth is presented firms follow s s pricing policies and price revisions are imperfectly synchronized in the aggregate price stickiness disappears and money is neutral the connection between firm price adjustment and relative price variability in the presence of monetary growth is also investigated the results contrast with those obtained in models with exogenous fixed timing of price adjustment

the substantial bias from ignoring general equilibrium effects in estimating excess burden and a practical solution we show that under typical conditions the simple excess burden triangle formula substantially underestimates the excess burden of commodity taxes in some cases by a factor of 10 or more this formula performs poorly because it ignores general equilibrium interactions most important interactions between the taxed commodity and the labor market many prior studies have shown that general equilibrium interactions affect excess burden but have not appreciated the bias associated with ignoring these interactions or the quantitative importance of this bias we derive an implementable alternative to the simple formula this alternative formula captures interactions that the simple formula omits as a result it is both unbiased and usually more accurate

variable price adjustment costs i introduction costly price adjustment models often called menu cost models see mankiw 1985 are based on the assumption that nominal price changes in product markets are costly with aggregate inflation the optimal pricing policies are state contingent the firm lets its real price drift until it reaches a threshold the nominal price is then changed so as to make the new real price equal to a target value the simplest case is the one sided s s policy studied by sheshinski and weiss 1977 the real price is increased to s after it has been eroded by inflation to s 1 nominal prices are held constant for extended periods of time as is apparent to anyone with eyesight rotemberg 1987 as the timing of price changes is chosen optimally the optimal policies dominate time contingent policies 2 not surprisingly the models have been adopted in the new keynesian literature as a microfoundation for nominal rigidities along with monopolistic competition and coordination failures they have entered the mainstream of that literature 3 given their importance for the new keynesian approach costly price adjustment models require closer scrutiny there are two basic problems first it is not clear what the costs of price adjustment are second there is empirical evidence inconsistent with the standard fixed cost model 4 1 more complex policies are studied by barro 1972 tsiddon 1988 caplin and leahy 1991 and dixit 1991 2 see discussions in blanchard and fischer 1990 and caplin and leahy 1991 a notable exception are time inconsistent problems which may arise in long term contracts 3 rotemberg 1987 ball mankiw and romer 1988 blanchard 1990 and gordon 1990 review macroeconomic applications textbook expositions are in blanchard and fischer 1990 mccafferty 1990 abel and bernanke 1992 and mankiw 1992 4 another issue is how a smooth aggregate price level results from lumpy individual adjustments on this see caplin and spulber 1987 and caballero and engel 1991 the costs of price changes are of two basic types first are the costs of market response customers switching competitors pricing more aggressively etc second are the costs of changing the menu deciding on the new price changing labels informing salesmen and customers etc in existing literature the costs are assumed to be fixed which suggests that they are of the latter type 5 the main criticism of this approach is that as menu costs are small the results are unlikely to be empirically relevant or economically significant mccallum 1989 summarizes this argument in response akerlof and yellen 1985 and mankiw 1985 argued that as the profit function is flat around its maximum profits are not responsive to changes in the real price thus even small costs may result in infrequent price changes empirical evidence supports neither the criticism nor the response the observed frequency of price changes is often too low and real price variations are too large to be generated by a small menu cost for example cecchetti 1986 finds that a typical u s weekly magazine would change its nominal price once every four to six years allowing the real price to deteriorate by about 25 percent results for monopolistic newspapers in canada studied by fisher and konieczny 1992 are similar the average price increase for the twenty six products in israel studied by lach and tsiddon 1992 was 12 percent when the monthly inflation rate was 7 3 percent also in kashyap 1990 price changes vary greatly in size across products sold in the same catalog even though presumably the menu cost is similar with respect to the second problem fixed cost models imply that the size of adjustment rises with inflation the real price is allowed to be eroded more and is reset to a higher value yet in lach and tsiddon 1992 this holds for only sixteen out of twenty six products adjustments become smaller for eight and there is no effect in two cases

