two stage optimal control problems with an explicit switch point dependence optimality criteria and an example of delivery lags and investment abstract this paper provides necessary conditions for the solution of two stage optimal control problems where the switch point is a choice variable and where the switch point appears as an argument of the integrands in each integral which comprise the criterion index to be maximized problems of this variety have arisen in the exhaustible resource and neoclassical investment literature using the conditions necessary for the solution of these problems we analyze an example of optimal investment in the presence of delivery lags and show how the optimal switch point delivery lag responds to shifts in exogenous parameters

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

resource and waste taxation in the theory of the firm with recycling activities the management of solid waste has become an urgent problem in nations with a great population density accordingly waste reduction through source reduction and recycling has become increasingly important our purpose is to show how prevention recycling and disposal of waste could be part of a theory of the firm we first derive efficient production functions from production processes with waste as a by product waste obtained as new scrap can partially be recycled by using additional inputs in order to cut back the purchase of virgin material waste not completely recyclable will leave the firm as disposal which also entails cost to the firm we use the dual cost function approach to develop a theory of the firm under solid residual management since the producer does not bear the full cost of disposal there will be a bias toward virgin materials and away from recycling the goal of the government is to stimulate the firms to recycle with respect to the preservation of exhaustible resources an incentive to recycle is a tax on resources or on waste in order to determine the tax levels the government maximizes welfare subject to the dynamic constraint for decumulation of land fill for waste deposits this gives the user cost and its time profile for taxing waste disposal or virgin material in a comparative statics analysis we compare the effect of taxes on waste vs virgin material on effort to produce in a resource saving manner on the quantity of recycled material on output and on the reduction of waste since the impact of environmental regulation on employment is important our model detects seven effects on labor demand as part of resource conservation policy we finally carry out a comparative statics analysis of waste intensive firms operating in different market structures of interest is the impact of a resource or waste taxation on market volume on the number of firms on resource saving effort and on profit

did migration in the 1980s narrow the north south divide this paper integrates empirical analysis of the decision to migrate from a region with that of destination choice thus we are able to study how net migration and not just gross outflows are influenced by regional labour market circumstances the results suggest that relative regional wages rates but not relative unemployment and vacancy rates are effective in reallocating labour from regions experiencing adverse demand shocks we find little evidence that manual labour is migrating from those regions with relatively high manual unemployment but that migration plays a more conventional role in the regional adjustment process for non manual workers

increasing the influence of co 2 emissions information on car purchase in response to concerns related to climate change and an attempt to encourage more sustainable behavior individuals are often provided with information on greenhouse gas emissions ghgs of consumer items such as personal vehicles currently in the us information on vehicle efficiency is provided as grams of carbon dioxide co2 per mile previous research presenting co2 as a mass and testing willingness to pay through discrete choice experiment has found that such information can influence vehicle choice however other research has questioned whether how this information is presented might affect choice that research argues that co2 emission information generally lacks contextualization that allows for interpretation as well it argues that the type of contextualization may affect choices that research though did not test willingness to pay and the strength of its influence is not clear in addition research exists that argues that using pro social as opposed to financial contextualization might be more influential on people s choices thus the purpose of this paper is to build on these previous findings on how co2 emissions are presented to determine whether changing how that information impacts vehicle choice with a discrete choice experiment of vehicle choice analyzed using latent class modeling no previous study has so robustly studied the influence that different framings might have on vehicle purchase five different methods of presenting co2 information are tested in this experiment co2 emissions as grams per mile current method co2 emissions as pounds per year consistent imperial units co2 emissions as tons per year yearly contextualization an annual tax on co2 yearly financial contextualization and co2 as a percentage of the 2025 us epa reduction target of 26 from 2005 levels social goal contextualization results demonstrate that the current method results in lowest willingness to pay for co2 emission reductions while the social goal contextualization results in the highest

dual labor markets urban unemployment and multicentric cities a two sector model of urban employment is developed which focuses on the formation of a secondary sector in response to a primary sector demand shock the optimal location of this single firm sector is shown to give rise to a multicentric urban spatial structure conditions are then established under which the new labor market equilibrium involves both a decrease in unemployment and an increase in net income for those unemployed these results are extended to a case where all unemployment benefits are financed by local taxation of firms here it is shown that profit incentives may exist for the primary sector to subsidize entry of the secondary sector c 1997 academic press

