spatial search migration and regional unemployment the dominant explanation of spatial unemployment in the literature assumes that workers must live in an area in order to be able to access job offers this gives rise to compensating variations in local wages and unemployment however for many occupations search is clearly conducted over longer distances from a home base in the model presented in this paper migration and unemployment are analysed both when the optimal search field is local as in the traditional model and when search is conducted over longer distances i compare equilibria in these two regimes and discuss the implications for regional policy

economic dynamics in the malthusian era evidence from the 1609 spanish expulsion of the moriscos we investigate economic dynamics in the malthusian era using the 1609 expulsion of moriscos from spain sharp population declines in former morisco districts were accompanied by decreased output and increased per capita output while these short run results are consistent with standard malthusian predictions malthusian convergence was delayed up to 1786 in former morisco districts archival sources and historical accounts suggest extractive institutions and cultural differences may have contributed to delayed convergence in population and output per capita this historic episode provides an unusually rich setting to examine malthusian dynamics highlighting the potential for sustained differences in per capita output in the malthusian era

does income inequality harm the environment empirical evidence from the united states abstract this study revisits the growth inequality environment nexus in the context of country specific time series data the short and long run effects of income inequality economic growth and energy consumption on co2 emissions in the u s are examined using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach we find that more equitable distribution of income in the u s results in better environmental quality in the short and long run it is also found that in both the short and long run economic growth has a beneficial effect on environmental quality whereas energy consumption has a detrimental effect on the environment

distributional aspects of emissions in climate change integrated assessment models the recent failure of copenhagen negotiations shows that concrete actions are needed to create the conditions for a consensus over global emission reduction policies a wide coalition of countries in international climate change agreements could be facilitated by the perceived fairness of rich and poor countries of the abatement sharing at international level in this paper i use two popular climate change integrated assessment models to investigate the path and decompose components and sources of future inequality in the emissions distribution results prove to be consistent with previous empirical studies and robust to model comparison and show that gaps in gdp across world regions will still play a crucial role in explaining different countries contributions to global warming

quality of life firm productivity and the value of amenities across canadian cities we estimate quality of life and productivity differences across canada s metropolitan areas in a hedonic general equilibrium framework these are based on the estimated willingness to pay of heterogeneous households and firms to locate in various cities which differ in their wage levels housing costs and land values using 2006 canadian census data our metropolitan quality of life estimates are somewhat consistent with popular rankings yet find canadians care more about climate and culture quality of life is highest in victoria for anglophones montreal for francophones and vancouver for allophones and lowest in more remote cities toronto is canada s most productive city vancouver is the overall most valuable city qualite de vie productivite des entreprises et la valeur des avantages dans les diverses villes canadiennes on evalue les differences entre la qualite de vie et la productivite des entreprises entre les zones metropolitaines au canada a l aide d un cadre d analyse d equilibre general hedonique ces metriques sont basees sur l estimation de la volonte de payer de menages et d entreprises heterogenes pour se localiser dans diverses villes qui different tant pour ce qui est des niveaux de salaires des couts de l habitation et des prix des terrains a l aide des donnees du recensement canadien de 2006 on construit des evaluations de la qualite de vie des diverses zones metropolitaines qui s arriment convenablement aux ordonnancements en vogue mais on decouvre que les canadiens portent une attention particuliere au climat et a la culture la qualite de vie est la plus elevee a victoria pour les anglophones a montreal pour les francophones et a vancouver pour les allophones et la plus faible pour les villes eloignees des grands centres toronto est la ville la plus productive vancouver est generalement la plus appreciee

urban decline and durable housing urban decline is not the mirror image of growth and durable housing is the primary reason the nature of decline is so different this paper presents a model of urban decline with durable housing and verifies these implications of the model 1 city growth rates are skewed so that cities grow more quickly than they decline 2 urban decline is highly persistent 3 positive shocks increase population more than they increase housing prices 4 negative shocks decrease housing prices more than they decrease population 5 if housing prices are below construction costs then the city declines and 6 the combination of cheap housing and weak labor demand attracts individuals with low levels of human capital to declining cities

a dynamic interregional theory of migration and population growth the authors attempt to bring the theory of regional amenity value determination together with a theoretical framework on migration to form a cohesive theoretical model they build on previous efforts to do this by introducing factors such as the housing market and determination of the equilibrium level of real full income the implied geographical focus is on the united states annotation

bidding for firms recently toyota sought a plant location in the united states the 800 million plant will employ 3000 workers and numerous states offered toyota generous investment incentives hoping this would induce toyota to select their state the commonwealth of kentucky won this competition but the price was high the present value of the payments exceeds 125 million the payment of investment incentives for the toyota plant is not unique in 1976 pennsylvania paid 75 million to attract a volkswagen plan nissan honda and mazda received generous investment incentives when locating plants in the united states and this bidding is not limited to states to attract the headquarters of the presbyterian church usa with its 1300 jobs and 38 million annual payroll civic leaders in louisville kentucky offered the church a warehouse and 6 2 million for renovation of the structure bidding the church away from kansas city missouri in this paper we contend that this competition may result from the average cost pricing of publicly provided goods and services 2 when the marginal cost of providing a firm and its workers with public services is less than the tax revenue they generate a government may offer the firm subsidies that reduce the distortions the average cost pricing of the public service creates thus this competition for industry is not a zero sum game where the subsidies are only transfers from the government to the firm rather these subsidies may facilitate the efficient location of industry

the impact of income components on the distribution of family incomes attempts have recently been made to assign inequality contributions to various components of income this paper discusses the issues involved in such assignments and highlights the problems that follow from having a number of possible decomposition rules u s data on the distribution of family incomes are used to examine the relative influence of these income components and to evaluate empirically the performance of different decomposition rules a wide range of inequality contributions can be obtained even when restricted to only naturally derived decomposition rules some of the results are plainly absurd and serve to warn against the indiscriminate use of decomposition formulae without first investigating their properties

is there a compensating wage differential for high crime levels first evidence from europe abstract this paper investigates whether high regional crime levels lead to a compensating wage differential paid by firms in the respective region using data from german social security records official police statistics and official statistics for 2003 2006 i consider both violent and non violent crimes and use three way error components estimators to control for individual and regional heterogeneity the findings suggest that wages are practically unrelated to changes in crime rates this result is robust over a wide range of subgroups there is however some evidence that crime rates influence land prices