an astructural analysis of national forest policy and employment linkages between sector specific policy and sector employment are explored using a nonstationary markov chain analysis when parameterization of transition probabilities between employment sectors includes policy variables hypothesis tests can determine policy impact relative to other variables this astructural approach eliminates bias inherent in structural models application of this technique to oregon s forestry sector and national forest policy demonstrates that macroeconomic forces have statistically important effects on employment while national forest policy measured as timber sold or timber cut does not this result raises questions about forest policy impact analysis and assumptions inherent in national forest policy implementation

a near rational model of the business cycle with wage and price inertia this paper presents a model in which insignificantly suboptimal behavior causes aggregate demand shocks to have significant real effects the individual loss to agents with inertial price wage behavior is second order in terms of the parameter describing the shock while the effect on real economic variables is first order thus significant changes in business activity can be generated by anticipated money supply changes provided that some agents are willing to engage in nonmaximizing behavior which results in small losses

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

the control of co2 emissions and its economic impact an age model for a german state since it is believed that co2 is responsible for 55 of the greenhouse effect a co2 levy is now under consideration in several countries for an assessment of the macroeconomic implications of an integrated energy and environmental policy we employ an applied general equilibrium model age since all sectors of an economy and all private households contribute to co2 emission our model is a temporary equilibrium model with capacity extension under adjustment costs and with abatement activities for so2 and nox emissions

estimating the costs of environmental protection in brazil abstract in this paper an effort is made to estimate the amounts of money the government of the state of sao paulo brazil must transfer to counties in which environmentally protected areas of any sort have been established by the state a methodology to estimate these transfers is proposed based on the potential loss of production in the protected areas and the corresponding amounts are calculated the results indicate that protecting 7 68 of the state s territory will cause a maximum decrease in its gdp of 0 05 the estimation of monetary values for environmental costs is of interest because it provides a basis for judgement among different environmental protection alternatives and between these and other investment projects

environmental and gender feedbacks in macroeconomics abstract potential interactions between the macroeconomic and environmental and or gender eg systems are traced out drawing on insights from the other papers in this special issue and the eg literature more generally

environmental technological change and governance in sustainable development policy abstract an evolutionary economics perspective between technological innovation and public policy is applied to analyse the relationships between technological change sustainable development and industrial competitiveness this leads us to emphasise the fundamental role that firm s strategies vis a vis the endogenisation of technological change can play for giving effect to win win strategies however allowing industrial competition to become the only factor determining win win strategies could lead to locked technological and social options being chosen which do not contribute to overall goals of ecological social and economic sustainability for this reason we introduce as complements to competitiveness the requirement of new forms of governance in pursuit of ecological economic sustainability

linking conservation and welfare a theoretical model with application to nepal abstract theoretical articles linking conservation and welfare find a negative relationship between these two variables while empirical studies show that land protection may be positively related to welfare several authors attribute this empirical result to the development of ecotourism in protected areas we thus argue that the gap between the theory and existing empirical results is partly explained by the fact that most theoretical models do not account for a productive activity on protected land therefore we develop a theoretical model in which conservation allows developing an alternative sector and show that the relationship between conservation and welfare is u shaped we test this theoretical prediction using nepalese data and find that conservation combined with ecotourism is indeed positively related to local welfare

amenities and regional differences in returns to worker characteristics average wages in regions in the united states vary considerably in trying to explain these differences in the average wage across regions a number of studies have found that differences in the returns to characteristics of workers such as years of schooling are as important as differences in the skill composition of the labor force 4 6 10 141 these differences in returns are generally interpreted as reflecting regional differences in demand for worker characteristics coupled with barriers to factor mobility this interpretation is based on the argument that the presence of at least one perfectly mobile factor with perfect information will cause spatial convergence in characteristic prices as that particular factor exploits any spatial price differential 4 p 2161 this paper suggests an alternative to this demand based explanation for regional differences in the structure of wages one based on regional differences in the supply of worker characteristics this explanation does not rely on impediments to the movement of workers or firms and is consistent with an equilibrium view of wages in which regional wage differentials are viewed as compensation for local amenities the theoretical model presented in the following section assumes capital and labor are perfectly mobile with perfect information implying that in equilibrium the utility of workers with similar characteristics is the same in all locations this convergence of utility however does not necessarily imply convergence of characteristic prices equilibrium differences in the returns to a specific worker characteristic can exist if worker characteristics affect an individual s valuation of an area s amenities relative to the individual s demand for land

