dynamic perspectives on agricultural policy issues among the innovators fred waugh was one of the most prolific he made pioneering contributions in linear programming statistics and econometrics demand analysis the welfare effects of price risk and the analysis and explanation of commodity cycles as a research leader mentor and teacher at the usda he left his mark on the work of later generations of researchers i find myself no exception as will become clear from what i have to say in this paper even though i never met him in person my work has been influenced by what he wrote and by what his students wrote and taught among the many topics that interested waugh were the dynamics of free market behavior and the implications for policy formation in this paper i consider models of markets in which the dynamics run in two directions forward from current conditions to expectations of future prices and back from price expectations to current decisions both types of linkages can be crucial in competitive models of agricultural production in which land has a prominent role as the quintessential fixed asset a central challenge of market analysis from waugh s time till now has been to infer from market observations whether markets are behav

spot and futures prices of nonstorable commodities under rational expectations the paper examines the effect of the presence of a commodity futures market upon the price formation process in a stochastic rational expectations framework an optimizing model with price uncertainty and risk aversion is used in order to solve equilibrium distributions of prices for nonstorable commodities the existence of futures trading does not affect the degree of short term spot price fluctuations however if the commodity market disturbance that originates from stochastic consumption demand is serially dependent then the long term price variation is smaller with a futures market than without it futures prices fluctuate less variably over time than spot and expected prices finally there exists a futures intervention rule whereby the authority can stabilize spot prices and raise the overall welfare of society

demand for environmental goods evidence from voting patterns on california initiatives this article studies voting behavior on 16 environmental ballot propositions in california in order to characterize the demand for environmental goods the environment is found to be a normal good for people with mean incomes but some environmental goods are inferior for those with high incomes at least when supplied collectively an important price of environmental goods is reduced income in the construction farming forestry and manufacturing industries income and price can explain most of the variation in voting there is little need to introduce preference variables such as political ideology

testing for granger s full causality a procedure is proposed to test for the existence of a fully causal relationship between two variables the method involves contrasting the probabilistic forecasting performance of a univariate and bivariate specification for the same variable y if there exists some theory or belief that x causes y and the addition of a variable x to the information set of a prequential forecasting system for a variable y reduces miscalibration and or the level of forecast uncertainty with respect y s distribution for the next period then a fully causal effect running from x to y may be inferred vector autoregression allows testing for feedback the method is to be applied to the issue of causality between the live cattle futures market and a major slaughter cattle cash market copyright 1992 by mit press

explaining voter turnout patterns an information theory voting research is rich in empirical regularities yet a parsimonious theory of voter turnout that can match the facts has proven to be elusive this paper argues that voter turnout patterns can be explained by extending the traditional rational voter model to include limited information a model is presented in which utility maximizing consumers receive higher payoffs from voting the more confident they are of their vote choice the model provides an explanation for the most important cross sectional voter turnout patterns in addition it suggests a novel explanation for the post 1960 decline in u s participation

collective action in an asymmetric world abstract a central authority possessing tax and expenditure responsibilities can readily provide an efficient level of a public good absent a central authority voluntary arrangements must replace coercive ones and significant under provision must be expected international public goods are particularly challenging due to the substantial asymmetries among nations small interest nations have strong incentives to ride cheaply our empirical results reveal cheap riding intentions in providing for climate change mitigation a critical international public good the evidence is provided by individual nations intended nationally determined contributions voluntarily pledged for the paris climate change conference we find that larger nations made much larger pledges in proportion to both their gross national incomes and their historical emissions implications for the nordhaus climate club and carbon tax proposals are discussed to achieve pareto optimality despite disparate cheap riding incentives we propose the cheap riding efficient equilibrium that solution takes the nash equilibrium as a base point and then applies the principles of either the nash bargaining solution or the lindahl equilibrium to proceed to the pareto frontier

extent and possible causes of intrayear agricultural commodity price volatility wheat corn rice soybeans and cotton experienced higher volatility in the second half of the 2000s for the sample at hand the unit root tests only validate a new period of high volatility for wheat and cotton if in the next couple of years however corn rice and soybeans maintain their higher volatility a new period of high volatility may also be validated statistically regarding the factors driving the intrayear volatility gmm estimates show that commodity market fundamentals i e the stock to use ratio and to a lesser extent the degree of internationalization are the most systematically statistically significant coefficients among commodities over time consecutive low stock to use ratios and a thin international market provoke typically high volatility speculative activity and liquidity in the agricultural derivative market have a stabilizing effect on the spot price if any finally common macro factors significantly impact volatility especially the volatility of petrol and of exchange rates their dispersion importance over the sample is quite sizeable however it is difficult to establish a link between on the one hand loose monetary policy business cycle and inflation and on the other hand commodity price volatility as the sign of the estimated coefficient changes depending on the commodity and the estimated elasticities are quite low

environmental regulation whose self interests are being protected special interest can explain why environmental policy limits economic activity in areas where air quality is above minumum standards locational competition among region helped create a policy that raised factor mobility cost from slower to faster growing regions analysis of votes shows greater support for this policy was received from northern urban constituencies and the greatest opposition came from the south and the west pollution abatement costs per unit of output are higher in areas with higher not lower air quality

a reconsideration of the in sensitivity of tests of the intertemporal allocation of consumption to near rational alternatives abstract this paper uses micro data to show that the utility loss from near rational behavior can be very significant we calculate the utility loss from using a sub optimal consumption allocation rule in a permanent income setting where utility is quadratic in contrast to estimates derived from aggregate data cochrane 1987 we find that small deviations from the optimal consumption allocation rule lead to large utility losses more than 100 quarter 1983 dollars

legislative voting and the economic theory of politics empirical studies of legislative voting have multiplied since the mid 1970s early work 13 distinguished two modes of representation delegates who vote as voters want and trustees who use their own judgment more recently researchers have considered only delegates claiming that legislators who use their own ideology are shirking following principal agent theory representatives are conceived as conduits through which citizens transmit and express interests empirical work on this question however has found that the legislator s ideology explains more variation in vote choices than is explained by measures of constituent interest the seeming contradiction has led some 9 10 17 to reject the economic theory of legislator behavior as erroneous the truth is that no such theory has ever been fairly stated much less tested estimating equations have been ad hoc and the usual approach to measuring ideology has imposed correlation between the equation error and an explanatory variable 8 in both cases the result is