beyond economic base theory the role of the residential economy in attracting income to swiss regions segessemann a and crevoisier o beyond economic base theory the role of the residential economy in attracting income to swiss regions regional studies regional development theories are mainly focused on export based activities to explain regional competitiveness the increasing mobility of workers and residents leads to a reconsideration of this approach residential economy has become a strategic issue to generate incomes within regions with this view the paper analyses the link between economic activities and incomes from workers and annuitants residents a spatial typology breakdown is compiled for swiss regions using a hierarchical cluster analysis hca empirical results highlight various regional development profiles conversely to export based theories regions with higher income are those with strong residential economy thus opening new avenues for local governance

manufacturer liability for harms caused by consumers to others should the manufacturer of a product be held legally responsible when a consumer while using the product harms someone else we show that if consumers have deep pockets then manufacturer liability is not desirable if homogeneous consumers have limited assets then the best rule is residual manufacturer liability where the manufacturer pays the shortfall in damages not paid by the consumer residual manufacturer liability distorts the market quantity when consumers willingness to pay is correlated with their propensity to cause harm it distorts product safety when consumers differ in their wealth levels in both cases consumer only liability may be preferred

stochastic convergence in per capita co2 emissions an approach from nonlinear stationarity analysis abstract this paper studies stochastic convergence of per capita co 2 emissions in 28 oecd countries for the 1901 2009 period the analysis is carried out at two aggregation levels first for the whole set of countries joint analysis and then separately for developed and developing states group analysis a powerful time series methodology adapted to a nonlinear framework that allows for quadratic trends with possibly smooth transition between regimes is applied this approach provides more robust conclusions in convergence path analysis enabling a robust detection of the presence and if so the number of changes in the level and or slope of the trend of the series b inferences on stationarity of relative per capita co 2 emissions conditionally on the presence of breaks and smooth transitions between regimes and c estimation of change locations in the convergence paths finally as stochastic convergence is attained when both stationarity around a trend and convergence simultaneously hold the linear approach proposed by tomljanovich and vogelsang 2002 is extended in order to allow for more general quadratic models overall joint analysis finds some evidence of stochastic convergence in per capita co 2 emissions some dispersion in terms of convergence is detected by the group analysis particularly among developed countries this is in accordance with per capita gdp not being the sole determinant of convergence in emissions with factors like search for more efficient technologies fossil fuel substitution innovation and possibly industry outsourcing also having a crucial role

carbon dioxide emission and income a temporal analysis of cross country distributional patterns the existence of a cointegrating relationship between income and co2 emission for individual country groups suggests existence of a corresponding relationship between the inter country disparities in the levels of income and co2 emission this paper explores the relationship between the patterns of cross country distribution of income and co2 emission and temporal shifts in such a relationship this paper also examines how the mean level of per capita co2 emission and its distributional inequality are related to the corresponding mean income level and the distributional inequality of income the analysis is based on a cross country panel data set at the level of country group environmental quality demanded is treated as a private good and not as a public good as done in most other studies the technique of lorenz and specific concentration curve analysis are used as the basic analytical framework to argue that a measure of relative distributional inequality of income should be used as an explanatory variable in the environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship along with the mean income level in the empirical exercise johansen s cointegration analysis technique is used to explore existence of statistically significant cointegrating vector s relating mean level of emission and specific concentration ratio scr of emission to mean income level and lorenz ratio lr of income the empirical results confirm that the pattern of cross country income distribution has significant effect on the mean level of emission for all the country groups considered

u s state and local fiscal policy and economic activity do we know more now early reviews of the academic literature on the economic effects of state and local taxes and expenditures suggested that not enough was known upon which to base policy the reviews called for better data and improvements in empirical methodology this paper reviews studies conducted since the early literature reviews to assess our current state of knowledge the conclusion of the study is that we know more now but our knowledge is unlikely to ever be sufficient to provide universal policy guidance rather we suggest that more research is needed on specific state and local policies for specific circumstances consistent with the general principles that guide place based policy

a reexamination of the federal private wage differential in the united states the federal private wage differential is reexamined with recent data using specifications similar to those used in three previous studies i find that the federal private wage differential has narrowed since the 1974 79 period analyzed in those studies in addition i discover that wage differentials based on specifications used in the literature are biased upward because the previous studies did not control for detailed occupational and locational characteristics of workers corrected point estimates of the wage gap are much smaller than previous estimates in the literature differences in the gap across demographic groups occupations and locations are also discussed

the determinants and welfare implications of us workers diverging location choices by skill 1980 2000 abstract from 1980 to 2000 the rise in the us college high school graduate wage gap coincided with increased geographic sorting as college graduates concentrated in high wage high rent cities this paper estimates a structural spatial equilibrium model to determine causes and welfare consequences of this increased skill sorting while local labor demand changes fundamentally caused the increased skill sorting it was further fueled by endogenous increases in amenities within higher skill cities changes in cities wages rents and endogenous amenities increased inequality between high school and college graduates by more than suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone jel d31 i26 j24 j31 j61 r23

explanatory factors of co2 per capita emission inequality in the european union the design of european mitigation policies requires a detailed examination of the factors explaining the unequal emissions in the different countries this research analyzes the evolution of inequality in co2 emissions per capita in the european union eu 27 in the period 1990 2009 and its explanatory factors for this purpose we decompose the theil index of inequality into the contributions of the different kaya factors the decomposition is also applied to the inequality between and within groups of countries north europe south europe and east europe the analysis shows an important reduction in inequality to a large extent due to the smaller differences between groups and because of the lower contribution of the energy intensity factor the importance of the gdp per capita factor increases and becomes the main explanatory factor however within the different groups of countries the carbonization index appears to be the most relevant factor in explaining inequalities the policy implications of the results are discussed

