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

estimation of economies of scale in banking using a generalized functional form this paper addresses four issues that arise in the estimation of economies of scale in the commercial banking industry first a common assumption underlying many of the studies of economies of scale in banking is the assumption of a cobb douglas production function with exogenous input prices the use of a cobb douglas production function facilitates the estimation of the output elasticity of cost however there does not appear to be any other reason a priori for such an assumption this paper utilizes a box cox hereafter b c generalized functional form methodology to directly test the assumption of an underlying cobb douglas production function second if the assumption of a cobb douglas production function is inappropriate as a description of the production process of the financial firm estimates of the output elasticity may be biased the sensitivity of the estimates of this elasticity to the choice of functional form can also be examined through the use of a generalized functional form methodology third no general consensus has been reached regarding the appropriate definition of bank output thus a diversity of measures of bank output have been employed in previous estimates of economies of scale in banking the sensitivity of the estimated output elasticity of cost to the selection of several alternative measures of output is examined through the use of the generalized functional form methodology finally the b c estimates of the cost function for commercial banks can be used

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

competitive search equilibrium in this paper i construct an equilibrium for markets with frictions which is competitive in the sense that all agents are price takers and maximize utility subject to a set of market parameters i show that the equilibrium allocation is socially optimal i also show how the competitive search equilibrium can be achieved if employers with vacancies can advertise publicly the wages they pay

the feasibility of the double dividend hypothesis in a democratic economy the two dividends in the double dividend hypothesis are assumed to be independent this assumption can be misleading when it comes to formulating policy i construct a model where the pollution tax rate is voted for by heterogeneous people in addition to the revenue recycling effect the equilibrium pollution tax rate depends on two opposite forces the tax cutting effect and the profit effect the two forces show that an instrument that exploits a greater revenue recycling effect can cause a more severe environmental deterioration thereby resulting in the infeasibility of the hypothesis the introduction of the interdependence between the two dividends can also mean that non revenue raising instruments are more efficient than revenue raising instruments

search theoretic models of the labor market a survey we survey the literature on search theoretic models of the labor market we show how this approach addresses many issues including the following why do workers sometimes choose to remain unemployed what determines the lengths of employment and unemployment spells how can there simultaneously exist unemployed workers and unfilled vacancies what determines aggregate unemployment and vacancies how can homogeneous workers earn different wages what are the tradeoffs firms face from different wages how do wages and turnover interact what determines efficient turnover we discuss various modeling choices concerning wage determination and the meeting process including recent models of directed search

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

assessing the effect of public policy on worker absenteeism we analyze the effect of economic incentives on worker absenteeism using panel data on work absence for 1990 and 1991 with a sample of 1 396 swedish blue collar workers during this period sweden implemented major reforms of both its national income replacement program for short term sickness and income taxes both affected the worker s cost of missing work our econometric model allows for state dependent dynamic behavior and control for unobserved heterogeneity the latter proves to be an important consideration we find that the cost of being absent significantly affects work absence behavior

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

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

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

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

the interactive effects of human capital and quality of life on economic growth abstractto bridge the gap in the quality of life qol and economic growth literature and understand the reinforcing effects of qol and human capital on economic development we examine the interactive effects of these two factors on wage growth from 2000 to 2007 at the county level across the united states first a rosen roback model is employed to estimate implicit values of amenities including climate clean air and other natural attributes which are used to generate qol indices second qol human capital represented by the share of college graduates and their interaction serve as key variables in the wage growth model an instrumental variable approach and location fixed effects are used to address endogeneity of human capital and control for location specific unobservable characteristics results suggest that human capital and qol significantly contribute to economic growth and the growth effects are even larger in nonmetropolitan counties importantly we find that the effect of human capital on

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

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

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

absenteeism efficiency wages and shirking we investigate the absence behaviour of workers when there is asymmetric information regarding worker health an individual s health is assumed to be private information to that individual and only observable to a third party at cost our aim is to complement the existing largely empirical studies of absence behaviour which have tended to treat the phenomenon exclusively as a labour supply decision on the part of workers cf allen 1981 barmby and treble 1991 barmby orme and treble 1991 and dunn and youngblood 1986 our approach is to draw out the interactive aspects of the employment relationship we assume that workers are ex ante uncertain as to their state of health and supply labour on the basis of an all or nothing utility maximising decision taken once a realisation of this state has been received utility is a function of income leisure and health and workers value leisure more the sicker they are firms are able to exert some control over individual behaviour by monitoring workers and threatening to fire shirkers that is workers absenting themselves with unacceptable sickness our model highlights an efficiency wage effect through which wages may be used as a method of absence control in particular the optimal response of the firm to an increase in the cost of monitoring is to discourage shirking by raising wages furthermore to the extent that

