where has all the bias gone detecting gender bias in the intrahousehold allocation of educational expenditure abstract the reliability of the household consumption based engel curve methodology in detecting gender bias has been called into question because it has generally failed to confirm bias even where it exists this article seeks to find explanations for this failure by exploiting a data set that has educational expenditure information at the individual level and also by aggregation at the household level i find that in the basic education age groups the discriminatory mechanism in education is via differential enrollment rates for boys and girls education expenditure conditional on enrollment is equal for boys and girls the engel curve method fails for two reasons first it models a single equation for the two stage process second even when we make individual and household level expenditure equations as similar as possible the household level equation still fails to pick up gender bias in about one third of the cases where the individual level equation shows significant bias this article

using a policy mix for pollution control a review of economic literature this article provides a review of economic studies analyzing the use of multiple policies a socalled policy mix to cope with single pollution problems to guide and structure the review an analytical framework is developed and applied the framework integrates transaction costs into the analysis of pollution problems and policies to overcome them moreover it understands a pollution externality not only as a market failure but more generally as the failure of private governance structures based on this insight two rationales for using a policy mix are identified first a policy mix may help to correct for multiple reinforcing failures of private governance structures such as pollution externalities and technological spillovers second a policy mix can be employed if the implementation of single first best policies brings about high transaction costs e g when marginal pollution damages are heterogeneous or polluters are unlikely to comply with the policy for each rationale the relevant literature is presented based on the review avenues for future research are identified

economic efficiency effects of alternative policies for reducing waste disposal abstract reducing the amount of municipal solid waste that is disposed of has become an important policy goal previous research argued that a virgin material tax offered an efficient method of meeting this goal and it continues to be considered as a policy option today this paper demonstrates however that a virgin material tax is not an efficient method of reducing waste but that an alternative policy a combined disposal tax and reuse subsidy is the combined disposal tax and reuse subsidy is theoretically consistent with unit based household charges for waste disposal but may have advantages in some situations

zero observations and gender differences in cigarette consumption censoring mechanisms and gender differences are investigated for cigarette consumption by individuals in the usa the gaussian single hurdle model is proposed which generalizes the specifications of cragg 1971 and heckman 1979 and allows examination of the empirical relevance of the two censoring mechanisms in the existing double hurdle model the proposed model performs better than cragg s and heckman s models but not as well as the double hurdle model and also produces different elasticity estimates the hypothesis of equal consumption parameters is rejected and demand elasticities found to differ between men and women income does not play a role and age has conflicting effects on the probability and level of cigarette smoking older individuals are less likely to smoke but conditional on smoking consume more cigarettes than their younger counterparts education has negative effects on the probability and level of smoking and can be an effective tool to curtail cigarette smoking

scrap prices waste and recycling policy this study examines the effect of waste and recycling policy on scrap prices and the importance of scrap price feedbacks as a determinant of policy costs price effects and direct and indirect channels of waste reduction are decomposed for deposit refund advance disposal fee and recycling subsidies scrap price feedbacks decrease the cost of advance disposal fees increase the cost of recycling subsidies and have an ambiguous effect on the cost of deposit refund simulation analysis finds that scrap price feedbacks substantially affect the costs of the policies and alter the ranking of instruments jel q53 q58

the effect of experience and quantity based pricing on the valuation of a curbside recycling program abstract quantity based pricing for garbage collection services and recycling programs are becoming increasingly popular methods of meeting municipal solid waste diversion objectives this article investigates household willingness to pay wtp for a pilot curbside recycling program crp in the presence of a quantity based pricing scheme for garbage collection services which allows a household to alter their garbage container size at a reduced price unlike previous studies that have modeled the simultaneity of these household decisions as a two step process we jointly estimate the household s intentions using a full information maximum likelihood fiml approach our results show a strong positive correlation between a household s wtp for a crp and its stated intention to reduce its garbage container size when a crp is offered the positive correlation suggests that wtp will be higher for households which are more likely to reduce their garbage container size thus in the presence of quantity based pricing a household s wtp for recycling more fully reflects the marginal social costs of garbage disposal

intrahousehold resource allocation in rural pakistan a semiparametric analysis we estimate semiparametric engel curves for rural pakistan using a large household survey this allows us to obtain consistent estimates of the effects of household size and composition on consumption patterns even when these demographic variables are correlated with an unknown function of income the coefficients on the household composition variables are used to infer patterns of intrahousehold allocation while there is little evidence of gender bias amongst children adult males appear to get more than adult females there is a tendency amongst males for workers to get more than dependents there is no evidence of differential treatment of the elderly and higher birth order children we identify substantial economies of size in food consumption we also find that engel curces for food adult goods and child goods are nonlinear which suggests that the piglog class of demand models in inappropriate

generation of household solid waste in oecd countries an empirical analysis using macroeconomic data while there are numerous studies that use household level and community level data to examine the determinants of household solid waste generation rates little empirical work has been previously undertaken using macroeconomic data using a cross sectional time series database of solid waste in countries that are part of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd we provide evidence on the economic and demographic determinants of generation rates of household solid waste with respect to economic activity and population density the results are largely consistent with results found in previous studies however additional insights are gained on the effects of factors such as household size and composition as well as the degree of urbanization

collective bargaining and regional wage differences in spain an empirical analysis this article analyses the importance of labour market institutions and in particular collective wage bargaining in shaping regional wage differences in the spanish labour market using microdata from the spanish structure of earnings survey our results reveal that there are significant inter regional wage differences for similarly skilled workers these differences are present throughout the whole wage structure and can be explained by both competitive and non competitive factors such as insufficient competition in product markets in this context industry level collective bargaining plays a major role in accounting for regional wage differences a role that in the spanish case is enhanced due to its unusual regional dimension