what makes cities attractive the determinants of urban labour migration in germany striking disparities characterise the population growth of cities in industrialised countries some cities suffer from ongoing population decline whereas other cities have experienced increasing numbers of inhabitants in recent years whether labour market conditions or amenities via their impact on migration primarily account for differences in cities demographic development is an important issue this paper investigates the determinants of the migration balance of german cities between 2000 and 2007 the focus is on the mobility of workers because labour migration in particular affects the future prospects of cities the findings suggest that not only labour market conditions but also amenities have an impact on the net migration rate moreover large cities seem to be ceteris paribus more attractive than small cities this finding possibly points to the importance of amenities such as cultural infrastructure and matching externalities in urban labour markets that are linked to city size urban policy aimed at enhancing the attractiveness of cities should thus consider both boosting the local economy and improving the quality of life

land use worker heterogeneity and welfare benefits of public goods we show that investments in public goods change the optimal land use in their vicinity leading to additional welfare benefits this occurs through two sorting mechanisms first availability of public goods leads to higher population densities second population groups sort according to their preferences for public goods we develop a structural spatial general equilibrium model that accounts for these effects the model is estimated using data on transport infrastructure commuting behaviour land use and land rents for some 3000 zip codes in the netherlands and for three levels of education welfare benefits of investments in public transport infrastructure are shown to differ sharply by workers educational attainment welfare gains from changes in land use account for up to 30 of the total benefits of a transport investment

here comes the rain again weather and the intertemporal substitution of leisure i revisit the intertemporal labor supply framework using exogenous variations in daily weather to see how time at work varies with rain in my model a rainy day is associated with a lower enjoyment of leisure effectively increasing wages and bringing more hours at work i test the model using data from the american time use survey supplemented with daily weather i find that on rainy days men shift on average 30 minutes from leisure to work computations give a rough estimate of the intertemporal elasticity of labor supply of around 0 01 in line with the rest of the literature

riding the wave of urban growth in the countryside spread backwash or stagnation the advisability of an urban centered growth strategy to reap the benefits of urban agglomeration economies is much debated rural areas benefit when the growth spreads to the hinterlands especially within daily commuting distance yet in distant peripheral locations urban growth may create a backwash as households relocate to the urban center this study examines spread vs backwash as separate from long run distance from urban center trend effects using a novel canadian gis database the unique nation wide approach yields a spread and backwash rural growth topography that varies by distance from the urban center by urban population vs income growth and by size of rural community

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

the geographical dimension of innovation collaboration networking and innovation in norway this paper looks at the geographical dimension of firm networking in norway by examining the impact of manager level firm level and regional level variables on the decisions of firms to collaborate with partners at different levels of geographical distance using data stemming from a survey of 1604 businesses in five norwegian city regions we model firms use of partners located within the region elsewhere in the country and abroad respectively the results indicate that collaboration is affected in different ways by variables related to all three levels at the level of the manager trust is an important predictor of regional and national collaboration but has no significant effect on the formation of international partnerships which are fundamentally associated with factors such as education and the open mindedness of managers at the regional level r d expenditure tends to increase collaboration between regional actors but reduces the likelihood of engagement with international partners education by contrast has the opposite effect it encourages international collaboration at the expense of local links the results highlight the need to balance policies for boosting regional social capital and r d with investments in education and fostering open mindedness as a means to prevent lock in and develop innovation enhancing global pipelines

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

carbon inequality at the sub national scale a case study of provincial level inequality in co2 emissions in china 1997 2007 abstract this study asks whether sub national inequalities in carbon dioxide co2 emissions mirror international patterns in carbon inequality using the case study of china several studies have examined global level carbon inequality however such approaches have not been used on a sub national scale this study examines inter provincial inequality in co2 emissions within china using common measures of inequality coefficient of variation gini index theil index to analyze provincial level data derived from the ipcc reference approach for the years 1997 2007 it decomposes co2 emissions inequality into its inter regional and intra regional components patterns of per capita co2 emissions inequality in china appear superficially similar to though slightly lower than per capita income inequality however decomposing these inequalities reveals different patterns while inter provincial income inequality is highly regional in character inter provincial co2 emissions inequality is primarily intra regional while apparently similar global patterns in co2 emissions are not mirrored at the sub national scale

future inequality in co2 emissions and the impact of abatement proposals this paper analyzes future carbon emissions inequality using a group decomposition of the gini index business as usual projections to the year 2100 for 135 countries show inequality in per capita emissions declines slowly next the impact on emissions levels and inequality of the kyoto protocol and other abatement proposals for annex ii countries in 2010 are measured with a focus on the gap narrowing and reranking effects substantial reranking of per capita emissions between annex ii and non annex ii countries will not occur unless the former reduce their emissions by at least 50 versus 1990 levels and the latter continue growing unabated

international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions a decomposition methodology by kaya factors in this paper we provide a methodology for decomposing international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions into kaya multiplicative factors and two interaction terms we use the theil index of inequality and show that this decomposition methodology can be extended for analyzing between and within group inequality components we can thus analyze the factors behind inequalities in per capita co2 emissions across countries between groups of countries and within groups of countries the empirical illustration for international data suggests some points firstly international inequality in per capita co2 emissions is mainly attributable to inequalities in per capita income levels which helps to explain its recent reduction while differences in carbon intensity of energy and energy intensity have made a less significant contribution this result is strongly influenced by the performance of china and india secondly the between group inequality component which is the biggest component is also largely explained by the income factor thirdly the within group inequality component increased slightly during the period something mainly due to the change in the income factor and the interaction terms in a few regions

production externalities and long run equilibria bargaining and pigovian taxation this paper analyzes bargaining and pigovian taxation solutions to inefficiencies from production externalities with free entry the coase theorem fails in a decentralized context but remains valid if the property rights holder can act like a command economy planner a less powerful price taking rights holder s objective function is nonconcave causing an inefficient bargaining outcome bargaining complicates pigovian taxes with a nonlinear tax scheme required to sustain the optimum polluting firms pay a franchise tax whose revenue is given lump sum to consumers and face a marginal charge only on excess output which thus raises no revenue in equilibrium

frictional labour mobility we build a dynamic model of migration where in addition to standard relocation costs workers face spatial frictions that decrease their ability to compete for distant job opportunities we estimate the model on a matched employer employee panel dataset describing labour market transitions within and between the 100 largest french cities our identification strategy is based on the premise that frictions affect the frequency of job transitions while mobility costs impact the distribution of accepted wages we find that 1 controlling for spatial frictions reduces mobility cost estimates by one order of magnitude 2 the urban wage premium is driven by better opportunities for local job to job transitions in larger cities 3 migration reduces lifetime inequalities by providing insurance against unsatisfactory initial location draws 4 labour mobility policies based on relocation subsidies are inefficient unlike switching from nationwide to local minimum wages