do etfs increase volatility due to their low trading costs exchange traded funds etfs are a potential catalyst for short horizon liquidity traders the liquidity shocks can propagate to the underlying securities through the arbitrage channel and etfs may increase the nonfundamental volatility of the securities in their baskets we exploit exogenous changes in index membership and find that stocks with higher etf ownership display significantly higher volatility etf ownership increases the negative autocorrelation in stock prices the increase in volatility appears to introduce undiversifiable risk in prices because stocks with high etf ownership earn a significant risk premium of up to 56 basis points monthly

an empirical study of the determinants of green party voting i empirically study the determinants of individuals green voting behavior for this i make use of three datasets from germany a panel dataset and two cross sectional datasets the empirically strongest determinants are the voters attitude or distance to nuclear sites the level of schooling and net income i show that those voters with deviant attitudes or alternative world views are more likely to vote green a result of the fact that the green party has always had the position of a protest party i find little role for demographic variables like gender marital status or the number of children this is in contrast to the stated preference literature age plays a role for explaining voting behavior only insofar as it proxies for health

a relative efficiency analysis of farmland preservation programs while agricultural land preservation programs seek to maximize the number of acres to preserve productive farms to preserve contiguous farms and to preserve threatened farms they are often evaluated solely on the number of acres preserved preserved parcels in four maryland counties were evaluated to determine how well programs traded off the four goals using a farrell efficiency analysis approach comparisons are made between the types of programs of the four objectives parcel size and productivity measures were the most likely to affect the efi ciency measures in addition purchase of development right programs were most successful in trading off objectives

real effects of futures speculation asymptotically rational expectations to what extent does the diversity in the forecasting ability of futures speculators simply result in transfers of wealth among themselves and to what extent does it affect the allocation of resources on the basis of bayesian analysis it is assumed that the variance of forecast errors between the subjective and objective expectations of the subsequent price differs among groups two major conclusions are as follows 1 if given our parameter estimates the forecast error variance of the amateur speculators is less than six times that of the professionals then the existence of futures markets will lower the expected price to consumers increase expected output and lower the variance of the price 2 since small speculators lose to the professionals the relative variance of the forecast error of the amateurs to the professionals exceeds their relative weights as measured by the ratio of numbers to average risk aversion

time series evidence on shirking in the u s house of representatives this paper presents time series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the u s house of representatives from 1975 to 1990 the empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time we find no evidence of economically significant last term effects on voting behavior nor are there important effects of legislative tenure on voting patterns the most significant deviations in voting behavior occur for congressmen who failed to win their reelection bid suggesting that sizable deviations from previous policy positions may result in swift retribution by constituents in the district

what drives deregulation economics and politics of the relaxation of bank branching restrictions this paper investigates private interest public interest and political institutional theories of regulatory change to analyze state level deregulation of bank branching restrictions using a hazard model we find that interest group factors related to the relative strength of potential winners large banks and small bank dependent firms and losers small banks and the rival insurance firms can explain the timing of branching deregulation across states during the last quarter century the same factors also explain congressional voting on interstate branching deregulation while we find some support for each theory the private interest approach provides the most compelling overall explanation of our results

cigarette taxes and the master settlement agreement i introduction in 1998 46 states and the four major tobacco companies entered into the master settlement agreement msa which settled litigation brought on behalf of the states to recover medical expenses paid by government insurance agencies for illness brought on by consumption of tobacco products national association of attorneys general 2003 the four remaining states florida minnesota mississippi and texas settled separately with the companies the msa stipulated that the tobacco companies pay the states an estimated 206 billion over the next several years the payments are made annually and are adjusted for the number of cigarettes sold in each state in each year in this sense the msa payment structure resembles an excise tax the strategy of using litigation as an instrument for discouraging consumption of a commodity deemed to be harmful to consumers is becoming more common parmet and daynard 2000 the impact that such litigation has on other tobacco control policies such as excise taxes depends on the extent to which litigation and such policies are substitutable the msa payments could substitute for excise taxes at the state level this may be so to the extent that state legislatures have succeeded in levying socially optimal excise tax rates 1 if so states would be expected to have reduced excise taxes on cigarettes after the settlements were reached similarly one would expect that various tobacco control policies such as workplace smoking bans would be substitutes albeit imperfect ones for state cigarette excise taxes and for penalties resulting from litigation that function as excise taxes alternatively litigation and the resulting settlement may have changed the balance of power between tobacco control advocates and the tobacco manufacturers with the consequence that the settlements and state excise taxes are complements the tobacco industry s influence on federal and state legislatures historically has been an impediment to enacting tobacco control legislation at either federal or state levels kelder and daynard 1997 parmet and daynard 2000 rather than crowd out state excise taxes the msa could have led to crowding in a cursory glance at the data supports the view that litigation changes the balance of power since the msa and four individual state settlements were reached the former in november 1998 and the individual settlements somewhat earlier state legislatures have increasingly looked to state excise taxes on cigarettes as a source of revenue relative to both excise taxes imposed on alcohol and state taxes more generally figure 1 in particular the largest jumps in the mean real state excise tax on cigarettes occurred in 1997 and 2002 in fiscal year 2003 for example state excise tax increases were larger than any other single type of tax including major sources of revenue such as income taxes national governors association and national association of state budget officers 2002 these increases did not coincide with increases in the mean real state excise tax on beer the only year in which real state excise taxes on beer rose was 1998 figure 1 omitted such trends could have been due to factors other than the settlement the goal of our empirical analysis is to assess whether the changes in cigarette excise taxes can be attributed to the settlement when other factors are held constant using pre post as well as state excise taxes on beer as controls in a panel data difference in difference approach the evidence on balance provides support for the view that litigation and cigarette excise taxes are complements which is consistent with changes in the political equilibrium ii data and empirical specification overview we use a panel data difference in difference d d regression design to test whether the litigation substituted for crowd out or complemented crowd in state excise taxes