environmental regulation cost and industry structure changes nonstationary markov analyses are used to investigate impacts of environmental regulatory costs associated with compliance on changes in market structure in pulp and paper industries results show environmental regulation expenditures have statistically significant effects on the probabilities of capacity moving to a larger company size category so industry structure is affected by environmental regulation however counter to expectations results further show consolidation occurs with higher probability when environmental costs are falling rather than when they are rising policy analyses that presume immediate policy responses to cost changes or that industry structure is unchanged may yield time inconsistent policy conclusions

a comparison of industrial productivity growth in canada and the united states this paper provides a consistent international comparison of the patterns of growth in canadian and u s industries while much previous work has been done comparing sectoral total factor productivity in these two countries the methods are not entirely comparable our approach here is to use methods and definitions that are almost identical for the two countries and therefore to provide a better sense of the relative productivity performance of the two countries our methodology for international comparisons of growth in output inputs and productivity is based on the economic theory of production we use measures of labor and capital that take into account the changing composition of the labor force and capital stocks relatively more educated and older workers and relatively more equipment compared to structures we find that during the 1961 1973 period canadian industries were able to bring their productivity levels closer to u s levels and they also had a higher rate of output growth however the growth in output and productivity slowed down after 1973 in both countries as a result the gap in the level of productivity between the canadian and u s industries has remained virtually unchanged since 1973 looking closely at the sources of industrial output growth we find that input growth is the predominant source of the growth for almost all industries in the two countries over the 1961 1995 period productivity growth contributes on average only about 20 percent of the growth of industrial output in the two countries over this period

measuring the environmental consequences of trade policy a nonmarket cge analysis the newly approved gatt trade agreement is likely to focus greater attention on the conflicts between the proliferation of diverse national policies toward environmental quality and the need to maintain competitiveness in world markets virtually all policy evaluations of this conflict have been limited by a significant misspecification in existing models none of the available computable general equilibrium cge models for international trading patterns consistently reflect the effects of environmental resources on consumers preferences the purpose of this paper is to report the first generation of a composite nonmarket and cge model nm cge for the european community the united states japan and a single region for the rest of the world the model incorporates the morbidity and mortality effects of particulates sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides it uses existing nonmarket valuation estimates freeman with a specification for consumer preferences that allows changes in atmospheric emissions to diffuse in different amounts to

new classical macroeconomics a sympathetic account the essential ingredients of new classical nc macroeconomics are 1 adoption of the equilibrium approach to model construction 2 acceptance of the natural rate hypothesis 3 a belief in the superiority of policy based on rules and 4 a strong skepticism regarding the empirical relevance for macroeconomic issues of rational bubble phenomena recent keynesian analyses stressing the interaction of monopolistic competition with pricechange menu costs are not incompatible with the nc approach but have not been highly successful a nc policy strategy that recognizes current weaknesses in macroeconomic understanding is described and rationalized and an analytical basis for nc skepticism regarding bubbles sunspots etc is outlined

estimates of the costs of kyoto marrakesh versus the mckibbin wilcoxen blueprint in this paper we update our earlier estimates of the cost of the kyoto protocol using the g cubed model taking into account the new sink allowances from recent negotiations as well as allowing for multiple gases and new land clearing estimates we then compare the protocol to an alternative policy outlined in mckibbin et al brookings policy brief no 17 june the brookings institution washington 1997 climate change policy after kyoto a blueprint for a realistic approach the brookings institution washington 2002a j econom perspect 16 2 2002b 107 that does not impose rigid emissions targets we focus particular attention on the sensitivity of compliance costs under each policy to unexpected changes in future economic conditions to illustrate the issue we evaluate the policies under two plausible alternative assumptions about a single aspect of the future world economy the rate of productivity growth in russia we find that moderate growth in russia would raise the cost of the kyoto protocol by as much as 50 percent but would have little effect on the cost of the alternative policy we conclude that the kyoto protocol is inherently unstable because unexpected future events could raise compliance costs substantially and place enormous pressure on governments to abrogate the agreement the alternative policy would be far more stable because it does not subject future governments to adverse shocks in compliance costs