urban resurgence and the consumer city cities make it easier for humans to interact and one of the main advantages of dense urban areas is that they facilitate social interactions this paper provides evidence for the us suggesting th

do inter city differences in intra city wage differentials have any interesting implications abstract recent research has related characteristics of cities to differences in the distribution of wages across workers with different skill levels we demonstrate that these differences in wage differentials arise naturally as a compensating variation in rosen s theoretical model of inter city wages for example if the income elasticity of demand for housing services is less than unity cities with higher house prices will have smaller money wage differentials between low and high skill workers this result has no implications for differences in either absolute or relative real productivity or welfare of unskilled workers similarly changes in the amenity of an urban area may result in changes in relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers with no implications for real productivity or welfare differentials empirical tests in which housing cost differentials are added as a determinant of inter city differences in an intra urban wage differential model provide empirical confirmation of the theoretical expectations it appears that intra urban money wage differentials differences in the quality of life and variation in the cost of living in each city are jointly determined variables just as rosen s model of inter city wage differentials predicts

regional differences in china s fossil energy consumption an analysis for the period 1997 2013 abstract measuring regional differences in fossil energy consumption is the first step to the study of natural resource allocation and utilization this paper employs annual and cumulative consumption gini indexes as well as the deviation index to discuss regional differences in the per capita consumption of fossil energy and related products across 30 chinese provinces from 1997 to 2013 the results show that chinese inter provincial gini ratio of fossil energy consumption is below 0 3 in recent years and change in per capita energy consumption is the key factor behind the decline in the overall gini index unlike existing studies based only on annual flows of energy consumption this paper also focuses on cumulative energy consumption moreover decomposing annual and cumulative consumption gini coefficients by type group and incremental variation is rarely seen in other studies based on the above positive analysis the paper provides some policymaking suggestions

structural change and convergence of energy intensity across oecd countries 1970 2005 abstract this paper uses new and unique data derived from a consistent framework of national accounts to compute and evaluate energy intensity developments across 18 oecd countries and 50 sectors over the period 1970 2005 we find that across countries energy intensity levels tend to decrease in most manufacturing sectors in the service sector energy intensity decreases at a relatively slow rate with diverse trends across sub sectors a decomposition analysis reveals that changes in the sectoral composition of the economy explain a considerable and increasing part of aggregate energy intensity dynamics a convergence analysis reveals that only after 1995 cross country variation in aggregate energy intensity levels clearly tends to decrease driven by a strong and robust trend break in manufacturing and enhanced convergence in services moreover we find evidence for the hypothesis that across sectors lagging countries are catching up with leading countries with rates of convergence that are on average higher in services than in manufacturing aggregate convergence patterns are almost exclusively caused by convergence of within sector energy intensity levels and not by convergence of the sectoral composition of economies

what is different about urbanization in rich and poor countries cities in brazil china india and the united states abstract are the well known facts about urbanization in the united states also true for the developing world we compare american metropolitan areas with analogous geographic units in brazil china and india both gibrat s law and zipf s law seem to hold as well in brazil as in the u s but china and india look quite different in brazil and china the implications of the spatial equilibrium hypothesis the central organizing idea of urban economics are not rejected the india data however repeatedly rejects tests inspired by the spatial equilibrium assumption one hypothesis is that spatial equilibrium only emerges with economic development as markets replace social relationships and as human capital spreads more widely in all four countries there is strong evidence of agglomeration economies and human capital externalities the correlation between density and earnings is stronger in both china and india than in the u s strongest in china in india the gap between urban and rural wages is huge but the correlation between city size and earnings is more modest the cross sectional relationship between area level skills and both earnings and area level growth are also stronger in the developing world than in the u s the forces that drive urban success seem similar in the rich and poor world even if limited migration and difficult housing markets make it harder for a spatial equilibrium to develop

equity in climate change an analytical review how global emissions reduction targets can be achieved equitably is a key issue in climate change discussions this paper presents an analytical framework to encompass contributions to the literature on equity in climate change and highlights the consequences in terms of future emissions allocations of different approaches to equity progressive cuts relative to historic levels for example 80 percent by industrial countries and 20 percent by developing countries in effect accord primacy to adjustment costs and favor large current emitters such as the united states canada australia oil exporters and china in contrast principles of equal per capita emissions historic responsibility and ability to pay favor some large and poor developing countries such as india indonesia and the philippines but hurt industrial countries as well as many other developing countries the principle of preserving future development opportunities has the appeal that it does not constrain developing countries in the future by a problem that they did not largely cause in the past but it shifts the burden of meeting climate change goals entirely to industrial countries given the strong conflicts of interest in defining equity in emission allocations it may be desirable to shift the emphasis of international cooperation toward generating a low carbon technology revolution equity considerations would then play a role not in allocating a shrinking emissions pie but in informing the relative contributions of countries to generating such a pie enlarging revolution

urban effects on participation and wages are there gender differences abstract this paper estimates participation and wage equations using panel data from the united kingdom to explore gender differences in urban wage and participation premiums the results suggest a small but economically significant urban participation premium for women but none for men results from the wage estimations suggest that after controlling for sample selectivity observed and unobserved heterogeneity the urban premium is larger for women this wage premium is also larger for married or cohabiting women relative to others there is also evidence of higher urban returns to experience for men and lower urban wage depreciation for both men and women

does school district and municipality border congruence matter research on zoning typically assumes that city planners aim to maximise housing prices with their land use decisions either explicitly for public choice reasons or implicitly through the approval of land uses that create local net benefits noncongruence of school district and municipality borders severs the link between costs and benefits in the eyes of the median voter however which could result in excessive residential development and fiscal externalities that lower property values this paper uses a hedonic approach to indirectly observe the presence of these externalities border congruency between school districts and municipalities in ohio is measured using gis data and matched with a data set of 56 717 home sales the hedonic results indicate that noncongruence is associated with lower housing prices while the degree of noncongruence is positively related for most school districts the negative effect of noncongruency dominates my results are robust and consistent across different model spec