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

economic analysis of paper recycling vis a vis wood as raw material abstract concerns for the environment has forced many firms define policies that protect the environment within which they operate this paper presents a linear optimization model for paper industry to compare total system cost of wood as a raw material with recycling of waste paper objective of the proposed model is to minimize the cost of paper in the supply chain costs included in the objective functions are costs for collection of raw material transportation inventory manufacturing segregation and disposal during recycling the model also includes the economic implications of using these alternative material sources on environment as well as quality of final product to gain further insights into system behavior sensitivity analysis shortage analysis and indifference curve analysis have been performed the analysis clearly reveals that the paper recycling is an economical option compared to wood as a raw material the paper analysis highlights various strategies that could be followed under different market conditions

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

on the dynamics of recycling and natural resources we study the dynamic impact of recycling through its effect on the production set of the economy and its relationship with natural resources the contribution of renewable and recyclable resources for sustainability is studied although in the short run recycling may alleviate resource scarcity in the long run it is not enough to compensate for the exhaustibility of non renewable resources and the possibility of obtaining non decreasing output paths crucially depends on the extent to which production rests on renewable resources furthermore recycling interacts with natural resource growth surprisingly not always favoring sustainability the production and recycling function is a generalization of the traditional production function providing an integrated view of regular production and recycling and representing the production set of the economy when a recycling technology is available

spatial competition with a land market hotelling and von thunen unified we introduce into the standard spatial competition model the consumption of land by households and study the spatial competition under the influence of a land market in contrast to the standard assumption of a fixed given distribution of households we introduce the possibility of households relocation in reaction to firms location decisions thus the spatial distribution of households is treated as endogenous and a land market is introduced on which households compete for land use households consume simultaneously land and firms output accordingly the demand of each household becomes in turn endogenous as it depends on the income left after the land rent is paid not surprisingly the results obtained within this more general framework prove to be very different from the standard results for example in the 2 and 3 firm cases the optimal configuration of firms is a nash equilibrium when transport costs are high enough or the amount of vacant land is large enough the existence property is restored in the 3 firm case when the transport costs are high enough the introduction of vacant land causes a discontinuous change in the set of equilibrium configurations

measuring the economic benefits of recycling the case of the waste agricultural film in korea recently increase of the waste agricultural film waf raises the loss of the resources and produces the environmental damage in korea the korean government has established the basic plan for increasing the recycling rate and abating the environmental damage the objective of this paper is to estimate the economic benefits attached to the policy of recycling the waf using contingent valuation method aiming to provide policy makers with useful information to make an informed public decision in recycling the waf the overall results show that the respondents well accepted the contingent market and would be willing to pay a significant amount for the proposed policy of recycling the waf the mean willingness to pay and the truncated mean willingness to pay per household were 4641 korean won us 3 6 and 5730 korean won us 4 4 respectively total economic benefits for the population amounted to approximately 14 33 billion korean won us 11 02 million per year this quantitative information can be use

it pays to be different endogenous heterogeneity of firms in an oligopoly abstract heterogeneous firms can be supported by familiar conditions of technology and demand in a two stage duopoly game firms choose technologies simultaneously in stage i from a continuous technology set in stage ii once technological commitments have been made firms choose quantities and the equilibrium price is determined if the technology set is insufficiently convex firms choose only the extreme production technologies in some cases they choose the same technology in others they choose different technologies when compared to socially optimal industry structures equilibria tend to have too little heterogeneity uncertainty about demand or costs favors the emergence of heterogeneous firms

the distributional effects of local labor demand and industrial mix estimates using individual panel data abstract this paper finds that increases in local labor demand have significant progressive effects on the income distribution and significantly reduce poverty the anti poverty effects of stronger demand have not lessened in recent years local labor demand s benefits are particularly great for younger less educated men labor demand s benefits are similar for blacks and whites and men and women the paper also finds that shifts in the local industrial mix toward manufacturing or other high wage industries do not have progressive effects and do not reduce poverty