when green isn t mean economic theory and the heuristics of the impact of environmental regulations on competitiveness and opportunity cost abstract the conventional neoclassical economic wisdom argues that the opportunity costs of environmental regulations are high with negative implications for costs and profits and by implication for growth and per capita gross domestic product gdp the minority view that environmental controls induce cost offsets that minimise such opportunity costs is marginalised by the conventional wisdom which assumes that economic agents are x efficient in production a behavioral model of the firm is presented in this paper whereby x inefficiency in production prevails even in a world of perfect product market competition that is dominated by rational economic agents in this model environmental regulations affect both the level of x efficiency and the extent of technological change and greener firms can be cost competitive and profitable however private economic agents cannot be expected to adopt green economic policy independent of regulations since in this model there need not be any economic advantage accruing to the affected firms in becoming greener

macro economic and development indexes and iso14001 certificates a cross national analysis abstract environmental management systems emss implemented according to the iso14001 standard have been examined by many authors especially focussing on its impact at the firm level however only a few papers have investigated the impact of iso14001 from a country perspective this paper aims to contribute to bridging this gap the aim is to study the relation between iso14001 growth and the trend in selected macro economic and development indexes by applying the growth mixture model to a panel of 73 countries for the period 1999 2012 we assess the following hypotheses a the increase in numbers of iso14001 certifications corresponds to an increase in economic indexes b the increase in iso14001 corresponds to an increase in development indexes c the trends of iso14001 adoption and macro economic indexes confirm the relationship described by the environmental kuznets curve the results confirm a positive relation among the trends of some variables such as iso14001 and gross domestic product gdp iso14001 and industry value added while no significant results were found when observing the relation between iso14001 and the selected development indexes in addition using the industry added value as the variable to measure economic development our results support the theory of the environmental kuznets curve

banning the bulb institutional evolution and the phased ban of incandescent lighting in germany much academic attention has been directed at analysing energy efficiency investments through the lens of behavioural failure these studies have challenged the neoclassical framing of regulation which emphasises the efficiency benefits of price based policy underpinned by the notion of rational individual self mastery the increasing use of a regulatory ban on electric lamps in many countries is one of the most recent and high profile flash points in this dialectic of freedom versus the state in the public policy discourse this paper interrogates this debate through a study of electric lamp diffusion in germany it is argued that neoclassical theory and equilibrium analysis is inadequate as a tool for policy analysis as it takes the formation of market institutions such as existing regulations for granted further still it may be prone to encourage idealistic debates around such grand narratives which may in practice simply serve those who benefit most from the status quo instead we argue for an evolutionary approach which we suggest offers a more pragmatic framing tool which focuses on the formation of market institutions in light of shifting social norms and political goals in our case progress towards energy efficiency and environmental goals

graduate education in ecological economics abstract interest in graduate education in ecological economics is increasing however no formal plan of study for a phd in ecological economics has been disseminated the lack of a formal plan is problematic as the field of ecological economics matures interest grows and new programs are being developed this paper attempts to fill a void by creating a program of study addressing the proficiencies a graduate student in ecological economics should have upon completion of his her phd based on the us educational system the plan of study presented in this paper has been developed to make the graduate of an ecological economics program as competitive on the labor market as students awarded traditional economics degrees the plan i describe is created to meet the requirements necessary for a phd in ecological economics further fields of specialization are suggested to complement the core of an ecological economics program to enhance the education process and to give the student with an ecological economics degree a higher level of marketability

climate change and the planetary trust abstract three models for thinking about our responsibilities with respect to climate change are compared and evaluated one is concerned with maximizing the present discounted value of consumption the second views climate change through the lens of the tragedy of the commons both of these approaches are found to rest on implausible assumptions a third model based on the conception of a fiduciary trust is found to be more credible and not to require overly burdensome policies

wages rents and amenities differences among workers and regions what explains persistent regional earnings differences this paper argues that regional differences in amenities can account for the wage differences in contrast cost of living variations do not account for wage differences but actually exacerbate them this conclusion results from a model in which variations in rents and wages are equalizing differences for amenity differences empirical results are consistent with the model