a global compass for the great divergence emissions vs production centers of gravity 1820 2008 we construct the world s centres of gravity for human population gdp and co2 emissions by taking the best out of five recognised data sources covering the last two centuries on the basis of a novel distortion free representation of these centres of gravity we find a radical western shift of gdp and co2 emission centres in the nineteenth century in sharp contrast with the stability of the demographic centre of gravity both gdp and emissions trends are reversed in the first half of the twentieth century after world war i for co2 emissions after world war ii for gdp since then both centres are moving eastward at an accelerating speed these patterns are perfectly consistent with the lead of western countries starting the industrial revolution the gradual replacement of coal by oil and gas as alternative sources of energy and the progressive catch up of asian countries in the recent past

reap what you sow agricultural technology urbanization and structural change abstract this paper studies how productivity enhancing agricultural technology affects urbanization by provoking structural change we investigate these issues using a natural experiment in the united states the results show that technologies which improve crop productivity lead to a less urbanized economy as economic activity relocates from manufacturing and services towards agriculture the effects are highly persistent and are driven by the technology increasing agricultural labor demand our findings highlight the potentially unintended disruptive force of innovative technologies

migration regional equilibrium and the estimation of compensating differentials in this study we have developed an improved model of net migration that encompasses both equilibrium and disequilibrium components instrumental variables fixed effects estimates of the model with time series data for 51 areas in the united states over the period 1971 1988 support the importance of both equilibrium and disequilibrium factors in migration excerpt

the unequal geographic burden of federal taxation in the united states workers in cities offering above average wages cities with high productivity low quality of life or inefficient housing sectors pay 27 percent more in federal taxes than otherwise identical workers in cities offering below average wages according to simulation results taxes lower long run employment levels in high wage areas by 13 percent and land and housing prices by 21 and 5 percent causing locational inefficiencies costing 0 23 percent of income or 28 billion in 2008 employment is shifted from north to south and from urban to rural areas tax deductions index taxes partially to local cost of living improving locational efficiency

earnings functions when wages and prices vary by location economists generally assume implicitly that the return to schooling is invariant across local labor markets we demonstrate that this outcome pertains if and only if preferences are homothetic a special case that seems unlikely our theory predicts that returns to education will instead be relatively low in expensive high amenity locations our analysis of u s data provides support for this contention returns to college are especially low in such cities as san francisco and seattle our findings call into question standard empirical exercises in labor economics that treat the returns to education as a single parameter

decomposing inequality in co2 emissions the role of primary energy carriers and economic sectors emission inequality across countries and the contribution of the energy mix and the sectoral composition of a country s energy use are of central importance to the climate debate we analyze the evolution of inequality in global co2 per capita emissions using both historical data on energy related co2 emissions and future emission scenarios generated with the integrated assessment model remind within our sample of 90 countries the results indicate that the gini index declined from about 0 6 in 1971 to slightly above 0 4 in 2008 a decomposition of the gini index of total emissions into primary energy carriers indicates that this reduction is mainly attributed to declining shares of emissions from coal peat and oil in total emissions and decreasing emission inequality within all fossil primary energy sources from the perspective of economic sectors the decline in overall inequality is almost entirely due to a decline of the contribution of emissions from manufacturing construction our analysis also suggests that an equally spread emission reduction from any one source would not have a major impact on overall emission inequality the analysis of future scenario data indicates that climate policy reduces absolute emission inequality while inducing drastic progressive emission reductions in all regions

economic geography and wages abstract this paper estimates the agglomeration benefits that arise from vertical linkages between firms we identify the agglomeration benefits off the spatial variation in firms nominal wages u

regional heterogeneity and the trans regional interaction of housing prices and inflation evidence from china s 35 major cities this paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyse the regionally heterogeneous responses of housing prices and inflation to the monetary aggregates shock and the trans regional interaction of housing prices and inflation which has seldom been discussed in previous literature using a gvar globe vector autoregression model evidence based on china s 35 major cities for this framework is provided the results show that 1 the housing price shocks have weak positive influence on cpis consumer price index 2 the housing price shocks especially the shocks in first tier cities and eastern cities have strong positive influence on domestic housing price dynamics and housing prices of other cities 3 monetary aggregates shock has strong influence on the housing prices of first tier cities and eastern cities while weak influence on that of central and western cities cpis are barely influenced by monetary aggregates shocks the empirical results are in accordance with the theoretical explanation

parking transit and employment in a central business district abstract in this paper we present a general equilibrium model to examine the role of parking and transit subsidy policy on the size of a central business district cbd cbd land values and the market shares of cars and transit the three main features of the model are 1 agglomeration economies increase continuously with labor market size 2 congestion arises from auto use only transit is noncongestible and 3 locational equilibrium is maintained in the sense that firms and individuals cannot reduce costs or increase utility by moving given equilibrium prices and city size we derive the conditions under which parking taxes can be levied and used to subsidize transit and increase equilibrium cbd size and land values we compute an optimal parking tax that maximizes cbd size and land values and derive relationships among parking taxes transit use and congestion we find nonmonotonic relationships among parking taxes land values and transit use

geographical spread of global emissions within country inequalities are large and increasing abstract in spite of the extensive literature on greenhouse gas emission inequalities at the world wide level most of the evidence so far has been based on country level data however the within country dimension matters for both the implementation and the policy formation of climate policies as a preliminary step towards a better understanding of within country inequalities this paper measures their extent for the two major greenhouse gases co2 and ch4 over the 1970 2008 period using theil index decompositions we show that within country inequalities account for the bulk of global inequality and tend to increase over the sample period in contrast with diminishing between country inequalities including differences across sectors reveals that between sector inequalities matter more than between country inequalities and between sector inequalities become the dominant source of global inequality at the end of the sample period in the co2 case finally estimated social tensions arising from the disconnection between emissions and future damages turn out to be increasing as soon as within country disparities are taken into account these orders of magnitude should be kept in mind while discussing the efficiency and fairness of alternative paths in combating global warming

new estimates of climate demand evidence from location choice abstract we develop and apply to census data a new method for estimating climate demand the method is useful for ranking quality of life based upon a willingness to pay criterion our two major findings are that the willingness to pay quality of life index is correlated with the hedonic approach s ranking but that the migration approach generates much larger estimates of willingness to pay for a more moderate climate this finding is relevant for evaluating the economic impact of global warming