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

risk the financial market and macroeconomic equilibrium growing recognition of the importance of stock market phenomena to the real economy underscores the need for models linking exogenous uncertainty asset market performance and the rest of the economy in an optimizing framework without certainty equivalence this paper constructs a three agent model with continuous time stochastic variables uncertain private production and government expenditure and forward looking rational agents the growth rate of output physical capital accumulation financial asset returns and uncertain inflation are determined as functions of the exogenous uncertainty in the economy analysis of the model finds that increased risk associated with government policy often reverses in an explainable way the conventional comparative static predictions of nonstochastic macro models

speculative intensity and spot and futures price variability this paper develops a simultaneous stochastic rational expectations model of futures and spot price determination using the model we find that increases in what we term speculative intensity increase spot price variability arising from storage cost shocks but decrease spot price variability arising from demand shocks in contrast increases in speculative intensity unambiguously decrease futures price variability regardless of the underlying source of disturbances we are able to develop these comparative static results because the model has a unique equilibrium

a critical review and an extension of the political shirking literature after substituting actual and real changes for proposed and nominal changes in budgetary and employment levels it is clear that the size and scope of the federal leviathon had not been reduced over 1982 83 it is also clear that the agencies which witnessed real budget cuts over this period were of minor importance in terms of the total u s budget future research on why only small agencies receive real budget cuts will provide us with a better understanding of the budgetary process

speculative commodity holdings abstract adopting a mean variance approach we characterize the optimal commodity holdings for a risk averse speculator within a discrete time framework a new factor namely covariance risk effect arises which essentially represents the difference between the optimal stock of a risk averse speculator and that of a risk neutral one

an analysis of the stabilizing and welfare effects of intervention in spot and futures markets this paper analyzes the effects of three alternative rules on the long run distributions of both the spot and futures prices ina single commodity market in which the key behavioral relationships are derived from the optimizing behavior of producers and speculators the rules considered include i leaning against the wind in the spot market ii utility maximizing speculative behavior by the stabilization authority in the futures market iii leaning against the wind in the futures market since the underlying model is sufficiently complex to preclude analytical solutions the analysis makes extensive use of simulation methods as a general proposition we find that intervention in the futures market is not as effective in stabilizing either the spot price of the futures price as is intervention in the spot market indeed rule iii while stabilizing the futures price may actually destabilize the spot price furthermore the analogous type of rule undertaken in the spot market will always stabilize the futures price to a greater degree than it does the spot price the welfare implications of these rules are also discussed our analysis shows how these can generate rather different distributions of welfare gains including the overall benefits this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

measuring heterogeneous preferences for preserving farmland and open space abstract public preferences for environmental policies often vary among individual citizens according to their socio economic characteristics and attitudes toward environmental programs most researchers account for socio economic characteristics when conducting public preference surveys but do not account for differences in preferences that transcend socio economic categories identifying the public s attitudes regarding environmental programs and the role they play in shaping individuals preferences for policy alternatives can assist policy makers in developing programs that are consistent with public expectations this paper uses factor analysis and a discrete choice model to describe differences in public preferences that result from different attitudes regarding the goals of programs designed to preserve farmland and open space results describe policy implications that are not apparent when using models that address socio economic characteristics alone

the death of firms exploring the effects of environment and birth cohort on firm survival in sweden this paper investigates the death of firms and seizes a long term perspective it investigates the life spans of nearly 2 200 firms in seven birth cohorts of swedish joint stock companies founded during seven separate years between 1899 and 1950 research has traditionally emphasized individual and micro oriented factors in explaining post entry performance or has often focused on the influence of firm specific structural factors firm age and size a less attended field recognizes environmental forces this paper focuses on the interaction between the micro and macro levels and combines structural and environmental factors employing a cohort approach it relates firm survival to firm age and size as well as to the effect of cohort affiliation and environmental change over time period effects during macroeconomic expansion the risk of death decreases cohort effects are also evident firms founded during times of economic crisis exhibit lower survival rates consequently cohort affiliation and environmental forces i e period effects can explain differences in death rates in different firm populations

a privately revealing rational expectations equilibrium for the futures market abstract this paper develops a model of the futures market with two types of participants farmers and speculators farmers undertake production decisions and face both output and spot price risk as opposed to speculators who face only spot price risk agents have constant absolute risk aversion von neumann morgenstern utility functions and form rational expectations about the future output shock and spot price we assume that traders specialize in information collection in our model the futures price is not a sufficient statistic for the market information we show that the rational expectations equilibrium ree futures price is privately revealing to traders who purchase costly information this ree is efficient in the sense that in equilibrium traders are in possession of all market information we demonstrate that traders a have an incentive to collect costly information and b are better off by specializing in collecting the information in which they have a comparative advantage in terms of the quality of the information that they can obtain finally we show that the futures market stabilizes the spot price

new estimates of quality of life in urban areas implicit markets capture compensation for intraurban and interregional differe nces in amenities and yield differences in housing prices and wages these pecuniary differences become preference based weights in a qual ity of life index hedonic equations are estimated using microdata fr om the 1980 census and assembled county based amenity data on climati c environmental and urban conditions ranking of 253 urban counties reveals substantial variation within as well as among the 185 urba n areas the quality of life differences across counties within one s msa is almost one half of the difference between the top and bottom ranked counties in the nation copyright 1988 by american economic association

the demand for hedging and the value of hedging opportunities hedging strategies typically assume that hedging is costless and that only one futures market exists when these assumptions are dropped the demand for hedging is shown to depend on basis risk price risk and the hedger s risk preference the marginal and incremental value of hedging opportunities are computed for the general cases of one and two markets and applied to the specific case of pennsylvania dairy input hedging copyright 2000 oxford university press

the effect of farmland preservation programs on farmland prices government agencies in urbanizing areas are increasingly utilizing purchase and transfer of development rights programs to preserve farmland and protect local farm economies this article tests the effect of development restrictions imposed by permanent easement sales on farmland sales prices using maryland data we correct for selectivity bias due to the voluntary nature of these programs in estimating hedonic sales equations although preserved parcels actual land values are lower the effect of the restrictions is not statistically significant these findings may encourage additional participation in preservation programs or justify reductions in the easement prices paid by agencies copyright 2001 oxford university press