case study evidence that direct regulation remains the main driver of industrial pollution avoidance and may benefit operational efficiency abstract environmental regulation is required to reduce industrial pollution to levels that are socially acceptable and economically efficient but there is debate over the most efficient form of such regulation typically a limited range of environmental and economic parameters are accounted for in the econometric studies that inform that debate this paper integrates evidence from two separate studies to assess a broad range of parameters related to the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation questionnaire responses from 25 italian manufacturers of building chemicals and 28 irish pharmaceutical manufacturers provided evidence on the environmental effectiveness and operational impacts of different regulatory instruments combined with extensive emissions data from irish pharmaceutical manufacturers survey results enabled a quantitative estimation of pollution avoidance specifically attributable to direct regulation the monetised social benefit of avoided pollution was found to be equal to direct compliance costs chemical manufacturers in italy and ireland stated that direct regulation is a more important driver of industrial environmental performance than economic or voluntary regulation and their responses indicated that direct compliance costs may be countered somewhat by stimulated operational improvements it was concluded that direct regulation is an effective approach for multi pollutant control in an industrial context and that the efficiency of such regulation may be underestimated in studies that do not consider the full range of pollutants and operational effects

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 dynamic effects of open space conservation policies on residential development density abstract recent economic analyses emphasize that designated open space increases the rents on neighboring residential land and likewise the probability of undeveloped land converting to residential uses this paper addresses a different question what is the effect of local open space conservation on the rate of growth in the density of residential land a discrete choice econometric model of lakeshore development is estimated with a unique parcel level spatial temporal dataset using maximum simulated likelihood to account for i the panel structure of the data ii unobserved spatial heterogeneity and iii sample selection resulting from correlated unobservables results indicate that contrary to the intuition derived from the current literature local open space conservation policies do not increase the rate of growth in residential density and some open space conservation policies may reduce the rate of growth in residential development density this is consistent with land value complementarity between local open space and parcel size

the role of amenities and quality of life in rural economic growth a structural model of regional economic growth is estimated using data for 2243 rural u s counties five indices designed to capture specific amenity and quality of life characteristics are constructed using fifty four separate indicators results suggest that amenity characteristics can be organized into consistent and meaningful empirical measures that move beyond ad hoc descriptions of amenities in addition to insights into the influence of local characteristics ranging from tax burdens to income distribution on regional economic growth results suggest that predictable relationships between amenities quality of life and local economic performance exist

the value of environment across efficiency quantiles a conditional regression quantiles analysis of rangelands beef production in north eastern australia in agricultural systems the value of environmental inputs can be measured using the production function approach whereby the marginal contributions of factors are associated with a shadow value under perfect competition and rationality assumptions however empirical studies show that inefficiency in production is common indicating that the rationality assumption is not met furthermore substantial evidence exists to suggest that the contributions of environmental inputs in particular may be differentiated across the efficiency distribution this means that the frontier technology may not be an appropriate reflection of the technology in use by inefficient enterprises this article presents the use of conditional regression quantiles to consider how the value of environmental inputs measured by their contributions to production vary across efficiency quantiles we employed a case study of rangelands beef production in australia to consider how environmental health differentially contributes to production values across efficiency quantiles our approach generates detailed insights into the nature of environmentally sourced technical inefficiency and suggests that conditional quantile regression approaches are ideal for consideration of issues wherein substantial heterogeneity exists limiting the information content of conditional mean based analyses

inflation and efficiency in search markets this paper examines how inflation affects efficiency and output in monopolistically competitive search markets it formalizes the conventional wisdom linking higher inflation price dispersion and increased resources devoted to search it also brings to light the induced exit of arms which reduces rent dissipation but the most important effect of inflation is how it alters the distribution of real transactions prices whether this reduces or promotes efficiency and output is shown to depend critically on preferences and market structure and especially on whether search costs are large or small relative to consumer surplus