policy evaluation with combined actual and contingent response data the city of marietta georgia experimentally switched from flat fee financing to volume based pricing for its trash services in january 1994 both before and during the experiment detailed data on individuals observed responses to the actual introduction and contingent behavioral responses to a hypothetical introduction of volume based pricing were collected this study applies these data and investigates the methodology of collecting contingent behavior data and their use in policy analysis in particular this study empirically evaluates the effect of experience with the policy on responses to contingent behavior questions and tests for potential bias in the contingent behavior data

recycling in multifamily dwellings does convenience matter factors that decrease the the cost of recycling have significant positive correlations with recycling rates in multifamily dwellings mfds waste management experts have previously used anecdotes to infer a link between convenience and waste diversion rates in mfd recycling programs this article confirms and quantifies that link by applying probit and double censored to bit analysis to survey data from 214 households in urbana illinois we find a strong connection between recycling rates and the perceived presence of adequate interior space for processing recyclables and distance to recycling bins affects container recycling intensity the results have implications for cost effective design of mfd recycling programs jel di q2 i introduction statistics from the u s environmental protection agency epa show that from 1960 to 1997 u s recycling rates rose from 6 4 to 28 and 9 000 curbside recycling programs were established epa 1998 such programs have traditionally been geared toward single family dwellings sfds conventional doctrine has been that recycling activity is likely to be limited in multifamily dwellings mfds however as residential recycling rates for sfds plateau in the united states solid waste managers and policy makers are becoming increasingly interested in mfd recycling programs by now at least half of all mfds may have access to a curbside recycling program epa 2001 stevens 1999 and the epa 1999 2001 show that waste diversion rates the fraction of a household s waste that is recycled instead of discarded as refuse tend to be slightly lower in mfds than in sfds but some mfd recycling programs have yielded diversion rates as high as 60 what factors influence the recycling rates chosen by residents of mfds in a detailed nationwide study the epa 2001 found that successful 20 or higher diversion rate mfd recycling programs tended to have large and numerous containers provided by the recycling service waste management experts emphasize the importance of convenience in yielding high waste diversion rates in mfd recycling programs with some record setting programs using strategies like doorstep pickup of recyclables in high rise apartment buildings epa 1999 such anecdotes are intriguing however although much work has studied sfd recycling behavior little has been done to explore mfd recycling in a rigorous statistical fashion a number of economists have studied the sensitivity of recycling behavior to pricing policies that alter the costs and benefits of recycling relative to disposal 1 another body of work has investigated the influence of nonpecuniary policies and variables on recycling in sfds work by vining and ebreo 1990 and ebreo and vining 2000 supports the notion that convenience may increase the number of people that identify themselves as recyclers however their data are strictly qualitative the earlier study dates from a time when only community drop off recycling was available and the later study is focused on public attitudes toward and expectations regarding changes in recycling policy jakus et al 1996 1997 use economic models and rigorous empirical analysis to study the influence on actual recycling behavior of recycling promotional campaigns and policies to alter the time cost of recycling they find evidence that recycling participation is not a function of home ownership or renting status per se however these articles do not delve into the details of mfd recycling because the data were collected in the context of rural drop off recycling a few studies have turned their attention to mfd recycling stevens 1999 finds that programs with high aggregate diversion rates are likely to have a relatively large ratio of collection bins to households mcquaid and murdoch 1996 conduct a qualitative analysis of mfd recycling in edinburgh that suggests that housing characteristics such as floor level presence of an elevator and household size may influence recycling rates

productivity gains from geographic concentration of human capital evidence from the cities abstract based on recent theoretical developments the argument is made that the average level of human capital is a local public good cities with higher average levels of human capital should therefore have higher wages and higher land rents after conditioning on the characteristics of individual workers and dwellings this prediction is supported by data for standard metropolitan statistical areas smsas in the united states where the smsa average levels of formal education and work experience are used as proxies for the average level of human capital the alternative explanations of omitted smsa variables and self selection are evaluated an estimate of the effect of an additional year of average education on total factor productivity is computed

designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice an overview of the issues abstract payments for environmental services pes have attracted increasing interest as a mechanism to translate external non market values of the environment into real financial incentives for local actors to provide environmental services es in this introductory paper we set the stage for the rest of this special issue of ecological economics by reviewing the main issues arising in pes design and implementation and discussing these in the light of environmental economics we start with a discussion of pes definition and scope we proceed to review some of the principal dimensions and design characteristics of pes programs and then analyze how pes compares to alternative policy instruments finally we examine in detail two important aspects of pes programs their effectiveness and their distributional implications pes is not a silver bullet that can be used to address any environmental problem but a tool tailored to address a specific set of problems those in which ecosystems are mismanaged because many of their benefits are externalities from the perspective of ecosystem managers pes is based on the beneficiary pays rather than the polluter pays principle and as such is attractive in settings where es providers are poor marginalized landholders or powerful groups of actors an important distinction within pes is between user financed pes in which the buyers are the users of the es and government financed pes in which the buyers are others typically the government acting on behalf of es users in practice pes programs differ in the type and scale of es demand the payment source the type of activity paid for the performance measure used as well as the payment mode and amount the effectiveness and efficiency of pes depends crucially on program design