voting on open space what explains the appearance and support of municipal level open space conservation referenda in the united states abstract numerous communities in the united states have been willing to use public funds to protect open space the amount of money allocated for open space protection by local and state governments exceeds the budget of the largest federal land protection program in the u s the conservation reserve program this paper analyzes what types of municipalities hold open space referenda and the level of support for these referenda factors that increased the probability of a municipality holding an open space referendum from 2000 to 2004 were large population low population density rapid growth of the surrounding area and highly educated and environmentally concerned residents increases in median household income up to 100 000 increased the likelihood of a vote but further increases in income beyond 100 000 decreased the likelihood for municipalities holding an open space referendum factors that increased support for passage of the referendum were rapid growth low unemployment rates highly educated residents and no new taxes given high levels of support for open space referenda 76 of municipal level referenda held from 2000 through 2004 passed the spatial pattern of locally managed open space will be largely determined by the factors that affect referenda appearance on a municipal ballot this conclusion suggests that locally managed conservation hotspots will cluster around fast growing affluent communities with highly educated residents such hotspots may or may not align with overall conservation priorities non governmental and environmental organizations should focus efforts on helping communities in locally managed conservation coldspots secure open space

do futures benefit farmers simulations are used to analyze welfare and market and farm level effects of making futures available to producers of a storable commodity key features of the model are the explicit consideration of dynamic impacts due to inventories and of aggregate market effects associated with futures adoption by some producers application to the natural rubber market shows that futures availability can lead to sizeable market and farm level effects futures availability enhances consumer welfare reduces non adopter welfare and yields important welfare gains for adopters when their market share is small and welfare losses when they account for a sufficiently large market share

determinants of hedging and risk premia in commodity futures markets this paper examines the determinants of commodity futures hedging and of risk premia arising from covariation of the futures price with stock market returns and with the reve nues of producers owing to supply shocks that stochastically redistribute real wealth surplus between producers and consumers and to limited participation in the futures market the total risk premium in the model is not proportional to the contract s covariance with aggregate consumption stock market variability interacts with the incentive to hedge causing the producer hedging component of the risk premium to increase de crease with income elasticity for a normal inferior good production costs that depend on output raise the premium we argue that output and demand shocks will typically be positively correlated raising the premium high supply elasticity reduces the absolute heding premium by reducing the variability of spot price and revenue

the environmental kuznets curve environmental protection policy and income distribution abstract the effect of economic growth on pollution emissions differs substantially among high income countries i address this issue by analyzing public environmental policy decisions individual heterogeneity relative income effect and the political framework in which policy decisions are taken determine the emergence of the downward sloping segment of the environmental kuznets curve ekc income inequality produces a gap between the country s ability to pay for environmental protection and a country s willingness to pay i test this result by using oecd data on public r d expenditure for environmental protection the conclusion is that contrary to the ek hypothesis moments of the income distribution function other than the mean may be important for the emergence of a virtuous path of sustainable growth in high income countries

earnings inequality and mobility in the united states evidence from social security data since 1937 this paper uses social security administration longitudinal earnings micro data since 1937 to analyze the evolution of inequality and mobility in the united states annual earnings inequality is u shaped decreasing sharply up to 1953 and increasing steadily afterward short term earnings mobility measures are stable over the full period except for a temporary surge during world war ii virtually all of the increase in the variance in annual log earnings since 1970 is due to increase in the variance of permanent earnings as opposed to transitory earnings mobility at the top of the earnings distribution is stable and has not mitigated the dramatic increase in annual earnings concentration since the 1970s long term mobility among all workers has increased since the 1950s but has slightly declined among men the decrease in the gender earnings gap and the resulting substantial increase in upward mobility over a lifetime for women are the driving force behind the increase in long term mobility among all workers

the relevance of attitudinal factors for the acceptance of energy policy measures a micro econometric analysis abstract this paper empirically examines the individual support of the german energy transition in total and especially of six single energy policy measures which are components of the energy transition our micro econometric analysis with binary and ordered probit models on the basis of data from a broad survey of citizens reveals the important role of several attitudinal factors with respect to our indicators for perceived personal costs of the energy transition the estimation results point to a weak evidence for economic self interest due to some negative correlations between expected energy price increases due to the energy transition and the support of single energy policy measures interestingly however the concern that the energy transition alone causes strong energy price increases is not shared by the majority of the respondents the estimation results also suggest that the support of several energy policy measures is strongly correlated with environmental values however the most important attitudinal factor is obviously political identification the econometric analysis suggests that an overall left green policy identification is positively correlated with the support of the energy transition in total and an identification with ecological policy is positively correlated with the acceptance of several single energy policy measures the econometric analysis especially supports the more sophisticated categorization of political orientation since for example a liberal conservative policy orientation is not significantly correlated with the support of the energy transition in total

robust inference concerning recent trends in us environmental quality understanding trends in environmental quality is important for individuals and policymakers typically trends in environmental quality are determined solely through comparisons of unconditional or conditional mean pollution levels however reaching unambiguous conclusions on the basis of only the first moment of the unconditional or conditional distribution is problematic since it ignores what is occurring in different regions of the distribution even relying on indices that incorporate both mean and variance is suspect to the extent that relative rankings are not typically robust to index choice addressing these concerns we adapt recent developments in the stochastic dominance literature to test for unambiguous relations between current and past distributions of toxic releases using epa data from 1988 1999 we find statistically significant evidence that the unconditional 1999 distributions of air land underground and total toxic releases dominate in a first degree sense their respective 1988 distributions while some of this improvement is explained by economic growth pollution net of income improved over the sample period as well finally we document robust differences in the distribution of pollution across regions in the us copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