environmental regulation and the export dynamics of energy technologies abstract the pollution haven hypothesis affirms that an open market regime will encourage the flow of low technology polluting industries toward developing countries because of potential comparative advantages related to low environmental standards in contrast the hypothesis suggested by porter and van der linde claims that innovating firms operate in a dynamic competitive situation which allows global diffusion of environmental friendly technologies environmental regulation may represent a relevant mechanism through which technological change is induced in this way countries that are subject to more stringent environmental regulations may become net exporters of environmental technologies this paper provides new evidence on the evolution of export flows of environmental technologies across different countries for the energy sector advanced economies particularly the european union have increasingly focused on the role of energy policies as tools for sustaining the development path the kyoto protocol commitments together with growing import dependence on energy products have brought attention to the analysis of innovation processes in this specific sector the analysis uses a gravity model in order to test the determinants and the transmission channels through which environmental technologies for renewable energies and energy efficiency are exported to advanced and developing countries our results are consistent with the porter and van der linde hypothesis where environmental regulation represents a significant source of comparative advantages what strongly emerges is that the stringency of environmental regulation supplemented by the strength of the national innovation system is a crucial driver of export performance in the field of energy technologies

on the stubbornness of sticky prices this paper presents a simple menu cost example in which there is a clear distinction between price stickiness and downward rigidity of prices while price stickiness may or may not exist in menu cost models downward rigidity shows up whenever there is a reduction of the expected rate of inflation this reduction changes the optimal target and threshold for each firm for some it also implies an immediate increase of their own price this upward jump of prices in case of a disinflationary attempt is interpreted as downward rigidity since there are no symmetric forces when expected inflation increases copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

technical change and measuring pollution abatement costs an activity analysis framework the cornerstones of studies that estimate the effectof environmental regulations on an economy areestimates of the pollution abatement costs incurred bythe manufacturing and electric utility sectors however there are concerns regarding the accuracy ofthe surveys used to generate these cost estimates this paper demonstrates that technical change tends toresult in an increasing share of pollution abatementcosts being impossible to measure this finding hasimportant implications for estimating the productivityeffects of environmental regulations developingregulatory budgets and data collection effortsrelated to environmental accounting

reprint of linking conservation and welfare a theoretical model with application to nepal theoretical articles linking conservation and welfare find a negative relationship between these two variables while empirical studies show that land protection may be positively related to welfare several authors attribute this empirical result to the development of ecotourism in protected areas we thus argue that the gap between the theory and existing empirical results is partly explained by the fact that most theoretical models do not account for a productive activity on protected land therefore we develop a theoretical model in which conservation allows developing an alternative sector and show that the relationship between conservation and welfare is u shaped we test this theoretical prediction using nepalese data and find that conservation combined with ecotourism is indeed positively related to local welfare

what is new keynesian economics this research was supported by the national science foundation i am grateful to george williams for help with the data and to steven allen laurence ball olivier j blanchard timothy bresnahan charles calomiris dennis carlton robert chirinko russell cooper stanley fischer herschel grossman r glenn hubbard david laidler john leahy assar lindbeck n gregory mankiw david romer julio rotemberg dennis snower john taylor andrew weiss and two anonymous referees for comments on one or more earlier drafts i am also indebted to michael parkin and edmund s phelps for helping to establish the etymology of the phrase new keynesian

small menu costs and large business cycles a macroeconomic model of monopoly i introduction the conflict between modern neoclassical and traditional keynesian theories of the business cycle centers upon the pricing mechanism in neoclassical models prices are fully flexible they represent the continuous optimization of economic agents and the continuous intersection of supply and demand in keynesian models prices are often assumed to be sticky they do not necessarily equilibrate all markets at all times one of the reasons for the resurgence of the equilibrium approach to macroeconomics has been the absence of a theoretical underpinning for this keynesian price stickiness this note shows that sticky prices can be both privately efficient and socially inefficient the business cycle results from the suboptimal adjustment of prices in response to a demand shock to the extent that policy can stabilize aggregate demand it can mitigate the social loss due to this suboptimal adjustment in some keynesian models prices are simply exogenously fixed 2 in others agents must set their prices in advance of the transaction date the act of altering a posted price is certainly costly these costs include such items as printing new catalogs and informing salesmen of the new price yet these menu costs are small and therefore generally perceived as providing only a weak foundation for these fixed price models however this inference is flawed small menu costs can cause large welfare losses the claim that price adjustment costs are small does not rebut the claim that they are central to understanding economic fluctuations