changes in the u s wage structure 1963 1987 application of quantile regression the 1980 s witnessed rapid changes in the structure of wages in the united states in this study recently developed techniques for quantile regression are applied to every march current population survey since 1964 and changes in the return to schooling and experience at different points of the wage distribution are examined the quantile regression technique parsimoniously describes the entire conditional wage distribution this conditional distribution is used to examine changes in within group wage inequality as measured by the difference between conditional quantiles two linear models are considered a simple one group model and a 16 group model the results suggest that the returns to schooling and experience differ across quantiles of the wage distribution but their patterns of change are similar significant differences in wage inequality are also found across the various skill groups the paper also presents a new imputation method for cps data

human capital and regional wage gaps lopez bazo e and motellon e human capital and regional wage gaps regional studies this paper uses micro level data to analyse the effect of human capital on regional wage differentials the results for the set of spanish regions confirm that they differ in the endowment of human capital but also that the return that individuals obtain from it varies sharply across regions regional heterogeneity in returns is especially intense in the case of education particularly when considering its effect on the employability of individuals these differences in endowment and especially in returns to human capital account for a significant proportion of regional wage gaps lopez bazo e and motellon e lopez bazo e et motellon e le capital humain et les ecarts des salaires regionaux regional studies cet article emploie des m

the regional dimension of collective wage bargaining the case of belgium rusinek m and tojerow i the regional dimension of collective wage bargaining the case of belgium regional studies the potential failure of national industry agreements to take into account productivity levels in the least productive regions has been considered as one of the causes of regional unemployment in european countries this paper investigates the role of the collective bargaining structure in the relationship between regional wage and productivity differentials using a rich belgian linked employer employee dataset it is found that the more an industry is decentralized in terms of wage setting the more regional differences in productivity are reflected in wages it is concluded that the current belgian wage setting system already includes mechanisms that allow regional productivity to be taken into account

reconsidering gender bias in intrahousehold allocation in india abstract finding evidence of gender discrimination among children in the intrahousehold allocation of goods has often proven to be difficult this article uses data on education expenditures in india to test whether data aggregation data reliability and the statistical method used help explain this pattern results suggest that discrimination against girls is increasing in age and robust to the statistical method and the expenditure measure at the all india level although state level results are more sensitive i find that data aggregation and statistical method are important factors in detecting gender bias while data reliability does not seem to play a major role

estimating the gender wage gap in rawalpindi city studies estimating wage discrimination against women have rarely been conducted for third world countries and no research has been directed to this issue in pakistan at all this article uses data from rawalpindi city to calculate the magnitude of the male female earnings gap and identifies the proportion of this gap which results from discrimination as well as that which stems from differences between males and females in productivity characteristics in addition to the oaxaca model the recently developed cotton neumark model is also used to derive estimates in a new twist to such models adjustments are made for the presence of selectivity bias in the data the results indicate existence of high levels of discrimination against women as reflected in estimates of the earnings differentials

garbage recycling and illicit burning or dumping abstract with garbage and recycling as the only two disposal options we confirm prior results that the optimal curbside fee for garbage collection equals the direct resource cost plus external environment cost when illicit burning or dumping is a third disposal option that cannot be taxed directly the optimal curbside tax on garbage changes sign the optimal fee structure is a deposit refund system a tax on all output plus a rebate on proper disposal through either recycling or garbage collection the output tax helps achieve the first best allocation even though it affects the choice between consumption and untaxed leisure

gender and household education expenditure in pakistan pakistan has very large gender gaps in educational outcomes one explanation could be that girls receive lower educational expenditure allocations than boys within the household but this has never convincingly been tested this article investigates whether the intra household allocation of educational expenditure in pakistan favours males over females it also explores two different explanations for the failure of the extant engel curve studies to detect gender differentiated treatment in education even where gender bias is strongly expected using individual level data from the latest household survey from pakistan we posit two potential channels of gender bias bias in the decision whether to enrol keep sons and daughters in school and bias in the decision of education expenditure conditional on enrolling both sons and daughters in school in middle and secondary school ages evidence points to significant pro male biases in both the enrolment decision as well as the decision of how much to spend conditional on enrolment however in the primary school age group only the former channel of bias applies results suggest that the observed strong gender difference in education expenditure is a within rather than an across household phenomenon

upstream pollution downstream waste disposal and the design of comprehensive environmental policies abstract many policymakers are shifting their focus from media specific pollution problems to product specific life cycle environmental problems in this paper we develop a model of production and consumption that incorporates life cycle externalities and use it to solve for alternative policies to achieve a social optimum in general we find that no single instrument can solve multiple problems contrary to what some observers have suggested however we find that there are alternative ways of reaching the social optimum we also discover that an integrated approach to policy appears to be important no matter what policy options are adopted and finally we find that there is only a limited role for so called product life cycle assessments

decoupling waste generation from economic growth a cge analysis of the swedish case abstract over the past decades we have seen the quantities of solid waste increase in close relation to economic growth to tackle this problem of continuing waste growth the eu has on its agenda that waste generation should decouple from economic growth within the eu in the future sweden also has stated a target of non increasing future waste quantities the strength of the policy measures needed to attain this target is here illustrated by comparing the waste intensity outcomes in a decoupling scenario and a baseline scenario of the swedish economy 2006 2030 a computable general equilibrium cge model is used for linking waste generation to firms material input firms production and households consumption when projecting future quantities of hazardous and non hazardous waste in sweden we show that to offset the effect of economic growth on waste generation in the decoupling scenario the intensities of material related wastes must decrease at a yearly rate that is about twice the historically estimated reduction rate used in the baseline scenario the reduction in the intensities of waste related to firms production and households consumption must also be substantial compared to historical estimates