the political economy of urban transport system choice this paper analyzes the political economy of transport system choice with the goal of gaining an understanding of the forces involved in this important urban public policy decision transport systems pose a continuous trade off between time and money cost so that a city can choose a fast system with a high money cost per mile or a slower cheaper system the paper compares the socially optimal transport system to the one chosen under the voting process focusing on both homogeneous and heterogeneous cities while considering different landownership arrangements the analysis identifies a bias toward underinvestment in transport quality in heterogeneous cities

a post consumer waste management model for determining optimal levels of recycling and landfilling the present study examines the optimal recycling rate for municipal solid waste first an optimal control model is developed to account for the physical costs of recycling the social costs of landfilling and consumers environmental preferences second an optimal solution is simulated using waste disposal data from the helsinki region in finland the benefits from recycling are included in the simulation using the results of a recent contingent valuation study the results of the present research suggest that mandates for achieving 50 recycling in municipalities are not far fetched and are both economically and environmentally justified

revaluing the hierarchy of paper recycling this article revalues the hierarchy of paper waste management policies in a dynamic general equilibrium model incineration material recycling and the distinction between non renewable fossil fuels and renewable forest assets are incorporated by comparing the first order conditions from the command optimum with the conditions from the market model it is discovered that the unregulated market fails to create an optimal resource allocation to see how the market behaves in absence of environmental policy compared to the first best solution a numerical model is used pigouvian taxes and subsidies are derived to correct for the externalities

gasoline prices fuel economy and the energy paradox abstract policymakers often assert that consumers undervalue future gasoline costs when they buy automobiles we test this by measuring whether relative prices of vehicles with different fuel economy ratings fully adjust to variation in gasoline prices vehicle prices move as if consumers are indifferent between 1 00 in discounted future gas cost and 0 76 in vehicle purchase price we show how corrections for endogenous market shares and utilization measurement error and different gasoline price forecasts affect the results we also provide unique evidence of sticky information vehicle markets respond to changes in gasoline prices with up to a six month delay

wage competition with heterogeneous workers and firms we study imperfect competition in the labor market when both workers and firms are heterogeneous when firms cannot observe workers skill firms pay workers equal wages but workers absorb training costs when firms can identify worker types firms pay different net wages to different workers voters select the level of general education that is financed by a lump sum tax workers are on average better off when firms can observe workers skill for a given level of general human capital but the median voter prefers a higher level of general human capital when firms cannot observe worker types

does city structure affect job search and welfare we develop a model in which workers search efficiency is negatively affected by access to jobs workers location in a city is endogenous and reflects a trade off between commuting costs and the surplus associated with search different configurations emerge in equilibrium notably the unemployed workers may reside far away segregated city or close to jobs integrated city we prove that there exists a unique and stable market equilibrium in which both land and labor markets are solved for simultaneously we find that despite inefficient search in the segregated city equilibrium the welfare difference between the two equilibria is not so large due to differences in commuting costs we also show how a social planner can manipulate wages by subsidizing taxing the transport costs and can accordingly restore the efficiency

optimal pricing of depletable replaceable resources the case of landfill tipping fees abstract we develop a general model for pricing a depletable replaceable asset and discuss its application in determining optimal tipping fees for a sanitary landfill we show that the optimal fee includes a component that grows at the real interest rate as space in the landfill is depleted and then drops when a new landfill is built because the scarcity cost of landfill space increases as the landfill is filled it may be optimal to delay a waste reduction program such as recycling composting or incineration until the landfill is partially full

does international harmonization of environmental policy instruments make economic sense harmonization of the instruments used in environmental policy has beenconsidered necessary to guarantee fair competition in internationalmarkets we examine the economic costs of harmonizing paper recyclingstandards in countries where the urgency of the waste disposal problemsdiffer using data of seven european countries we estimate thetechnologically feasible input combinations of pulp and waste paper forpaper production short term effects of two environmental policy measures minimum content requirement and utilization rate target are analyzed bytranslating the two administrative instruments into taxes and subsidies weshow that the shadow costs of the harmonization vary considerably betweencountries the difference in the domestic availability of waste may explainthe variation and a modification of the policy measures to incorporate thisaspect is suggested