applied general equilibrium models for energy studies a survey the importance of energy in any economy developed or underdeveloped became clear after the first oil shock in 1973 since then different studies were carried out to formulate energy policies and to study their impact on the economies since energy policy issues are related to various aspects of the economy such as price formation output determination income generation and distribution consumption behaviour government operation etc a coherent and systematic mechanism is required for such analysis by offering such a framework of analysis age models gained popularity among energy modellers in the 1980s the environmental issues have gained importance and the focus shifted towards curbing and containing emissions of environmentally unfriendly gases resulting from the use of energy age models because of their capability to capture the complexities of the economy have found relevance in analysing the economic impacts of controlling pollution and greenhouse gases this paper surveys the literature on such general equilibrium models as applied to energy studies and reports their special features evolution through time as well as their limitations

the impact of economics on environmental policy abstract environmental economists have seen their ideas translated into the rough and tumble policy world for over two decades they have witnessed the application of economic instruments to several environmental issues including preserving wetlands lowering lead levels and curbing acid rain this essay examines the impact of the rise of economics in the policy world on the making of environmental policy i focus on two related but distinct phenomena the increasing interest in the use of incentive based mechanisms such as tradable permits to achieve environmental goals and the increasing interest in the use of analytical tools such as benefit cost analysis in regulatory decision making i argue that economists and economic instruments have had a modest impact on shaping environmental health and safety regulation but that economists will play an increasingly important role in the future although the role of economics is becoming more prominent it does not follow that environmental policy will become more efficient this apparent inconsistency can be explained by the political economy of environmental policy

why are prices sticky the dynamics of wholesale gasoline prices the menu cost interpretation of sticky prices implies that the probability of a price change should depend on the past history of prices and fundamentals only through the gap between the current price and the frictionless price we find that this prediction is broadly consistent with the behavior of nine philadelphia gasoline wholesalers nevertheless we reject the menu cost model as a literal description of these firms behavior arguing instead that price stickiness arises from strategic considerations of how customers and competitors will react to price changes

inflation output and labour productivity when prices are changed infrequently when prices are changed infrequently the effect of inflation on output depends on the form of profit and demand functions this paper provides a general taxonomy at small inflation rates output falls rises stays the same if the demand function is concave convex linear in terms of the log of real price this holds when the frequency of price changes is fixed in case of a catalogue firm as well as when it is chosen optimally in case of a menu cost firm with fixed and variable price adjustments costs with some specifications inflation increases output but reduces labor productivity copyright 1990 by the london school of economics and political science

migration and interregional employment redistribution in the united states during the 1970 s the south and west census regions accounted for 89 9 percent of incremental u s population and 72 5 percent of incremental nonagricultural employment these figures are sharply higher than corresponding figures for any other decade in u s history for example during the 1930 s the south and west gained 65 4 percent of incremental national population which was the highest share previously recorded the immediate cause of the interregional population shifts is fairly heavy net out migration from the northeast and north central regions to the south and west combined with birth rates that are near historical low levels interactive relationships that cause employment growth and migration to reinforce one another are probably operating but these relationships are not well understood they are the focus of this paper using a new and unique set of time series data on migration and employment we develop and estimate a time series model of migration and employment growth for each of 171 u s regions our primary emphasis in this paper is on the 57 major metropolitan

menu costs entry deterrence and nominal rigidity this paper studies in a model of entry deterrence conditions under which a small cost of changing nominal prices combined with a real rigidity leads to a large nominal rigidity the entry deterrence environment which generates the real rigidity provides an appealing explanation as to why firms sometimes react to shocks by changing output instead of prices as in ball and romer 1990 a large nominal rigidity arises with some parameter values it is not however monotonically increasing as real prices become more rigid the paper studies in a model of entry deterrence conditions under which a small cost of changing nominal prices combined with a real rigidity leads to a large nominal rigidity the entry deterrence environment which generates the real rigidity provides an appealing explanation as to why firms sometimes react to shocks by changing output instead of prices as in ball and romer 1990 a large nominal rigidity arises with some parameter values it is not however monotonically increasing as real prices become more rigid