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

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

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

earnings unemployment and the allocation of time over time since an individual s labour market history can be described by a markov chain in state space it is possible to calculate the steady states it is natural to interpret the steady state proportion in unemployment for a group of identical workers as the natural rate of unemployment for this group i e it is the expected proportion that would be employed if the environment were to remain constant it is shown how the natural rate of unemployment is different for different groups the model is estimated using data from a large u s income maintenance experiment the predictions of the model with some exceptions bear up well to confrontation by data the empirical findings also accord well with existing evidence on cross section studies of labour supply we find that labour force participation rates implied by the estimated models are positively related to earnings for all age sex and race groups as expected we demonstrate that the elasticities of the unemployment rates for all groups with respect to expected wage rates are negative and large in absolute value in the case of adults while the role of the wage in allocation of time is not novel the existing neoclassical labour literature uses static labour supply models to interpret participation rate studies

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

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

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

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

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

the effects on sick leave of changes in the sickness insurance system to get a more complete picture of how labor supply is affected by economic incentives the effects on absenteeism should be taken into account in particular absenteeism due to sick leave can be considerable we examine whether the level of sick leave compensation affects sick leave behavior using long time series data 1955 99 for sweden with numerous changes of the compensation level we generally find strong effects reforms implying more generous compensation for sick leave tend to be associated with permanent increases in sick leave and vice versa these findings are reinforced in a panel study covering the 1983 91 period

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

sick of being unemployed interactions between unemployment and sickness insurance this paper examines the incentive effects of interactions between unemployment insurance ui and sickness insurance si two important components of sweden s social insurance system the main topic is how the sickness report rate among the unemployed is affected by i the limit of 300 workdays for ui benefits and ii the difference in maximum compensation between ui and si benefits results obtained by duration analysis suggest that sick reports increase as the ui benefit expiration date approaches there is also evidence of an incentive effect on the sick report rate because si offers higher compensation than ui

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

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

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

do economic conditions influence environmental policy evidence from the us senate abstract this paper investigates whether economic conditions influence environmental policy by examining how policymakers voting on environmental legislation respond to changes in their state s unemployment rate the outcome of interest is a us senator s league of conservation voters score which reflects how often a senator voted for the environmentally favorable outcome on bills related to the environment in a given year i find evidence that a higher unemployment rate is associated with reduced support for environmentally favorable policies and that the estimated response is largest for republicans counterfactual estimates indicate that if each state had experienced its lowest observed unemployment rate throughout the sample then the proportion of votes taking the environmentally favorable outcome would have increased from 36 to 41

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

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

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

sickness absence an international comparison this paper shows how internationally and intertemporally consistent information on sickness absence can be constructed from labour force surveys and describes some important features of data that we have generated using the luxembourg employment study we also analyse sickness absence rates by age gender and other socio economic characteristics of workers these relationships prove to be similar across countries with widely differing mean rates of absence in this dataset workers with longer tenure tend to have higher absence rates even when age is controlled for absence is also positively correlated with higher usual hours of work we show how internationally and intertemporally consistent information on sickness absence can be constructed from labour force surveys lfs and describe some important features of data that we have generated using the luxembourg employment study les such data fill an important gap in available information about absence since they have the potential to provide answers to a number of issues that remain unresolved in its study there is now substantial evidence going back to the work of the industrial fatigue research board in the 1920s and 1930s i that sickness absence is not purely a response to a medical condition workers who have access to compensation payments are more likely to be absent than those without buzzard and shaw 1952 the higher the rate of compensation the more absences workers are likely to take buzzard and shaw 1952 furthermore the higher the rate of compensation the longer absences are likely to be barmby et al 1991 the analysis of sickness absence is placed firmly in the agenda of economics by the idea that sickness absence rates are the consequence of choices that can be mediated by financial and other incentives the provision and level of sickpay is typically determined at two levels by negotiation between firms and their workforces and by government regulation interfirm variations in absence and their correlates are not well understood coles and treble 1996 have argued that the marginal cost of an absence is partially in the control of firms and can be usefully seen as driven by the nature of the technology adopted these theoretical arguments remain largely unexplored empirically but the ability to compare similar industries across different countries is likely to be revealing this paper was drafted during a visit to ceps instead in the summer of 1999 the research was funded by a grant of the european commission under the tmr programme access to large scale facilities hosted by iriss c i at ceps instead in differdange luxembourg we are also grateful for support from the leverhulme foundation through a grant to the institute for labour research at the university of essex and to colleagues at the ilr for their constructive comments acknowledgements to les data providers are given at the end of the paper we would also like to thank paul alkemade elena bardasi and pascal garin for their help any remaining errors are our own and the views expressed herein are not necessarily those of ceps instead 1 see for example vernon and bedford 1928

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

worker absenteeism in search equilibrium in this paper we introduce a general equilibrium model of search unemployment that incorporates absence from work as a distinct labor force state absenteeism is driven by random shocks to the value of leisure that are private information to the workers firms maximize profits while recognizing that the compensation package may affect the queue of job applicants and the absence rate the analysis provides results concerning the effects of social insurance benefits and other determinants of workers and firms behavior the normative analysis identifies externalities associated with firm provided sick pay and examines the welfare implications of alternative policies

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

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