augmenting travel cost models with contingent behavior data this paper proposes contingent behavior survey questions as a valuable supplement to observed data in travel cost models of non market demand for recreational resources a set of observed and contingent behavior results for each survey respondent allows the researcher to control for individual heterogeneity by taking advantage of panel data methods when exploring the nature of respondent demands the contingent scenarios also provide opportunities to a test for differences between observed and contingent preferences and or b assess likely demands under conditionsbeyond the domain of observed variation in costs or resource attributes most importantly contingent scenarios allow the researcher to imposeexogenously varying travel costs exogenous imposition of travel costs together with panel methods reduces the omitted variables bias that plagues observed data travel cost models of recreational demand using a convenience sample of data for illustrative purposes we show how to estimate the demand for recreational angling by combining observed and contingent behavior data we begin with simple naive pooled poisson models and progress to more theoretically appropriate fixed effects panel poisson specifications

symmetric equilibrium existence and optimality in differentiated product markets abstract equilibrium existence and optimality are analysed in a market for products differentiated by their variety a game of three stages is analysed firms enter in the first stage choose varieties in the second stage and choose prices in the third stage the existence of subgame perfect equilibria is established at equilibrium products are symmetrically located in the space of characteristics and are offered at equal prices the surplus maximizing solution is characterized and it is shown that surplus maximizing product diversity is lower than the equilibrium one

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

product design and efficient management of recycling and waste treatment abstract using a general equilibrium model where material is first extracted then used for producing a consumption good recycled and finally treated to reduce environmental damage we study efficiency restoring policies when one or more of the constituent markets are inactive the material is modeled as being embodied in the output and forms an important aspect of green product design if all markets for embodied material per unit output fail and if recycling benefit exceeds environmental damage the policy instruments needed for green design are a tax on the consumption good supply and a subsidy on the demand for material input

accounting for uncertainty in willingness to pay for environmental benefits previous literature on the distribution of willingness to pay has focused on its heterogeneity distribution without addressing exact interval estimation in this paper we derive and analyze bayesian confidence sets for quantifying uncertainty in the determination of willingness to pay for carbon dioxide abatement we use two empirical case studies household decisions of energy efficient heating versus insulation and purchase decisions of ultralow emission vehicles we first show that deriving credible sets using the posterior distribution of the willingness to pay is straightforward in the case of deterministic consumer heterogeneity however when using individual estimates which is the case for the random parameters of the mixed logit model it is complex to define the distribution of interest for the interval estimation problem this latter problem is actually more involved than determining the moments of the heterogeneity distribution of the willingness to pay using frequentist econometrics a solution that we propose is to derive and then summarize the distribution of point estimates of the individual willingness to pay under different loss functions

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

competition and teacher pay i introduction recent policy initiatives are increasing the degree of competition in primary and secondary education the number of charter schools is growing at an astounding rate vouchers are available to eligible children in florida utah and a number of cities including washington d c kafer 2005 school districts throughout the country are experimenting with subcontracting campuses to private firms the increasing popularity of policies that foster school competition dovetails with a burgeoning literature on the effects of educational competition researchers have examined the effects of educational competition on academic outcomes average public school spending and school district efficiency l this research has largely ignored the effects of increased competition on teacher pay yet reductions in the market power of school districts could have a significant impact on teacher earnings if school districts behave as typical monopsonists or oligopsonists when hiring then a lack of competition suppresses wages and policies that are designed to enhance competition among schools could lead to higher teacher salaries ceteris paribus 2 alternatively if a school district s position as a monopolistic provider of education services generates economic rents there are few parties to whom those rents might be dissipated besides school district personnel if teachers have been able to appropriate a share of the economic rents generated by the market power of school districts then increased competition could lower teacher salaries 3 this study uses individual data on more than 335 000 teachers from 670 texas school districts to explore the empirical relationship between competition and teacher pay the analysis suggests that a lack of competition in the public school system has led to significant market power for texas school districts resulting in lower wages for most texas teachers but higher wages for teachers in relatively concentrated markets ii theoretical models the elementary and secondary education industry in the united states is often highly concentrated more than 30 of u s educational markets are served by a single public school district and there are many more that are served by only a handful of educational providers 4 the concentrated nature of education markets suggests two alternative models of teacher wage determination the first is a classic oligopsony model and the second is a rent sharing model an oligopsony model of teacher wage determination boal and ransom 1997 lay out a classic cournot model of oligopsony that can be directly applied to the educational labor market 5 firms school districts choose an employment level l sub i to maximize the firm s revenue function r sub i given the employment level of all other firms in the market l sub i 1 r sub i l sub i w l sub i l sub i l sub i the market wage is determined by the total employment of all firms the first order condition for each firm implies that it chooses l sub i such that 2 mrp sub i w w l sub i l epsilon sup 1 in this model the gap between the marginal revenue product of firm i mrp sub i and the wage rate w depends on the firm s employment share l sub i l and the inverse wage elasticity of labor supply for the market epsilon sup 1 6 assuming that firms have different marginal revenue products the employment weighted average across all the firms in the market is 3 summation over i mrp sub i w l sub i wl epsilon sup 1 summation over i l sub i l sup 2 the last term on the right hand side is the familiar herfindahl index of market concentration thus wages are a function of market concentration h the employment weighted average marginal revenue profit per worker bar