risk futures pricing and the organization of production in commodity markets this paper examines equilibrium in a spot and futures market with both primary producers growers and intermediate producers processors for a commodity that is subject to output shocks processors tend to hedge long in contrast with hick s theory of futures hedging nevertheless if transaction costs are low the two stage production process brings about a downward futures price bias consistent with hick s pricing prediction but if costs of trading futures are high growers tend to be differentially driven from the futures market reversing the direction of the bias futures trading may also affect the organization of industry when demand is inelastic futures trading can serve as a substitute for vertical integration as a means of diversifying risk because the risk positions of growers are complementary with those of processors

the determination of spot and futures prices with storable commodities this paper analyzes the effects of futures trading in a market for a storable commodity in which producers and speculators are assumed to be risk averse and specifications of the aggregate supply and inventory demand functions are derived from explicit optimization a critical aspect is how the parameters of these functions change with the introduction of the future market as it is through these induced parameter changes that the futures market exerts its influence on the spot price the effects of the futures market on both the long run average spot price and its variance are analyzed while we are unable to draw any definitive conclusions on this issue we find that in all cases considered the futures market stabilizes the spot price as well as lowering its long run mean for many years now the question of the effects of futures trading on the stability of spot prices has been extensively debated this topic has been discussed at various levels for example farmers and agricultural interest groups have claimed that futures trading destabilizes spot prices thereby imposing welfare losses on the economy in the united states congress has decided that futures trading can cause price destabilization and has subjected futures trading to the regulation of the commodity futures trading commission at a more analytical level economists have been investigating the issue both empirically and more recently theoretically as well

farmland retention techniques property rights implications and comparative evaluation a conceptual framework distinguishes farmland retention institutions and with a survey of various literatures interviews and original policy design classifies 28 techniques in four types regulatory incentive based governmental participatory and hybrid the analysis reveals that techniques often perceived to be incentive based such as pdr pace and tdr are better understood as participatory and hybrid techniques respectively likely fiscal impacts stakeholder acceptability and implementation challenges are assessed the framework suggests that when governments select multiple techniques attention should be paid to the implied allocation of property rights to maintain coherent land use policy and minimize property rights conflicts

a rational expectations model of time varying risk premia in commodities futures markets theory and evidence the intertemporal hedging theory is used to model the role of spot price risk measured by the variance in futures market risk premia the model gives a theoretical basis for treating the variance as serially correlated when commodities are storable t he rational expectations hypothesis implies that agents use the varianc e process to predict risk therefore the expected variance should be incorporated in equilibrium risk premia tests on data from four commodity markets show that variances do have predictable components however premia are related to expected variances in only one market copyright 1993 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

temporal and spatial modelling of tropical deforestation a survival analysis linking satellite and household survey data we estimate a spatially explicit model of the forest clearance process among smallholder farmers in an agricultural frontier of southern mexico our analysis takes as its point of departure a simple utility maximising model that suggests many possible determinants of deforestation in an economic environment characterised by missing or thin markets hypotheses from the model are tested on a data set that combines a time series of satellite imagery with data collected from a survey of farm households whose agricultural plots were geo referenced using a global positioning system gps we implement a survival analysis to identify the effect of household level explanatory variables on the probability of deforestation this approach allows us to introduce a measure of the time until clearance as a covariate thereby affording a control for the effect of potentially important explanatory variables that vary through time but are not directly observable in addition to identifying several variables relevant for policy analysis including household demographics proximity to roads and government provision of agricultural support model results suggest that the deforestation process is characterised by non linear duration dependence with the probability of forest clearance first decreasing and then increasing with the passage of time

changing the price of pork the impact of local cost sharing on legislators demands for distributive public goods abstract the provision of public services through national legislatures gives legislators the chance to fund locally beneficial public projects using a shared national tax base nationally financed and provided local congestible public goods will be purchased at a subsidized price below marginal cost and may be inefficiently too large as a consequence an important assumption behind this inefficiency is that national legislators in fact demand more of the locally beneficial project as the local price for projects declines this paper provides the first direct test of this important assumption using legislators project choices following the passage of the water resources development act of 1986 wrda 86 we find legislators chosen water project sizes do fall as the local cost share rises with a price elasticity of demand ranging from 0 81 for flood control and shoreline protection projects to 2 55 for large navigation projects the requirement of wrda 86 that local taxpayers contribute a greater share to the funding of local water projects reduced overall proposed project spending in our sample by 35 and the federal outlay for proposed project spending by 48

a note on futures markets with small price and production risks when the spot price and production risk are jointly normally distributed the mean variance approach has little theoretical justification the authors use taylor approximations instead and show the three results one farmers hedge less than expected production when the futures price is less than or equal to the expected spot price two when the futures price equals the expected spot price farmers facing production risk produce less than those without production risk three normal backwardation contango prevails in the markets when correlation between the spot price and production risk is smaller greater in absolute value than the ratio of coefficients of variation of these variables copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

property value capitalization and municipal open space referenda this paper first develops a theory of demand for land conservation in the presence of price effects due to both amenity creation and housing supply restriction three hypotheses designed to distinguish demand for amenities from homeowner rent seeking are based upon 1 renters 2 the quality of another locally provided good schools and 3 spatial autocorrelation of funding across municipalities econometric results suggest an observable degree of demand for open space measures is nonenvironmental in motivation efficiency and policy implications are discussed along with a recommendation for benefit cost analysis capable of separating nonrival amenities from other interests to certify open space measures jel h41 q24

the ideological component of senate voting different principles or different principals evidence exists on both sides of the question of whether or not legislator specific ideologically driven shirking of constituent interest occurs in this paper we use a well known model of such shirking by senators as our point of departure and add measures of inter state constituent interests the role of campaign contributions and hence the importance of whether or not senators are up for reelection we find some evidence that the model provides a stronger explanation for senators up for reelection than for those who are not and that campaign contributions help determine voting decisions by these legislators finally accounting for inter state constituent interests shirking is not a significant variable in the voting decisions of senators facing reelection thus it appears that the reelection interests of some senators have been mistaken for ideologically driven shirking

the working curve and commodity storage under backwardation there remains controversy over whether the empirical curve relating intertemporal commodity price spreads and stocks originally drawn by holbrook working in 1933 i e the working curve is a valid stylized fact in commodity markets the core of the controversy is the portion of the curve representing commodity stocks under backwardation in this article we analyze the original data used by working plus more disaggregated numbers we find that the working curve is indeed valid the diversity of stockholders and different stockholding motives most likely explain the empirical working curve relationship

a simple test of consumption insurance are consumers effectively insured against idiosyncratic shocks to income or wealth either by formal institutions such as charities private insurance and government programs or by informal mechanisms such as gifts and loans from relatives friends and neighbors under full insurance consumption growth should be cross sectionally independent of idiosyncratic variables that are exogenous to consumers this proposition is tested by cross sectional regressions of consumption growth on a variety of exogenous variables full insurance is rejected for long illness and involuntary job loss but not for spells of unemployment loss of work due to strike and an involuntary move