education gender gaps in pakistan is the labor market to blame abstract differential labor market returns to male and female education are one potential explanation for large gender gaps in education in pakistan we empirically test this explanation by estimating private returns to education separately for male and female wage earners this article contributes to the literature by using a variety of methodologies ordinary least squares heckman correction two stage least squares and household fixed effects in order to estimate economic returns to education the latest nationally representative data the pakistan integrated household survey 2002 are used earnings function estimates consistently reveal a sizable gender asymmetry in economic returns to education with returns to women s education being substantially and statistically significantly higher than men s the return to an additional year of schooling ranges between 7 and 11 for men and between 13 and 18 for women there are also large direct returns to women s education at low levels of schooling

a comparison of public policies for lead recycling policies that encourage recycling may be used to reduce environmental costs from waste disposal because direct restrictions on disposal are difficult to enforce four recycling policies have been advanced i taxes on the use of virgin materials ii deposit refund programs iii subsidies to recycled material production and iv recycled content standards in this article i analyze the structure of these policies and their cost effectiveness in achieving reductions in disposal i then examine the policies in the empirical context of the recycling of lead from automobile batteries in order to calculate the effects of recycling programs i estimate the elasticities for primary and secondary lead supply and demand my results suggest that price based policy mechanisms can be successful in increasing lead recovery and that the difference in efficiency between the four approaches is similar

waste management policies for industrial symbiosis development case studies in european countries industrial symbiosis is emerged as a self organizing business strategy among firms that are willing to cooperate to improve their economic and environmental performance the adoption of such cooperative strategies relates to increasing costs of waste management most of which are driven by policy and legislative requirements development of is depends on an enabling context of social informational technological economical and political factors the power to influence this context varies among the agents involved such as the government businesses or coordinating entities governmental intervention as manifested through policies could influence a wider range of factors and we believe this is an area which is under researched this paper aims to critically appraise the waste policy interventions from supra national to sub national levels of government a case study methodology has been applied to four european countries i e denmark the uk portugal and switzerland in which is emerged or is being fostered the findings suggest that there are commonalities in policy instruments that may have led to an is enabling context the paper concludes with lessons learnt and recommendations on shaping the policy context for is development

effects of norms and opportunity cost of time on household recycling social and moral norms and the opportunity cost of time will affect household recycling efforts a model is developed to describe how norms affect the recycling decision through feelings of self respect guilty conscience and warm glow as well as respect in and sanctions from the community we find that the opportunity cost of time has a significant negative effect on household recycling all indicators of warm glow social and moral norms increase household recycling efforts we find no evidence of crowding out neither when recycling is perceived as mandatory nor when economic incentives are introduced in the form of a differentiated garbage fee

trade offs in designing markets with multiple objectives abstract this paper explores some of the problems involved in designing markets with multiple objectives the first part of the paper considers the issue of how such markets are designed in theory while the second part reviews some evidence on actual applications in the field of air pollution control

regional disparities and national similarities in spanish unemployment a case of seasonal cointegration short run fluctuations in unemployment could be interpreted as transitory movements away from a hypothetical equilibrium the problem apart from the existence of such equilibrium is the existence of an adjustment mechanism that ensures the convergence of the short towards the long run with quarterly data from the spanish labour market since 1975 we have estimated a vectorial error correction model that allows for precisely this convergence the objective was to investigate the variables that explain the two distinctive features of spanish unemployment its size and its persistence we have found that there is a cointegration relationship between unemployment and production proxied by several variables for this reason rather than hysteresis we have found a high persistence in spanish unemployment this persistence could be explained by regional mismatch that is lack of adjustment between demand and supply of labour in some spanish regions we have used regional data to find those common trends i

green consumption under misperceived prices an application to active transportation we propose a consumption model that captures the impact that perceived price ambiguities may have upon decision making in green markets in general and in active transportation markets in particular the basic intuition for the model is that a consumer who may be misperceiving the price of the green good the active transportation mode would be willing to pay a positive amount from her income in the current period to resolve the misperception going forward we posit that the basis for the price misperception in the active transportation context is misperception of the relative risks involved in taking that mode the compensating variation that aligns perceived and objective risk is derived we show how raising green consumption via price misperception correction can be superior to traditional economic policy instruments the results shed light on the more general family of situations in which agents may consistently misperceive aspects of the decision environment

microdata evidence on rent sharing we examine the effect of firm profits on wages for individual workers while focusing on the empirical complications associated with estimating the extent of rent sharing controlling for worker and firm fixed effects and using several instruments to deal with the endogeneity of profits we report results indicating that ordinary least square ols estimates strongly underestimate the effects of profits on wages moreover the effect of profits on wages are estimated separately for firms with increasing and decreasing profits within a given time period we find a positive and stable effect only in firms with increasing profits this is in line with the idea that falling profits do not lead to wage cuts while increasing profits imply higher wages

explaining the variation in household recycling rates across the uk household waste recycling rates vary significantly both across and within regions of the uk this paper attempts to explain the variation by using a new data set of waste recycling rates and policy determinants for all of the uk s 434 local authorities over the period 2006q2 to 2008q4 our results suggest that the method of recycling collection chosen by policy makers is an important factor influencing the recycling rate we also find an inverse relationship between the frequency of the residual waste collection and the recycling rate