household responses to price incentives for recycling some further evidence this paper investigates the role of waste disposal service fees and household characteristics in determining recycling rates and waste generation using individual household data from portland oregon we model a multistage household decision process regarding waste generation and recycling effort under a block pricing system including the choice of container size and reduced form demand equations for recyclables non recyclables and recycling rate the choice of container size is not affected by the price of waste disposal services but within a given container size households respond to a price increase by increasing recycling to avoid charges for waste generation above contracted volumes

outsourcing labor market pooling and labor contracts this paper considers the interaction between input sharing and labor market pooling in urban areas in particular it examines the impact of the size of a city and business risks on the organizational structures of firms located in urban agglomerations and it also discusses the impact of organizational structure on incentives to insure workers against income risks it is shown that manufacturing firms suffer from a coordination game in their decision to outsource production the existence of idiosyncratic risks causes manufacturers to refrain from outsourcing the incentives to offer wage and employment protection to workers are more pronounced when manufacturers outsource the production of their inputs to a local market which mitigates the impact of labor market pooling

landfill construction and capacity expansion we study the optimal capacity and lifetime of landfills taking into account their sequential nature such an optimal capacity is characterized by the so called optimal capacity condition particular versions of this condition are obtained for two alternative settings first if all the landfills are to have the same capacity and second if each of them is allowed to have a different capacity in the second case we obtain an optimal control problem with mixed elements of both continuous and discrete time the resulting optimization problems involve dividing a time horizon of planning into several subintervals of endogenously decided length the results obtained may be useful to address other economic problems such as private and public investments consumption decisions on durable goods etc

the economics of household solid waste generation and disposal abstract we develop a household production model of waste management that explicitly incorporates many of the technical and behavioral elements germane to current regulatory and non regulatory solid waste policy initiatives examination of first order conditions shows the interaction among household preferences these production options and external prices and fees a simplified simulation of our model illustrates these relationships showing that household response elasticities can vary widely over common price ranges and that relatively large household welfare gains may be obtained by adopting curbside recycling and unit pricing programs

car ownership and the labor market of ethnic minorities we show how initial wealth differences between low skilled minorities and white workers can generate differences in their labor market outcomes this even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against ethnic minorities or exogenous differences in distance to jobs because of the initial wealth difference minorities cannot afford to buy a car while whites can car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time which gives them a better bargaining position in the labor market as a result in equilibrium ethnic minorities end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites furthermore we also show that it takes more time for minorities to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles when employed those predictions are consistent with the data better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes

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

willingness to pay for curbside recycling with detection and mitigation of hypothetical bias in this article we estimate willingness to pay for curbside recycling using a unique data set we also test for and detect significant hypothetical bias using stated and revealed preference data a short scripted cheap talk statement is used to mitigate the bias and provide more efficient estimates of the welfare impacts of curbside recycling programs copyright 2003 oxford university press

social welfare and income inequality in a system of cities abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of a system of core periphery cities to examine the main determinants of intra and inter regional income disparities the economy is populated by a continuum of homogeneous unskilled and heterogeneous skilled workers unskilled workers whose wages are determined competitively specialize in food production in local cities skilled workers whose wages are determined according to a nash bargain manufacture a high tech commodity in the metropolis we establish conditions under which this core periphery equilibrium spatial configuration emerges we show that both intra and inter regional income disparities are present the determinants of each type of disparity and the social welfare implications are fully investigated our results suggest that public policy programs that improve income equality may not be necessarily welfare enhancing