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

assessing the efficiency of local open space provision abstract this paper tests the efficiency of local provision of land conservation i examine how housing prices which capitalize open space amenities and future tax obligations change after municipalities vote on referendums for conservation spending using a dynamic regression discontinuity based on voting outcomes results suggest that average housing prices increase about 0 68 1 12 for every 1000 per household of open space spending authorized which indicates inefficiency and underprovision of conservation i also examine tax capitalization and supply side explanations for estimated capitalization

assessing holistic economic value for multifunctional agriculture in the us abstract this study used contingent valuation method to shed light on public preferences on the multifunctional roles of the us agriculture and to present a holistic estimate of the economic value of the nonmarket goods and services of us agriculture contingent valuation survey instrument was administered to a sample composed from the ipsos web based panel fishbein s model of reasoned behavior and mediation hypothesis were combined to model the relationship between wtp behavioral intentions and sets of explanatory variables including attitudes perceived attributes about family farms farmland preservation programs government involvement in agricultural markets and ecological state of our world and socio demographic profiles results show that while exerting a highly significant impact on wtp attitudes mediate the effects of the attribute variables on wtp i e the attributes influence wtp directly as well as indirectly through attitudes the estimated mean wtp was 515 per taxpayer annually aggregating individual wtps across the us taxpayers above 20 years old produces 105 billion representing a crude estimate of the economic value that the us consumers place on the multifunctional roles of us agriculture

gambling preferences options markets and volatility this study examines whether the gambling behavior of investors affects volume and volatility in financial markets focusing on the options market we find that the ratio of call option volume relative to total option volume is greatest for stocks with return distributions that resemble lotteries consistent with the theoretical predictions of stein 1987 we demonstrate that gambling motivated trading in the options market influences future spot price volatility these results not only identify a link between lottery preferences in the stock market and the options market but they also suggest that lottery preferences can lead to destabilized stock prices

what does it take to sell environmental policy an empirical analysis of referendum data we analyze the factors that influence the support for environmental policy proposals swiss referendum data show that proposals obtain more yes votes if they do not restrict consumption possibilities directly if they are endorsed by the largest business association if environmental preferences are strong and economic conditions are favorable at the time of the referendum also there are more pro environmental votes in cantons with higher population density on the other hand yes votes do not seem to depend on whether a proposal involves a tax or not

voting for pollution policy the importance of income inequality and openness to trade abstract this paper analyzes how openness and the distribution of factor ownership interact to determine individual and aggregate demand for pollution policy analysis of voter preferences in autarky shows that an increased stake in either the dirty or the clean industry can induce an individual voter to prefer stricter environmental policy similarly the paper shows that poorer voters may be the greener voters within an electorate the model also reveals that the incidence of pollution policy depends upon a country s trade regime with consequences for the direction in which income inequality influences aggregate demand for pollution policy

the politics of pollution party regimes and air quality in canada environmental concerns often figure prominently in opinion polls but do election outcomes actually affect the environment i test the influence of the party in power on urban air pollution in 13 canadian cities the government s political stripe is not reliably associated with positive or negative effects on air pollution provincial parties on both the right and the left are associated with elevated levels of some air contaminants federal effects also go in contrasting directions overall it appears a change in government is unlikely to be a reliable predictor of changes in air pollution jel classification q51 q58 d78

private provision of a public good land trust membership land trusts prevent the development of open space providing both public and impure public goods to area residents this study examines the relationship between these benefits and membership levels for a sample of 91 land trusts while controlling for local demographic and area characteristics trusts that offer member only access to property have higher membership but most trusts do not provide such benefits membership increases with local population but at a decreasing rate consistent with the free riding behavior found in other studies of collective action the study finds the existence of scope effects with respect to the amount of protected acreage

intraday relationships between volatility in s p 500 futures prices and volatility in the s p 500 index abstract this paper examines the intraday relationships between the volatility of s p 500 futures prices and the volatility of the s p 500 index we calculate variance measures for minute to minute price changes on a daily basis and across 30 minute intervals the empirical results indicate that i futures volatility is greater than index volatility ii volatility increased for both futures prices and the index in absolute terms from 1984 through 1986 iii both futures and index volatility increased directly with futures trading volume and iv index volatility was systematically greater during the first 30 minutes of trading each day than at other times granger tests however reveal no systematic pattern of futures volatility leading index volatility or index volatility leading futures volatility

the effect of futures markets and corners on storage and spot price variability when a futures market is introduced the volume of storage should become more sensitive to changes in the return to storage the increase in storage sensitivity means that storage will absorb a larger proportion of demand and supply shocks than it did previously reducing spot price volatility data from the chicago board of trade support the hypotheses of increased storage sensitivity and reduced spot price volatility the effect of futures on spot price volatility is sensitive to the competitive structure of the futures market futures market manipulation causes spot price variance to increase despite manipulation the development of the wheat futures market caused the coefficient of variation of spot price to decline significantly