curbside recycling in the presence of alternatives we measure the extent to which curbside access affects quantity recycled we use novel data to distinguish between new recycling and material diverted from other recycling modes we find that the marginal impact of expanding curbside programs on total recycled quantities is small in part because curbside programs significantly cannibalize returns from drop off recycling centers failure to account for cannibalization from other modes may substantially over estimate the benefits of curbside programs we conclude with simple cost effectiveness comparisons results suggest that incremental expansion of curbside access may not be cost effective

revenue sharing coordination in reverse logistics a reverse supply chain as a post consumption activity aims at extracting value from products at the end of their life cycle it could be comprised of reusing refurbishing remanufacturing and recycling activities in this paper we revisit the issue of revenue sharing in reverse supply chains to formulate the decision problems of coordinating parties manufacturer and retailer the coordination is formed in a dynamic setting where a feedback relationship exists between the return incentive policy of the retailer and the revenue sharing incentive strategy of the manufacturer to model this process we have adopted the use of a system dynamics sd approach sd is well suited for studying the behavior of complex systems over time and where internal feedbacks and delays exist we first identify pareto optimal solutions for individual players and from environmental perspectives of landfill diversion and carbon offset we then focus on revenue sharing as a widely practiced coordination scheme in reverse supply chains it resembles a leader follower stackelberg strategic decision making game with an equilibrium solution that yields lower performance for environmental criteria in this context we investigate if how a revenue sharing mechanism can be coordinated to achieve a higher environmental performance

uncovering industrial symbiosis potentials in a small island developing state the case study of mauritius small island developing states sids face a serious issue of sustainability as far as waste management within the industrial sector is concerned this paper makes an attempt at addressing the eventual practice of industrial ecology in sids with mauritius as a case study three major polluting industries namely the slaughterhouse edible oil refinery and the scrap metal recycling plant have been considered with a particular focus on the recycling of electric arc furnace slag as concrete aggregates along with the potential areas of applications for the different waste materials this research has also addressed the benefits barriers and factors for implementing industrial symbiosis projects within sids the most striking benefits are the preservation of the fauna and flora of the island and reduced dependency on developed countries for the importation of raw materials while the absence of a landfill disposal fee for non hazardous wastes and lack of awareness of industrial symbiosis projects have been identified as the main barriers to overcome these barriers a shift from manufacture consume dispose to manufacture consume recycle manufacture is recommended this study concludes that if a sustainable island is anticipated in the future a combination of recycling options along with all necessary factors such as technology funding from international organisations regulatory framework and involvement of stakeholders general public and non governmental organisations is required ultimately this would result in the establishment of networks among source and sink industries thus being in harmony with the environment

an economic analysis of household recycling of solid wastes the case of portland oregon abstract solid waste is one of the residuals generated by economic activities faced with rising disposal costs communities are implementing programs to encourage recycling activities this paper investigates the role of price incentives and other socio economic factors in household recycling participation in recycling is modeled as an ordered probit choice using a large sample of households from the portland oregon metropolitan area demand for solid waste collection is estimated using two stage least squares results indicate that increases in disposal fees encourage recycling although demand for solid waste collection services is not reduced substantially

household responses to pricing garbage by the bag this paper estimates household reaction to the implementation of unit pricing for the collection of residential garbage we gather original data on weight and volume of weekly garbage and recycling of 75 households in charlottesville virginia both before and after the start of a program that requires an eighty cent sticker on each bag of garbage this data set is the first of its kind we estimate household demands for the collection of garbage and recyclable material the effect on density of household garbage and the amount of illegal dumping by households we also estimate the probability that a household chooses each method available to reduce its garbage in response to the implementation of this unit pricing program we find that households 1 reduced the weight of their garbage by 14 2 reduced the volume of garbage by 37 and 3 increased the weight of their recyclable materials by 16 we estimate that additional illegal or at least suspicious disposal accounts for 0 42 pounds per person per week or 28 of the reduction in garbage observed at the curb this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

decomposing the gender gap in cognitive skills in a poor rural economy girls lag markedly behind boys in education in many developing countries which may slow economic growth and increase inequity this paper uses indicators of the output of the education production process cognitive skills to characterize and to investigate the determinants of the large educational gender gap in rural pakistan local school availability accounts for about a third of the total cognitive achievement gender gap and over two fifths of that in numeracy which implies that policies that increased local school availability for girls could reduce substantially the gender gaps in cognitive skills to further reduce these gender gaps will require policies that focus on the demand side of the market where our results suggest the response to modest changes in incentives may be high

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

household food security and child nutrition the interaction of income and gender of household head abstract data from kenya and malawi suggest that food security and preschooler nutritional status are influenced by the interaction of income and gender of the head of household rather than simply one or the other not only is household food security influenced by total household income but the proportion of income controlled by women has a positive and significant influence on household caloric intake households were disaggregated not simply in male and female headed households but female headed households were further disaggregated into de jure legal head of household is a woman and de facto female headed households male head of household is absent more than 50 of the time in both kenya and malawi the de facto female headed households had the lowest income despite this low income preschoolers nutritional status was significantly better than in the higher income male headed and de jure female headed households the ability to improve nutritional status in a low income environment in the de facto female headed households is related to a combination of child feeding practices and other nurturing behavior the findings suggest that interventions that exploit incentives to invest in children can provide more immediate improvements in child health and nutrition where sustained income growth is possible only in the long term