municipal waste kuznets curves evidence on socio economic drivers and policy effectiveness from the eu waste generation and waste disposal are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis in general waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation incineration and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the eu25 to assess the effects of different drivers economic structural policy and the eventual differences between western and eastern eu countries we show that for waste generation there is still no waste kuznets curve wkc trend although elasticity to income drivers appears lower than in the past landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention and in terms of landfill and incineration as expected they are respectively decreasing and increasing with policy acting as a strong driver eastern countries appear to be performing generally quite well thus benefiting from eu membership and related policies in terms of environmental performance we can conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation there are some first positive signs of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and robust landfill diversion and varying evidence of a significant role of the eu waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s our evidence suggests that if while landfill diversion is currently associated to a delinking partly explained by eu policies waste prevention must be the next objective of waste regulation efforts

endogenous job destruction and job matching in cities we propose a spatial search matching model where both job creation and job destruction are endogenous workers are ex ante identical but not ex post since their jobs can be hit by a technological shock which decreases their productivity they reside in a city and commuting to the job center involves both pecuniary and time costs as a result workers with high wages are willing to live closer to jobs to save on time commuting costs we show that in equilibrium there is a one to one correspondence between the productivity space and the urban location space workers with high productivities and wages reside close to jobs have low per distance commuting costs and pay high land rents we also show that higher per distance commuting costs and higher unemployment benefits lead to more job destruction

how urbanization affect employment and social interactions we develop a model where the unemployed workers in the city can find a job either directly or through weak or strong ties we show that in denser areas individuals choose to interact with more people and meet more random encounters weak ties than in sparsely populated areas we also demonstrate that for a low urbanization level there is a unique steady state equilibrium where workers do not interact with weak ties while for a high level of urbanization there is a unique steady state equilibrium with full social interactions we show that these equilibria are usually not socially efficient when the urban population has an intermediate size because there are too few social interactions compared to the social optimum finally even when social interactions are optimal we show that there is over urbanization in equilibrium

landfilling versus backstop recycling when income is growing the paper considers a dynamic model in which an income stream growing over time is optimally divided into consumption andexpenditures on waste disposal the latter being optimally dividedbetween recycling and landfilling recycling is thoughtof as a backstop waste disposal technology it does notrequire landfill space but is a relatively expensive method ofwaste disposal landfilling uses up scarce landfill capacity while conserving landfill space is the major reason themunicipality recycles another motive for recycling might be thatrecycling itself generates utility our analysis suggests thatthe optimal recycling program varies considerably with bothlandfill capacity and initial income for example richermunicipalities are likely to introduce recycling much earlier inthe planning period than poorer municipalities thus whenlegislating recycling national or regional governments must besensitive to the differences between municipalities

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

flexible waste management under uncertainty in this paper we use stochastic dynamic programming to model the choice of a municipality which has to design an optimal waste management program under uncertainty about the price of recyclables in the secondary market the municipality can by undertaking an irreversible investment adopt a flexible program which integrates the existing landfill strategy with recycling keeping the option to switch back to landfilling if profitable we determine the optimal share of waste to be recycled and the optimal timing for the investment in such a flexible program we find that adopting a flexible program rather than a non flexible one the municipality i invests in recycling capacity under circumstances where it would not do so otherwise ii invests earlier and iii benefits from a higher expected net present value c 2013 elsevier b v all rights reserved less

monopsony in the labor market this paper surveys recent theoretical and empirical research on monopsony in labor markets broadly defined as upward sloping labor supply to an employer we compare older monopsony models based on small numbers of employers with newer models based on labor market frictions such as moving costs and search we also compare older econometric approaches that focus on static wage concentration relationships with newer approaches that focus on dynamics our review of empirical estimates suggests that monopsony power based on small numbers of employers is probably rare but occasionally large while monopsony power based on frictions is probably widespread but small on average

local labor markets job matching and urban location we present a new way of modeling local labor markets by linking the space of workers skills and the physical space of cities the key lesson of our analysis is that firms exploit workers in these two spaces by setting wages that are below the competitive level the degree of monopsony power depends on the elasticity of the firm s labor pool which is inversely related to the costs workers incur in commuting and acquiring skills our analysis thus shows how socioeconomic ghettos emerge as workers with poor skill matches are also those who incur the highest commuting costs