s p 500 cash stock price volatilities s p 500 stock return volatilities are compared to the volatilities of a matched set of stocks after controlling for cross sectional differences in firm attributes known to affect volatility no significant difference in volatility is observed between 1975 and 1983before the start of trade in index futures and index options since then s p 500 stocks have been relatively more volatile the difference is statistically but not economically significant the relative increase occurs primarily in daily returns and only to a lesser extent in longer interval returns other factors besides the start of derivative trade could be responsible for the small increase in volatility stock price volatility has received much attention in the popular press over the last few years especially since the october 19 1987 stock market crash the rise in volatility has alarmed investors regulators and the public in general some suggest that the start of trade in stock index futures and index options increased speculative activity that in turn destabilized cash markets causing higher volatility large trading activity in the derivative contracts makes the suggestion plausible volume in index futures and index options increased dramatically since their introductions in 1982 and 1983 by 1987 the average daily dollar volume in the s p 500 futures contracts alone exceeded the dollar volume of cash s p 500 trade by a factor of about two while the dollar value of the daily net change in total open interest is about 8 of s p 500 stock dollar volume speculative trade in futures and options frequently is accused of destabilizing underlying cash markets the charge has been made for more than a century in the agricultural precious metal and currency markets recent evidence by french and roll 1986 showing stock variance to be strongly related to trading session hours heightens these concerns unfortunately theoretical analyses of whether speculative trade destabilizes cash markets lead to conflicting conclusions depending on what assumptions are made 1 school of business administration university of southern california and office of economic analysis u s securities and exchange commission i wish to thank mary denny mcsweeny and steve hornstein for their valuable research assistance and the referee and editor for their many suggestions and insights the opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the u s securities and exchange commission or those of the author s colleagues on its staff an increase in well informed speculative trade has two opposite effects on measured volatility it decreases volatility due to order flow imbalances caused by uninformed traders because informed traders provide liquidity in such events and it increases volatility due to new fundamental information since the information which is assumed to be generated at discrete time intervals is impounded into

risk aversion and the recommended hedging ratio in a recent article in this journal kahl reviewed the existing literature on the determination of optimal futures and cash market positions the optimal hedging ratios were found to depend on whether the cash position was treated as endogenous or predetermined and some general implications were set forth the surprising conclusion was that the optimal hedging ratio is independent of the individual s risk aversion even though the optimal positions in the cash and futures markets are themselves not independent of the risk parameter kahl demonstrates that this conclusion

on the accuracy of the mean variance approximation for futures markets abstract simple approximate fomulae for the volume and gains from futures trading are derived using the mean variance model the errors involved are exactly quantified and shown to be negligible for the futures price and welfare gains though potentially larger for volumes

explaining the appearance and success of open space referenda many communities in the united states have begun enacting policies to preserve open space often through local voter referenda new jersey sponsors such municipal action through the green acres program by providing funding and low interest loans to towns that choose to increase property taxes and spend the money raised on open space preservation for the purposes of conservation and or recreation this paper endeavors to understand which factors contribute to the appearance and success of these measures although previous literature has examined this issue this is the first study to account for spatial dependence spatial autocorrelation and to explore dynamic issues through survival analysis the traditional two stage model from the literature is extended by incorporating a bayesian spatial probit for the first stage and a maximum likelihood spatial error model in the second stage a cox proportional hazard model is used to examine the timing of referenda appearance spatial dependence is found in the second stage of the analysis indicating that future studies should account for its influence there is no strong evidence for spatial dependence or correlation in the first stage the survival model is found to be a useful complement to the traditional probit analysis of the first stage

the value of ideal contingency markets in agriculture an incomplete markets equilibrium in which no contingency markets are available is compared to a complete markets equilibrium formed by introducing a futures market and a crop insurance market the two regimes are compared using comparative static and welfare analyses numerical examples highlight important characteristics of the model and illustrate how the effects of introducing contingency markets can be quantified the main conclusions are that contingency markets in agriculture increase economic efficiency but there is no guarantee that farmers and consumers both benefit it is found that futures and crop insurance markets may reduce farmer welfare when the demand for farm products is price inelastic

sample selection individual heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity in valuing farmland conservation easements public concern about farmland loss has a long history these concerns are reflected in the u s federal farm bill and state level programs however studies of the benefits of farmland conservation have largely been conducted at the local level this study investigates heterogeneity in preferences for farmland conservation easements by conducting parallel studies in georgia maine and ohio and for a nationally representative sample using a choice experiment we find that a program set at the national level will not result in optimal allocations of funds at the state level in terms of targeting farmland that will generate the greatest public benefits

who votes for public environmental goods in california evidence from a spatial analysis of voting for environmental ballot measures abstract voting referenda provide direct evidence of the demand for public goods a number of previous studies have used referenda to analyze the support for public environmental goods these studies have used aggregate data from large jurisdictional units usually counties and summary income measures such as the mean or median and have usually found that higher income areas offer greater support for environmental propositions we examine environmental referenda voting in california using census block group data spatial dependence controls and detailed income distribution data we find that household income has a negative marginal effect on environmental referenda voting for most of the income range when using census block data in addition controls for spatial dependence significantly reduce the magnitude of most coefficients this suggests that ols estimates of referenda determinants are biased we also show that county level data may be subject to severe aggregation bias and might not be appropriate for referenda studies

local choice of property taxation evidence from norway fiscal competition may influence the design of tax systems the tax competition literature has concentrated on mobility of tax base and tax levels while we turn the attention to the political decision making system and the determination of tax structure in the norwegian setting local governments make a discrete choice whether to have property tax the local choice is investigated in an econometric model allowing for yardstick competition our results indicate that yardstick competition explains the distinct geographic pattern in local property taxation observed grants have no effect on the propensity to have property taxation consistent with the flypaper effect the main methodological challenge handled concerns spatial interaction with discrete choice

hedging price risks of farmers by commodity boards a simulation applied to the indian natural rubber market abstract this paper investigates a hypothetical hedging scheme in a domestic commodity market under which a commodity board offers a forward contract to domestic producers and local traders and covers its commitments on an international futures exchange it is aimed to quantify welfare gains to agents in the market and costs and benefits of the board empirically the empirical work is based on the indian natural rubber market and the tokyo commodity exchange tocom for the period 1990 95 the hedging scheme is shown to increase welfare substantially particularly welfare of growers the costs of such a facility for the commodity board basis risk are negligible if the forward price offered on the domestic market is a small fraction below the international futures price the board can prevent losses at only slightly lower welfare gains