greenhouse gas emissions waste and recycling policy abstract this paper examines least cost policies for waste reduction incorporating upstream greenhouse gas externalities associated with the production of consumption goods from various materials in particular we decompose the effect of deposit refund advance disposal fees and recycling subsidies on upstream greenhouse gas emissions we find that the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are of the same order as or larger than the benefits of reducing solid waste disposal implying larger optimal total waste reduction than previous studies furthermore the least cost intervention levels will be material specific and vary substantially across materials finally despite the reductions in emissions implied by increased recycling rates direct recycling subsidies are more costly and generate less emissions reductions than a deposit refund or advance disposal fee

managing municipal solid waste with unit based pricing policy effects and responsiveness to pricing many municipalities across the united states have turned to unit based pricing also known as pay as you throw payt as a vehicle for reducing municipal solid waste generation increasing recycling and promoting equity in paying for the service in this paper we reevaluate the standard analytical methods used to examine the impact of payt in the literature and illustrate that econometric shortcomings may have led to underestimation of policy effects a two tier analytical approach to examining payt program effects is proposed and is demonstrated in a case study of new hampshire municipalities

efficient implementation of collective extended producer responsibility legislation extended producer responsibility epr is a policy tool that holds producers financially responsible for the post use collection recycling and disposal of their products many epr implementations are collective a large collection and recycling network crn handles multiple producers products in order to benefit from scale and scope economies the total cost is then allocated to producers based on metrics such as their return shares by weight such weight based proportional allocation mechanisms are criticized in practice for not taking into account the heterogeneity in the costs imposed by different producers products the consequence is cost allocations that impose higher costs on certain producer groups than they can achieve independently this may lead some producers to break away from collective systems resulting in fragmented systems with higher total cost yet cost efficiency is a key legislative and producer concern to address this concern this paper develops cost allocation mechanisms that

factors influencing willingness to accept different waste management policies empirical evidence from the european union abstract improving waste management strategies with more collaborative participation and responsibility of different public and private agents is a matter of increasing concern for academia and policy makers based on data from 28 european countries the present study unlike other previous studies analyzing the influence of individual drivers for waste generation or recycling evaluates different options for waste management government based fair consumer and producer responsibility for this the influence of individual and socio demographic characteristics age gender education level and occupational status contextual variables rural or urban country of origin and the environmental awareness of 23 976 individuals are considered being a woman being well educated having a good job and living in a rural or small town increase the probability of being a fair consumer while men and people living in a large town are more willing to entrust this responsibility to firms the government based solution is only chosen by low educated people finally individuals with the highest environmental awareness and effort prefer to pay while those who are less environmentally conscious prefer government action the findings show that factors explaining individual acceptance of these different waste management policies wmp are essential for implementing proactive and preventive approaches to enhance responsibility and involvement of all stakeholder groups consumers firms and institutions

local human capital and productivity an analysis for the spanish regions sanroma e and ramos r 2007 local human capital and productivity an analysis for the spanish regions regional studies 41 349 359 this paper examines the relationship between the stock of human capital and productivity in the spanish regions nuts iii and assesses whether the transmission channel involves external economies the empirical evidence points to a positive relationship between the two variables although it cannot be explained in terms of the impact of exogenous local human capital external economies but rather in terms of other demand factors sanroma e et ramos r 2007 le capital humain et la productivite locales une analyse des regions d espagne regional studies 41 349 359 cet article cherche a examiner le rapport entre le stock de capital humain et la productivite dans les regions d espagne nuts iii et a evaluer si oui ou non la chaine de transmission implique des economies externes les preuves empiriques indiquent un rapport etroit entre les deux variables bien que l

a complete system of engel curves in the spanish economy the main goal of this article is the estimation of the consumption income relationship along with socio economic factors using cross section data from the spanish household expenditure survey 1991 the data has been grouped according to exogenous criteria to avoid the problem of null expenditure first a non linear system of equation is estimated from which the linear form that best fits the used data is tested finally income elasticities are calculated considering three alternative formulations depending on how an initial income increment is distributed among consumers income elasticities are shown for the whole income distribution

misalignment of productivity and wages across regions evidence from belgium abstractthis paper is one of the first to estimate how regions affect the productivity wage cost and cost competitiveness i e the productivity wage gap of firms detailed linked employer employee panel data for belgium and the hellerstein neumark framework are used to estimate dynamic models at the establishment level the findings show that interregional differences in productivity and wages are significant but to a large extent due to drivers at the individual and or firm level the research provides evidence that the specificity of the brussels region can be linked to its higher density compared with the rest of belgium robustness tests suggest that the relatively better ceteris paribus performance of firms in brussels is limited to the service sector

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

optimal policies for solid waste disposal taxes subsidies and standards abstract pricing trash collection and disposal services can be politically unpopular and may lead to increased illegal disposal of trash several studies have shown that deposit refund systems can act like disposal charges without the illegal disposal problem and thus can generate an optimal amount of solid waste disposal we assess the efficiency implications of an alternative policy currently in use in some states in the u s and considered at the federal level recycled content standards these are requirements that a certain fraction of total material use in production be comprised of secondary materials we find that such standards by themselves cannot generate the optimal amount of disposal but must be combined with additional taxes on both the final product and other inputs to production moreover the information requirements for setting the optimal standards and accompanying taxes are high the deposit refund approach would be preferred in most cases

the history and current applications of the circular economy concept abstract the challenges of balancing industrial development environmental and human health and economic growth in china and elsewhere in the world are drivers for recent resource use and low carbon development strategies that include the application of the circular economy ce concept a central theme of the ce concept is the valuation of materials within a closed looped system with the aim to allow for natural resource use while reducing pollution or avoiding resource constraints and sustaining economic growth the objectives of this study are 1 to review the history of the ce concept to provide a context for 2 a critical examination of how it is applied currently thematic categories are used to organize the literature review results including policy instruments and approaches value chains material flows and products and technology organizational and social innovation the literature review illustrates the variability in ce project success and failure over time and by region ce successes key challenges and research gaps are identified the literature review results provide useful information for researchers as well as multi stakeholder groups who seek to define the ce concept in practical terms and to consider potential challenges and opportunities it presents when implemented