search in cities the aim of this paper is to expose the recent developments of urban search models which incorporate a land market into a search matching framework using these models we will be able to explain why unemployment rates vary within a city how city structure affects workers labor market outcomes how unemployment benefits and the job destruction rate affect the growth of cities and why workers living far away from job centers search less intensively and experience higher unemployment rates than those residing closer to jobs we are also able to explain why as compared to whites black workers spend more time commuting to work but travel less miles and search for jobs over a smaller area

heterogeneous preferences for community recycling programs this paper examines household preferences for community recycling programs which have both public and private good dimensions the data come from a survey conducted in seattle wa which elicited stated preference contingent ratings for different recycling programs relative to status quo with experimental variation in the overall community recycling rate achieved and expected household cost the recycling rate is interpreted as capturing the public benefits of recycling programs and constitutes the most common measure used by policy agencies for setting waste management objectives and evaluating policy initiatives the analysis begins with fixed parameter models that explore different ways of handling rating data and mixed logit estimations that capture household preference heterogeneity both within and across different recycling programs this analysis yields unique estimates of willingness to pay for an increase in the community recycling rate predicted individual specific utility parameters are then regressed on household background information to explicitly examine the nature of preference heterogeneity overall this paper generates interpretable policy relevant insights into the public and private good dimensions of community recycling programs

private versus public schools in post apartheid south african cities theory and policy implications blacks and whites have different incomes decide where to locate in the city and which school to send their children to we show that despite the tuition fees imposed by whites and their remote location some black pupils attend the private school this market solution is shown not to be optimal because whites overprice education in order to limit black attendance at the private school three types of education policies are then considered transportation subsidies private school vouchers and public school spending the efficiency of such policies depends on the fee setting behavior of whites that strongly varies from one policy to another

restricting the trash trade in early 1999 the mayor of new york city announced a plan for exporting most of his city s waste about 13 000 tons per day to other states the responses escalated an already growing war of words about interstate waste shipments a pennsylvania state legislator bluntly called the mayor s plan irresponsible and the governor of new jersey labeled it a direct assault on her state a spokesperson for new york city s department of sanitation coolly staked out the city s position you can t stop interstate commerce if virginia is the least expensive place to deliver this solid waste then that is where it is going to go the response was swift various legislators joined environmental activists to send 50 pounds of trash to the mayor s office led by the governor s efforts the virginia general assembly subsequently responded with proposed legislation to restrict significantly imports of waste see r h melton 1998 virginia s legislative proposal came on the heels of numerous similar proposals by other states to which large shipments of waste are transported interstate shipments of waste involve almost the entire nation 47 states export waste and 44 states import waste and represent nearly 1 billion annually in disposal and transportation fees since the early 1990 s these shipments have increased by more than 30 percent as officials in importing states have sought to curb these flows the u s supreme court has repeatedly struck down their proposed restrictions as violations of the interstate commerce clause in response the congress has advanced proposals to exempt waste from jurisdiction of that clause to date however very little is known about the positive and normative effects of the various proposals to restrict municipal solid waste transshipments how are the effects of restrictions likely to be distributed among the owners of waste disposal facilities and the users of these services given that the northeast is a net exporter and the midwest is a net importer of waste are the effects likely to differ among regions of the country in this paper we model the interstate market for municipal solid waste and evaluate the potential economic effects of public policies proposed to restrict waste flows these restrictions include local and state requirements stipulating where waste must be landfilled prohibitions on the import or export of waste across state boundaries quantitative limits on these flows and extra fees levied on imported waste to our knowledge this research is the first to evaluate these proposals quantitatively we develop both a conceptual and a computable economic model of the use over time of spatially differentiated resources characteristics which well describe the nation s landfill facilities landfills rather than recycling or other disposal options are the dominant destination of most interstate shipments the model characterizes the efficient intertemporal allocation of spatially distributed waste disposal capacity among users who are also spatially distributed in addition