ex post liability for harm vs ex ante safety regulation substitutes or complements this paper concerns the regulation of hazardous economic activities economists have generally viewed ex ante regulations safety standards pigouvian fees that regulate an activity before an accident occurs as substitutes for ex post policies exposure to tort liability for correcting extemalities this paper shows that where there is uncertainty there are inefficiencies associated with the exclusive use of negligence liability and that ex ante regulation can correct the inefficiencies in such a case it is efficient to set the safety standard below the level of precaution that would be called for if the standard were used alone jel 619

composition and determinants of the skilled out migration in the brazilian formal labor market a panel data analysis from 1995 to 2006 this paper aims to examine the composition and identify determinant factors of interstate the skilled labor loss in the brazilian formal labor market between 1995 and 2006 with emphasis on the role of individual motivations and regional factors in order to estimate such determinants we use a fixed effect logit in a wide panel with data from ministry of labor and employment rais migra annual report on social information and ibge the brazilian statistics bureau the estimated results confirm the importance of wage differentials in determining such mobility furthermore an increased skilled out migration probability is explained by skilled workers heading to states showing economic prosperity higher dynamism in the labor market as well as higher population density 2014 national association of postgraduate centers in economics anpec production and hosting by elsevier b v all rights reserved

spatially uneven development and low carbon transitions insights from urban and regional planning the ageing of existing energy system infrastructure the threat of climate change and uncertainty in the movement of energy prices have resulted in a widespread agreement on the need for a transition to a low carbon energy system yet the nature of this transition i e what when how and where and its socio economic outcomes at different scales are not well understood the interdependence of the energy sector and economic growth has been mostly studied at the national level via some general equilibrium or econometric models whilst sub national studies at community or urban levels mostly focus on the governance of transitions hence we suggest that a regional perspective to energy policy and research promises to integrate these two approaches by providing a more robust and comprehensive understanding of the implications of low carbon transitions as well as contributing to the development of more effective policies by building on recent ideas on geographical aspects of energy transitions this article offers insights on the changing relationship between the spatial organisation of economic activities and energy systems and identifies tools and methods from urban and regional planning to help with the delivery of efficient and equitable policy outcomes

cultural amenities and unemployment in dutch cities disentangling a consumerist and productivist explanation for less educated urbanites varying unemployment levels across urban economies previous studies on the advanced economies have shown that unemployment levels of the less educated are low in cities with high employment shares in the advanced producer services scholars have consistently interpreted this finding according to sassen s polarisation thesis this article confronts this production based interpretation with a competing consumption based explanation which focuses on the role of cultural amenities analysing data on 22 dutch metropolitan agglomerations between 1996 and 2008 it is shown that in line with consumerists notions of richard florida advanced producer services settle in cities that are rich in cultural amenities instead of the other way around as classical labour follows capital explanations imply yet only advanced producer services prove to reduce the unemployment levels of the less educated meaning that the polarisation thesis and not the theory on cultural amenities is a valid explanation for the low level of unemployment in post industrial cities

decomposing inequality in energy related co2 emissions by source and source increment the roles of production and residential consumption abstract using provincial data on energy related co2 emissions in china from 1997 to 2014 and the co2 emission gini coefficient ceg this study evaluates china s spatial inequality in energy related co2 emissions further we decompose this inequality and its variation from the perspectives of production and residential energy consumption using the source decomposition and source increment decomposition methods this paper presents a new ceg source increment decomposition method that can achieve complete decomposition the results reveal a downward trend in china s overall production sector and residential sector co2 emissions inequality although the gini coefficient of co2 emissions from the residential sector is larger than that from the production sector the contribution of the latter to the overall ceg is higher the impacts of the spatial inequality of co2 emissions from china s production and residential sectors depend on the type of energy the concentration effect is the primary factor responsible for inducing changes in china s overall and production sector co2 emissions inequality but it is not the only dominant factor for the residential sector co2 emissions inequality

liability and large scale long term hazards this paper analyzes the application of liability to large scale long term hazards the key features distinguishing such hazards are the long temporal separation between exposure to a hazard and disease and the large damages when injuries finally emerge the large scale of damages creates a strong incentive to avoid liability payments and the long temporal separation creates numerous avenues through which parties can avoid paying possible damage awards the analysis focuses on the incentive to avoid paying damages by vertically divesting production tasks associated with serious occupational risks such divestiture can lower liability costs if the small firm operating the risky stage goes out of business before latent injuries emerge or has insufficient assets to pay damages and declares bankruptcy when suits are filed the paper then presents an empirical regression analysis of small firm entry into the u s economy between 1967 and 1980 the period in which liability laws were changing the point estima

crime and economic incentives we explore the role that economic incentives particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution play in determining crime rates we use data on the police force areas of england and wales between 1975 and 1996 and find relative falls in the wages of low wage workers lead to increases in crime we carry out a number of experiments with different wage measures including a wage measure that accounts for the effects of changes in the composition of employment these reinforce the picture of a strong association between the low wage labor market and crime the result that incentives play a central role is reinforced further by the strong impact on crime of deterrence measures and of a measure of the returns to crime

taxation fines and producer liability rules efficiency and market structure implications this paper analyzes the comparative efficiency of producer liability rules and regulatory policy in short run and long run competitive equilibria with endogenous product safety pigouvian taxes on output and safety provision fail to achieve the long run social optimum an appropriately designed policy involving fines on accidents and subsidies on safety provision achieves efficiency however the optimal policy may involve the taxation not the subsidization of product safety tort liability also leads to efficient outcomes but may be associated with perverse structural changes for example increased liability exposure may induce de novo entry in hazardous sectors even with fully capitalized firms the control of external diseconomies created by worker consumer and environmental exposure to hazardous substances is a pervasive problem in many industries consumers and workers are routinely exposed to health risks associated with radiation cigarette smoking diethylstilbestrol des asbestos saccharin dioxin vinyl chloride beta napthylamine benzidine coke oven emissions and various occupational carcinogens arising from the use of basic materials such as pesticides petroleum coal paraffin iron ore nickel and chromium other industries involved with petroleum production nuclear power generation metal mining and smelting pulp milling and solid waste disposal pose the threat of contamination through accidental spills into the environmental medium the unifying feature of these problems is that the extent of external damages whether embodied in the probability of product failure or in the likelihood of human and environmental exposure to hazardous substances is determined jointly by a producer s choice of output and safety provision two important forms of externality control in hazardous sectors of the economy are producer liability rules and direct regulatory control through the use of output pigouvian taxation and fines on injuries this paper provides a comparative analysis of the relative efficiency properties of producer liability rules and regulatory policy in both short run and long run competitive equilibria the essential feature of the model is that the provision of product safety in the hazardous sector is endogenized as a choice variable of the firm the extent or magnitude of external damages can be limited for example by removing carcinogens from consumer products by following re entry guidelines after the application of pesticides by requiring safety