evaluating unit based pricing of residential solid waste a panel data analysis municipalities introduced unit based pricing ubp with the aim of achieving a decrease in household waste generation and for the replacement of unsorted waste with recycling although many studies have shown that ubp has a short run effect on recycling few works have tackled the long run effect on waste generation and recycling by using panel data for 665 japanese cities over 8 years we examine the long run effect of ubp on waste generation and recycling the estimation results in waste generation suggest that there is a rebound effect though a small one we confirm that the effect of ubp on recycling sustains for the long run we also find that the short and long run responses to an economic incentive for recycling activities differ with income groups recycling among the high income group has not been promoted by implementation of ubp but people in that group are willing to participate in recycling without an economic incentive in contrast recycling activity within the low income group is strongly motivated by ubp for many years

the effects of minimum bargained wages on earnings evidence from spain abstract this paper provides an empirical evaluation of the effects of spanish sectoral collective bargaining on wages for this purpose we use a sample of workers for whom bargained wage rates and earnings are available using a variant of the meyer and wise approach we are able to estimate wage gains due to minimum bargained wages and their employment effects the most relevant conclusion is that there is evidence of a sword of justice effect by unions but this is limited by non compliance among unskilled workers and the non binding nature of bargained wages for skilled workers

let s talk about the money spousal communication expenditures and farm production a burgeoning body of literature highlights asymmetric information among household members however little is known about the source of the asymmetry and its effect on efficiency using a unique survey of ghanaian households we examine the accuracy of spousal cross reports and the effect of discrepancies on farm production we find that information problems pertain to scale the quantity of resources and scope the distribution of resources as well as allocation decisions on the margin engel curves moreover we find that information asymmetries lead to inefficiency in production and the effect is equivalent to about 15 of the variation across households

the cold shiver of not giving enough on the social cost of recycling campaigns governments sometimes try to increase individuals contributions to public goods through appeals to consumer responsibility rather than by economic incentives for example in recycling campaigns using standard consumer theory one would hardly expect such campaigns to work at all but if consumers are motivated by norms appeals may work through changing consumers perception of the normrequirement however increasing voluntary contributions through appeals may come at a social cost the reason is that appeals work through imposing a heavier perceived responsibility on consumers this represents a welfare loss which is not necessarily outweighed by warm glow benefits

the two part instrument in a second best world abstract standard pigovian tax theory has been extended in two directions first many polluting activities are difficult to tax because they are not market transactions and so recent papers have shown that the same effects can be achieved by use of a two part instrument 2pi a tax on output or income and a subsidy for clean alternatives to pollution it is a generalization of a deposit refund system drs second a different literature concerns the second best pollution tax in the presence of other tax distortions here we combine the two extensions by looking at the second best 2pi when government needs revenue is the deposit larger and the rebate smaller we find explicit solutions for each tax and subsidy in a general equilibrium model with other tax distortions and we compare these to the rates in a first best model the tax subsidy combination is explained in terms of a tax effect an environmental effect and a revenue effect the model allows for flexible interpretation to show various applications of the 2pi we also discuss important caveats

impact of government financial intervention on competition among green supply chains abstract this work analyzes the effects of governmental financial intervention on green supply chain competition using a three stage game theoretic model nash equilibrium solutions for governmental and chain member decisions are derived analytical results suggest that the government should adopt green taxation and subsidization to ensure that green profit attributed to green product production is non negative strategically low wholesale price strategies are suggested to recycled component suppliers under green subsidization to stimulate manufacturers intention of green product production under green taxation numerical results reveal that under equilibrium conditions social welfare and chain based profits improve by 27 8 and 306 6 respectively compared with the case without financial intervention

schooling costs and child labour in rural pakistan a conventional argument in the child labour debate is that improvements in access to schools are an effective way to reduce the labour force participation of children it is argued that schooling competes with economic activity in the use of children s time and enhanced access to schools interpretable as reduction in schooling costs may raise school attendance at the expense of child labour in this article we draw a distinction between child labour within the household intra household and child work in the labour market extra household and examine the separate effects of schooling costs upon these two types of child labour in rural pakistan consistent at least in part with our theoretical framework we find that extra household child labour and schooling costs are positively related whereas intra household child labour is insensitive to changes in the costs of schooling our results suggest that reduction in schooling costs will have limited success in the abatement of child labour in rural p

does garbage pricing increase the immoral disposal of household waste abstractsome empirical studies have attempted to clarify the mechanism of illegal dumping by examining the degree to which per bag pricing plays a role however previous research on the behaviour of avoiding paying a charge for waste collection has tended to neglect so called immoral disposal which is less risky than illegal dumping because there is no legal penalty in this study we define immoral disposal as the dumping of waste in a manner that is immoral but not illegal to detect the existence of immoral disposal we apply a spatial econometric approach namely an extended panel spatial durbin model to identify the actual spillover effect of garbage pricing in neighbouring municipalities on immoral disposal from the total waste a major finding of this study is that immoral disposal exists in unit based pricing two tiered pricing and fixed pricing