labor specialization and the extent of the market this paper presents an analytical model of labor specialization workers make human capital investment decisions on the depth and the breadth of their skill given that firms have diverse job requirements and increasing returns to scale workers invest more for the depth of their human capital and less for the breadth as the size of the labor market increases also the larger the size of the market the more varieties of job requirements are used so that the average match between a worker and a firm improves

application of the distance function to nonmarket valuation of environmental goods and services an illustrative example abstract this paper develops and implements a unique formulation of a household production model in that technology is characterized as a distance function the properties of the distance function allow for the derivation of shadow prices for the inputs and outputs associated with household production which can be applied to the problem of valuing nonmarket goods or activities the approach requires only one input to or output of household production to bear a price the derivation of shadow prices for all other household inputs outputs follows from the properties of the distance function i demonstrate the approach using data on the waste management activities of a sample of households from marietta georgia and by calculating shadow prices for the nonmarket activity of recycling

monopsony power pay structure and training although interest in monopsonistic influences on labor market outcomes has revived in recent years only a few empirical studies provide direct evidence on this topic in this article the authors analyze the effect of monopsony power on pay structure using a direct measure of labor market thinness the authors find evidence of monopsony power as firms facing fewer local competitors offer lower wages to skilled labor and trainees but not to unskilled labor the findings have important implications for the economic theory of training as most recent models assume monopsonistic pay setting for skilled labor but not for trainees

wasted waste an evolutionary perspective on industrial by products abstract every production process gives rise to unintended outputs we argue that whether an output is desired or undesired is not given per se but depends on the economic circumstances which change over time as a result by products of one industry first perceived as non marketable wastes may become desired inputs into other production processes by adopting an evolutionary perspective on economic dynamics in particular by exploiting the concept of niche exclusion we identify favorable circumstances for undesired outputs to become marketable to cope with the pace and unpredictability of economic evolution we argue for a flexible policy system which favors outcome over process oriented waste management policies and balances the responsibility between consumers and producers on the one side and the society as a whole on the other side

is there monopsonistic discrimination against immigrants the authors investigate immigrants and natives labor supply to the firm within an estimation approach based on a dynamic monopsony framework applying duration models that account for unobserved worker heterogeneity to a large administrative employer employee data set for germany they find that immigrants supply labor less elastically to firms than do natives under monopsonistic wage setting the estimated elasticity differential predicts a 7 7 log points wage penalty for immigrants thereby accounting for the entire unexplained native immigrant wage differential of 5 8 to 8 2 log points when further distinguishing immigrant groups differing in their time spent in the german labor market their immigration cohort and their age at entry the authors find that the observed unexplained wage differential is larger for those groups that show a larger elasticity differential relative to natives these findings not only suggest that search frictions are a likely cause of employers more pronounced monopsony

an economic analysis of household waste management abstract this paper provides a comprehensive model of household waste management policy incorporating the possibility of waste reduction effort by the firm and the household and of illegal waste disposal by the household when household waste reduction effort is insignificant the first best optimum can be achieved using various combinations of environmental tax on the firm and waste collection charge on the household however when household waste reduction effort is significant the first best optimum is not achievable and explicit monitoring of illegal waste disposal is needed rendering a simple pigouvian tax sub optimal this paper solves for the second best optimal policy and provides some comparative statics of the optimal policy

dynamic analysis of materials product chains an application to window frames abstract environmental pressure associated with a specific economic service can originate from several stages in the process of production use and disposal of products rendering that particular service when alternative products are available to fulfil such a service an interesting evaluation problem results because generally such alternatives will differ in terms of materials composition this means that different or even unique materials flows and environmental stress categories will be associated with each of them this type of evaluation problem is studied here using a materials product chain framework in which links between materials and product flows and between decision market and physical processes can be considered the term chain refers to a sequence of activities possibly including extraction production consumption materials recycling and re use of products and treatment incineration and dumping of waste chain management can then be considered as an overall policy strategy that takes explicit account of the sequential economic and physical linkages between these various activities a dynamic simulation model is developed for studying the materials product chain associated with the use of window frames in houses this provides an interesting example of a durable good the use of which has important long run consequences for material flows a number of environmental and economic indicators are considered in the modelling exercise so that a comparison and evaluation of policies and scenarios from a broad integrative perspective is possible among other things this allows for a ranking of instruments