bringing economic opportunity into line with environmental influence a discussion on the coase theorem and the porter and van der linde hypothesis environmental concerns and tightened environmental policy parameters have been associated with the notion of additional costs of compliance rather than with innovation and sustainability the contrary has also been suggested claiming that strict environmental legislation merely serves as a catalyst for firms to retain obvious economic and environmental mutual gains so called win wins laying around waiting to be collected such implications can be seen from the porter and van der linde writings heavily criticised by palmer et al as being built on faulty examples this paper supports that conclusion and uses property rights and transactions costs theories to find private incentives to explore the win wins for those actors who have the largest potentials to diminish the pressure on our environment by applying the coase theorem emphasising transaction costs and property rights this paper argues that strong public support is needed to create private incentives for exploring economic and environmental win win innovations the public support suggested is to a extend producer responsibilities where the same costs which may be neglected by the end consumers will if transferred to the design owner be viewed as a production cost and to b enforce environmental public procurement both may be combined with a support to c actors such as non governmental organisations and consumer agencies positioning themselves as information bridges by informing the consumers the negative effects of asymmetric information among actors can thereby be diminished as well as the low interest to primarily care for the environment among common consumers

the dynamics of u s internal migration in this paper we have theoretically derived a net migration equation and estimated it using time series data for 51 u s regions over the period 1971 1988 the results indicate that the dynamic response of net migration is stable and is significantly related to stock equilibrium changes induced by amenity differentials relative employment opportunities relative real wages and industry composition excerpt

messy marginal costs internal pricing of environmental aspects on the firm level abstract internal pricing of environmental aspects is usually not embedded in management accounting systems therefore we first show that pricing from a corporative perspective is possible and applicable contrary to common belief we also show that marginal costs curves of environmental aspects are often not monotonic and price changes are highly context specific we introduce a model that addresses different environmental aspects that translate into constraints or change direct cost factors in the objective function environmental constraints originate from different types of limit values concerning emissions and production processes as well as restraining the potential environmental damage as the outcome of ecological valuation methods direct cost factors include the taxation of emissions and costs stemming from being involved in the emissions trading market our model allows for calculating the marginal indirect costs of these environmental aspects as the constraints might enforce factor and product substitutions we show that the marginal costs differ substantially from the direct costs and do not follow a predictable pattern sensitivity analysis and parametric programming are applied to set up an internal pricing and cost allocation scheme for environmental aspects specifically focusing on the pricing of emissions resources and processes of production and recycling the model s implications on corporate decision making are illustrated by a numerical example that draws on the opportunity of process substitution e g producing a product on different machines even though we cannot use original data for proprietary reasons such settings are highly relevant in industry and the energy sector

inflation and costly price adjustment a study of canadian newspaper prices the paper studies the effect of inflation on price behaviour using price data from canadian daily newspapers we test the sheshinski and weiss 1977 monopoly price adjustment model on a sample of monopolistic as well as oligopolistic newspapers in contrast to earlier studies that used data from oligopolistic or monopolistically competitive markets the results depend crucially on the assumptions about how often the firm collects information and revises its optimal pricing policy with infrequent policy revisions the results for monopoly newspapers support the model the results for oligopoly newspapers are similar

environmental regulation and environmental productivity the case of china abstract constrained by the dual mission of supporting industrial growth and reducing emissions china s traditional emission reduction oriented environmental policies unavoidably face a dilemma this study adopts the gml index to calculate china s industrial productivity by considering environmental factors in addition based on the assumption of industry heterogeneity the author examines the non linear relationship between china s environmental regulation and environmental productivity and calculated the optimal regulation environment for industries according to this study when impact of undesirable outputs pollutant emissions is considered environmental regulation and environmental productivity are positively correlated which to some degree validates the porter hypothesis at present environmental regulation has significant positive effects on clean production industries but shows a lag effect on pollution intensive industries the degree of environmental regulation and environmental productivity show an inverted u shaped relation and display three thresholds it should be noted however that the relationship between regulation and productivity may vary across industries these findings have clear policy implications rather than continually increasing the level of environmental regulation the government should establish standards for individual industries that emphasize flexibility