going home evacuation migration decisions of hurricane katrina survivors in the wake of hurricane katrina many evacuees from the gulf region began the difficult process of deciding whether to rebuild or restart elsewhere we examine pre katrina gulf residents decision to return to the postdisaster gulf region which we call the return migration decision we estimate two separate return migration models first using data from a mail survey of individuals in the affected region and then focusing on self administered questionnaires of evacuees in houston our results indicate that return migration can be affected by household income age education level and employment marital and home ownership status but the results depend on the population under consideration we find no effect of connection to place on the return migration decision although the effect of income is relatively small within subsamples we find a much higher proportion of middle income households planning to return than lower income households when comparing across the subsamples in addition the real wage differential between home and host region influences the likelihood of return larger implicit costs in terms of foregone wages for returning induce a lower likelihood of return exploiting this difference at the individual level we are able to produce estimates of willingness to pay wtp to return home average wtp to return home for a sample of relatively poor households is estimated at 1 94 per hour or 3954 per year

local amenities and life cycle migration do people move for jobs or fun abstract do households move for jobs or fun and where do they go when they move we address these questions using the 1970 2000 us census based on a panel of quality of life and business environment measures households prefer msas in warm coastal areas and non metropolitan locations while firms prefer large growing cities in addition cities with improving business environments acquire increasing shares of workers especially workers with high levels of human capital cities with improving consumer amenities become relatively more populated by retirees further analysis of individual level migration decisions indicates that regardless of marital status young highly educated households tend to move towards places with higher quality business environments this tendency is especially pronounced among highly educated couples who are more subject to job market co location problems in contrast regardless of education couples near retirement tend to move away from places with favorable business environments and towards places with highly valued consumer amenities these patterns help explain why areas unattractive to both households and business have struggled as with upstate new york while the sun belt and other regions are thriving

la dolce vita hedonic estimates of quality of life in italian cities colombo e michelangeli a and stanca l la dolce vita hedonic estimates of quality of life in italian cities regional studies this paper investigates quality of life in italian cities using the hedonic approach it analyses micro level data for housing and labour markets to estimate compensating differentials for local amenities within four domains weather environment services and society large compensating differentials in housing markets are found whereas the effects on wages are relatively small quality of life varies substantially across space and is generally better in large and medium sized cities of the centre north services and social conditions are strongly related to overall quality of life it is also found that across cities quality of life is positively and significantly related to subjective well being

globalisation growth and convergence this paper devoted to the study of globalisation analyses two distinct but closely related issues first it aims at evaluating disparities in the degree of globalisation observed in a sample of 101 countries over the period 1970 2005 second the paper tries to shed some light to the much debated issue of whether globalisation affects economic growth and in so doing whether convergence in globalisation brings about convergence in per capita income the results obtained are both encouraging on the one side as it is shown that there has been a clear process of globalisation convergence on the other the paper concludes that globalisation has been one of the main drivers of economic growth thus fostering convergence in per capita income

the impact of supply constraints on house prices in england we test the theoretical prediction that house prices respond more strongly to changes in local earnings in places with tight supply constraints using a unique panel dataset of 353 local planning authorities in england between 1974 and 2008 exploiting exogenous variation from a policy reform vote shares and historical density to identify the endogenous constraints measures we find that regulatory constraints have a substantive positive impact on the house price earnings elasticity the effect of constraints due to scarcity of developable land is largely confined to highly urbanised areas and uneven topography has a quantitatively less meaningful impact

political internalization of economic externalities and environmental policy abstract this paper derives the characteristics of endogenous environmental policy in a common agency model of politics and proceeds to show that competition between lobby groups is an important source of internalization of economic externalities our analysis generalizes bhagwati s principle of targeting to the case of distorted political markets moreover we show that the politically optimal structure of environmental taxes incorporates a pigouvian adjustment however since lobby groups care about the distribution of income as well as about efficiency the equilibrium structure of taxes differs considerably from the pigouvian rule

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

people places and earnings differentials in scotland abstractpeople places and earnings differentials in scotland regional studies this paper investigates the contribution of people and place effects to earnings differentials in scotland using individual and regional data the main sources of differentials are attributed to workers characteristics people effects particularly academic and vocational qualifications followed by occupational and industrial affiliations on the other hand differences in the attributes of local area labour markets place effects explain only a small part of individual earnings differentials the most relevant spatial attribute is local area human capital the findings suggest that people based policies are likely to be more effective at improving workers earnings prospects than place based policies

the effects of housing prices wages and commuting time on joint residential and job location choices an empiricalmodelof joint decisions of where to l and where to work demonstrates that individuals make residential and job location choices by trading off wages housing prices and commuting costs wages are higher in metropolitan markets but housing prices are also higher in urban areas consumers can live in lower priced nonmetropolitan houses and still earn urban wages but they incur commuting costs that increase with distance from the city improvements in transportation that lower commuting time will increase nonmetropolitan populations and will increase the number of nonmetropolitan commuters to metropolitan markets equal wage growth across labor markets causes a shift in relative population from rural to urban markets while an equiproportional increase in housing prices causes a population shift toward rural areas