feed in subsidies taxation and inefficient entry we study energy markets with dirty production and lumpy entry costs of clean production renewables for intermediate entry costs markets yield inefficient production and inefficient entry a mix of three popular regulatory instruments polluter taxation feed in subsidies for renewables and consumption taxation cannot correct these market failures for larger entry costs the instruments are imperfect because they affect marginal incentives whereas entry is a lumpy fixed cost problem whenever the first best is implementable feed in subsidies and consumption taxes are redundant the second best requires feed in subsidies or consumption taxes in addition to a pollution tax and overshoots first best levels given production levels the instruments do not affect the regulator s budget

household behavior under alternative pay as you throw systems for solid waste disposal in 1994 residents of marietta georgia participated in a pay as you throw solid waste demonstration project rather than pay a fixed monthly fee for collection half of the resi dents paid a fee per reusable trash can and half paid for each nonreusable trash bag collected data from both a sample of households and city wide totals indicate that the programs signifi cantly reduced waste set outs even after account ingfor increases in unpriced recycling the bag program caused larger reductions 36 than the subscription can program 14 rough esti mates of the program indicate both savings for residents and social welfare increases jel q20

effects of unit based garbage pricing a differences in differences approach using a unique 10 year dataset of all 458 dutch municipalities we apply a differences in differences approach to estimate the effect of unit based pricing on household waste quantities and recycling community level studies of unit based pricing typically do not include fixed effects at the local level we find that failure to do so may substantially inflate the estimated price effect we also find that unit based pricing may be endogenous and use instrumental variables to account for this our analysis shows that user fees depend on user fees in neighboring jurisdictions policy interaction our estimate of the garbage reduction per 1 user fee is lower than any previous estimate bar one the price effect depends on the pricing system weight based systems reduce garbage quantities more than volume based systems user fees increase recycling especially of paper but not nearly as much as they reduce garbage quantities we find no evidence for waste tourism or illegal dumping

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

how the brazilian government can use public policies to induce recycling and still save money abstract public policies can leverage the recycling of materials however there is no clear guidance on how to use such policies and still spare public funds to fill this gap a multiple case study was undertaken in brazil eleven companies that can produce new products using the waste generated by their customers were investigated the findings contribute by suggesting how governments can economically use taxes sanctions incentives and other public instruments to induce recycling tax exemptions are not required when the waste recycled reduces the manufacturer s costs or generates revenue for customers who produce it and or for the scrap dealers who collect it sanctions or penalties imposed on the manufacturer s customers can increase the recycling efforts of such manufacturers when the recycling is technically feasible but not economically attractive sanctions are ineffective when wastes have a good market value or are widespread over millions of generation points for such cases the public policies should focus on community awareness campaigns and attention on waste pickers incentives for the technological development can be provided to wastes that present a good market value but do not have an economical recycling technology available granting resources to universities and technological institutes will help spread the solution to sme companies by better understanding how to apply public instruments the governments will be able to save funds on tax exemptions better define sanctions focus its community awareness campaigns focus its waste pickers support and better allocate funds to support the development of new recycling technologies

industrial symbiosis the case for market coordination abstract despite the fact that all successful documented cases of industrial symbiosis to this day have been self organizing some authors and development officials have suggested that increased public planning might deliver better results in this respect than spontaneously evolved market coordination this paper takes an historical approach to suggest that comprehensive planning is unlikely to live up to the expectations of its proponents the essay is structured as follows the first section provides short case studies of industrial symbiosis in highly different economic and institutional settings the essentially free market regime of victorian england and communist hungary 1948 1989 the available evidence suggests that market coordination proved much more favorable to the emergence of industrial symbiosis despite the elaboration of a comprehensive policy to that effect in hungary insights derived from the so called austrian critique of central planning are then used to explain this paradox the analysis presented suggests that the hungarian planners failure was not so much the result of the bad implementation of sound policies but the logical outcome of a top down approach s shortcomings policy implications for the public planning of industrial symbiosis in a mixed economy are then derived and the case for self organization is found more compelling the creation of more innovative institutions that will force firms to internalize their externalities while leaving them the necessary freedom to innovate is viewed as an urgently needed and promising path towards increased sustainable reuse of industrial by products

family decision making for educational expenditure new evidence from survey data for nigeria this study examines the determinants of educational expenditures by households in nigeria data from the nigerian general household survey panel 2012 2013 wave 2 was used and a double hurdle mode

labour market institutions and wage setting evidence for oecd countries the main channel through which labour market institutions are supposed to work in affecting unemployment is through their effects on the key parameters of the wage curve in particular labour market institutions may have both a direct wage push or level effect i e change the level of the real wage for any given level of the unemployment rate and productivity and an indirect slope effect i e change the responsiveness of the real wage to the unemployment rate the question this article addresses is whether there is any evidence that these transmission mechanisms were at work in a group of 20 organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries over the period 1960 to 1999 the analysis is accomplished in two steps pooled mean group pmg estimates of a wage equation including unemployment productivity and a set of wage push institutions are first obtained allowing only a subset of institutional coefficient to be homogeneous while leaving the unemployment and other coefficients

estimating a wage curve for britain 1973 90 following a w phillips s 1958 original work on the united kingdom applied research on unemployment and wages has been dominated by the analysis of highly aggregated time series data sets however it has proved difficult with such methods to uncover statistically reliable models this paper adopts a different approach it uses macroeconomic data on 175 000 british workers from 1973 to 1990 to provide evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped relationship linking the level of pay to the local rate of unemployment the paper casts doubt on standard ideas in macroeconomics regional economics and labor economics copyright 1994 by royal economic society