using referendum data to characterize public support for purchasing development rights to farmland an econometric model that de scribes public support for farmland preservation programs as a function of local land use pat terns and socioeconomic data is developed two versions of the model are estimated using data from referenda conducted in pennsylvania and rhode island during 1982 through 1990 results suggest that support for referenda that purchase development rights is stronger in counties and towns with both rapidly increasing population and where land and house values have increased at higher rates environmental factors such as the prevalence of resource sensitive lands are also significant in describing the public s moti vation to preserve farmland jel q15

derivative securities and cash market stability this study investigates the effect of introducing interest rate futures and options on the price variances in related financial cash markets standard research approaches to this issue relate cash price stability before the introduction of futures and options trading to cash price stability after trading in the derivative security begins however controlling for the additional factors that may also effect cash markets is difficult the approach employed here to deal with this obstacle is motivated by recent theoretical research relating cash and futures markets but hitherto not operationalized to empirically test for a relationship between the markets varying parameter models of 1 the demand for short term treasury securities 2 the demand for large time deposits and 3 the supply of large time deposits are specified such that changes in the parameters imply changes in the volatility of the cash price these parameters are modelled as functions of the trading volume of interest rate futures and o

understanding china s urban pollution dynamics china s ongoing urban economic growth has sharply increased the population s per capita income lowered the count of people living below the poverty line and caused major environmental problems we survey the growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of china s urban pollution challenges we begin by studying how urban population and industrial growth impacts local pollution levels and greenhouse gas production as the urban population grows richer its demand for private transportation and electricity sharply increases such privately beneficial activity exacerbates urban pollution externalities facing these severe environmental challenges china s urbanites increasingly demand quality of life progress we survey the emerging literature investigating the demand for environmental progress in china progress in mitigating externalities hinges on whether the powerful central and local governments choose to address these issues we analyze the political economy of whether government officials have strong incentives to tackle lingering urban externalities we conclude by discussing future research opportunities at the intersection of environmental and urban economics jel o18 p25 p28 q53 r23 r41 r58

seasonal patterns of futures hedging and the resolution of output uncertainty abstract optimal futures hedging is examined in a two good model with stochastic output and sequential information arrival a producer s optimal hedge depends on demand elasticity sensitivity of his output to weather his correlation with aggregate output and how rapidly his output uncertainty is resolved relative to other producers during different seasonal periods because regional output uncertainties are resolved at different times the optimal futures position of a grower will commonly reverse in direction during the crop year a producer with non stochastic output who faces price risk arising from demand shocks may remain unhedged or even maintain a long position

voting on the environment price or ideology evidence from swiss referendums studies on preferences for environmental quality usually posit that price and income explain most of the observed choices however we argue that conceptions of social norms and the common good are equally important when analyzing environmental voting outcomes and are a significant component of the environmental demand we study aggregate results of three ballot proposals in switzerland put to vote in the year 2000 which foresaw different tax schemes on fossil energy all three bills were rejected by the electorate we are able to show that regions with producer interests car commuting habits and elderly population are less supportive of ecological tax reforms unlike higher education and leftist political affinity that work in favor of the bills though more importantly our results underline the importance of including variables pertaining to the notion of ideology both in terms of statistical fit and obtaining unbiased estimates for price and income determinants

measuring the property value effects of local land use and preservation referenda this paper examines a massachusetts policy that encourages communities to raise money through referenda for preservation and affordable housing i use difference indifferences fixed effects and quantile regression to compare home prices before and after such referenda in two towns i include covariates representing existing land uses zoning and historic resources to estimate the value of these amenities standard regression techniques indicate weak effects of the referenda while the estimated coefficients on land use and historic preservation confirm that preservation has a positive effect on property values the quantile regression sheds light on some heterogeneity that goes unnoticed in standard regression results

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

the sensitivity of tests of the intertemporal allocation of consumption to near rational alternatives suppose a consumer sets consumption equal to income each period rather than following the optimal permanent income decision rule how much utility does he lose this paper finds that the answer is typically less than 10 cents 1 per quarter in environments specified by popular tests on aggregate data it includes calculations of the costs of excess sensitivity and excess smoothness to income and interest rate changes and the costs of ignoring information it concludes that the theory does not make predictions for aggregate tests that are robust to small costs such as information or transactions copyright 1989 by american economic association

the heckman correction for sample selection and its critique this paper gives a short overview of monte carlo studies on the usefulness of heckman s 1976 1979 two step estimator for estimating selection models such models occur frequently in empirical work especially in microeconometrics when estimating wage equations or consumer expenditures it is shown that exploratory work to check for collinearity problems is strongly recommended before deciding on which estimator to apply in the absence of collinearity problems the full information maximum likelihood estimator is preferable to the limited information two step method of heckman although the latter also gives reasonable results if however collinearity problems prevail subsample ols or the two part model is the most robust amongst the simple to calculate estimators

open access and the evolution of the u s spot market for natural gas federal regulations promoting open access transportation dramatically altered the organizational structure of the u s market for natural gas in the 1980s generally unbundling the merchant and transport functions of interstate pipelines an empirical analysis of wellhead spot prices is undertaken to examine the effect of open access on the geographic scope of the spot market using monthly spot price data from 1984 91 three statistical tests are applied and compared price correlations granger causality and cointegration we find that open access integrated the regional wellhead markets into a national competitive market for natural gas the effects of unbundling on contracts for natural gas are then investigated incentives for long term contracts between pipelines and producers are shown to be effectively removed by the introduction of competitive buying and selling of gas at the wellhead through open access

payment vehicles for public goods evidence from california s proposition 21 proposition 21 on california s 2010 ballot concerned an annual surcharge on vehicles to support state parks proposition 21 failed leaving 25 of california state parks at risk of closure we analyze voting patterns which we show depend on the average gross price of the proposition political ideology environmental preferences the availability of substitutes and park salience we simulate counterfactual scenarios under which proposition 21 might have passed and use holdout samples to illustrate the predictive ability of our model heterogeneity across california makes our model potentially useful for predicting public sentiment for similar propositions even for jurisdictions without direct democracy