social interaction and urban sprawl abstract various authors most notably putnam putnam r d 2000 bowling alone simon and schuster new york have argued that low density living reduces social capital and thus social interaction and this argument has been used to buttress criticisms of urban sprawl if low densities in fact reduce social interaction then an externality arises validating putnam s critique in choosing their own lot sizes consumers would fail to consider the loss of interaction benefits for their neighbors when lot size is increased lot sizes would then be inefficiently large and cities excessively spread out the paper tests the premise of this argument the existence of a positive link between interaction and density using data from the social capital benchmark survey in the empirical work social interaction measures for individual survey respondents are regressed on census tract density and a host of household characteristics using an instrumental variable approach to control for the potential endogeneity of density

what drives migration moves to urban areas in spain evidence from the great recession during the great recession international emigration skyrocketed while internal migration strongly declined however when the focus is on migration to the larger urban areas in spain an increase i

inequality in co2 emissions across countries and its relationship with income inequality a distributive approach this paper analyses the inequality in co2 emissions across countries and groups of countries and the relationship of this inequality with income inequality across countries for the period 1971 1999 the research employs the tools that are usually applied in income distribution analysis the methodology used here gives qualitative and quantitative information on some of the features of the inequalities across countries that are considered most relevant for the design and discussion of policies aimed at mitigating climate change the paper studies the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and shows that income inequality across countries has been followed by an important inequality in the distribution of emissions this inequality has diminished mildly although the inequality in emissions across countries ordered in the increasing value of income inequality between rich and poor countries has diminished less than the simple inequality in emissions lastly the paper shows that the inequality in co2 emissions is mostly explained by the inequality between groups with different per capita income level the importance of the inequality within groups of similar per capita income is much lower and has diminished during the period especially in the low middle income group

the distributional effects of pollution regulations do renters fully pay for cleaner air abstract changes in housing prices play an important role in determining the incidence of environmental regulations if the increase in value due to changes in environmental amenities is fully passed forward in the form of higher rental prices renters may receive no net benefit from the regulations to estimate the pass through of the value of an environmental amenity i exploit the reduction in suspended particulate matter pm 10 due to the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa using instrumental variables at varying levels of spatial aggregation i find that the 1990 caaa led to a significant increase in rents but the estimated percentage effect is about half as large as that of owner occupied housing values little of this difference is driven by income differences between renters and homeowners when stratifying by income and comparing the effect of the 1990 caaa on housing values and rents point estimates suggest that half of the increase in value is passed on to renters in the form of higher rents this suggests that pass through may be incomplete but landowners still capture much of the value of the air quality regulations

housing and location choices of retiring households evidence from france in this paper a study is made of the mobility and housing choices of the elderly when retiring using household data collected in france from a theoretical viewpoint individuals are likely to decrease their housing quantity because of an income loss when retiring but they may also increase it to benefit from more housing comfort for leisure using the 1992 trois generations survey it is first shown that housing mobility at retirement is substantial in france with a variety of self reported motives then using the 1994 2001 french europanel survey evidence is found of both upsizing and downsizing for mobile recent retirees in many cases housing adjustments lead to a correction of the initial disequilibrium between the number of rooms and the number of occupants however a significant proportion of mobile recent retirees improve the quality of their dwelling

the role of price spillovers in the american housing boom abstract one of the striking features of the last u s housing boom was the heterogeneity in the timing of its onset across local markets in this paper we exploit this heterogeneity to estimate the extent to which the boom was spread via spatial spillovers from one market to another our analysis focuses on spillovers that occur around the time that a local market enters its boom which we identify using sharp structural breaks in house price growth rates on the extensive margin there is evidence that the likelihood of a market booming increases substantially if nearby neighbors boom on the intensive margin we also find statistically significant but economically modest effects of the size of a neighbor s boom on subsequent price growth in nearby markets these affects appear to be unrelated to local market fundamentals suggesting a potential role for non rational factors

new housing supply and the dilution of social capital this paper examines the role of local housing supply conditions for social capital investment using an instrumental variables approach and data from the social capital community benchmark survey it is documented that the positive link between homeownership and individual social capital investment is largely confined to more built up neighborhoods with more inelastic supply of new housing the empirical findings provide support for the proposition that in these localities house price capitalization provides additional incentives for homeowners to invest in social capital the findings are also largely consistent with the proposition that built up neighborhoods provide protection from inflows of newcomers that could upset a mutually beneficial equilibrium involving reciprocal cooperation however the results do not appear to be driven by selection based on inherent differences in social aptitudes or by tiebout sorting

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

international equity and differentiation in global warming policy ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries long standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden sharing moreover individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations this paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits a non linear programming model which distinguishes between allocation based and outcome based rules is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes the model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications

convergence of carbon emissions at the household level in china a distribution dynamics approach abstract since household carbon emissions hces have become a new growing source and a significant contributor to global emissions the reduction of hces is crucial to formulate targeted and effective emission mitigation policies we need to fully understand the characteristics of the distribution and evolution of per capita hces and their urban rural and regional heterogeneity this paper explores the transitional dynamics of per capita hces in china by employing the distribution dynamics approach with panel data compiled at the household level we find that the overall per capita hces are unimodal distribution in the long run and the distribution dynamics of the per capita hces between the urban and rural areas or among the regional subgroups are quite different however the speed of convergence has accelerated over time moreover our findings indicate that the per capita hces in the urban areas will achieve convergence to an emission level much higher than that of the rural areas meantime the per capita hces in northeast china will converge to an emission level much higher than those of the other three regions these findings provide valuable insights for policymakers in implementing differentiated environmental policies for different regions and between urban and rural households in china

determinants of carbon inequality in china from static and dynamic perspectives abstract carbon inequality ci is one of the core issues concerning social welfare and economic development to overcome the disadvantages of the widely used theil economic inequality index which does not consider technical efficiency and technological change we developed static and dynamic inequality analysis tools by incorporating production theoretical decomposition analysis a logarithmic mean divisia index and a shapley sun method into the theil index decomposition model we then investigated the determinants of china s ci during the period 2003 2015 using the original and modified theil index decomposition models our key findings are 1 national ci experienced a downward trend with some fluctuations over time 2 intragroup inequality was the main driver of these changes using the original approach 3 the disparities in industrialization investment scale income population share potential carbon factor energy usage technical efficiency and co2 emission technological change accounted for the decreases in ci whereas the disparities in investment rate potential energy intensity industrial investment output share energy usage technological change and co2 emission technical efficiency contributed to increases in ci we offer some policy proposals based on our results