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

on measuring the quality of life abstract it is widely recognized that per capita income is not an adequate indicator of aggregate well being it has thus become customary to use a range of socioeconomic indices for assessing the quality of life in a society in this article we extend measures of general well being in current use by including ordinal indices of political and civil liberties and we provide a ranking of the world s poorest countries on the basis of the borda rule we then compare improvements in socioeconomic performance with the availability of political and civil liberties during the decade of the 1970s and observe that improvements in per capita national income life expectancy at birth and infant mortality are positively correlated with the extent of political and civil liberties enjoyed by citizens while improvements in literacy are negatively correlated with these liberties

the returns to schooling a selectivity bias approach with a continuous choice variable the essence of selection bias is that we do not observe nonoptimal choices this applies whether the choice variable is discrete or continuous this paper extends the selection bias methodology to the case where the choice variable is continuous and the choice set is ordered the leading practical application of this analysis is the schooling choice problem schooling is treated as a continuous choice variable and selectivity corrected rates of return are estimated the findings suggest selectivity is of considerable importance and support the comparative advantage hypothesis of willis and rosen 18

a productivity model of city crowdedness abstract population density varies widely across us cities a simple static general equilibrium model suggests that moderate sized differences in cities total factor productivity can account for such variation nevertheless the productivity required to sustain above average population densities considerably exceeds estimates of the increase in productivity caused by such high density in contrast increasing returns to scale may be able to sustain multiple equilibria at below average population densities

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

the rising price of nonmarket goods nonmarket goods such as unpaid household labor leisure health and longevity and the environment are important components of the standard of living they represent a large fraction of all activities prime aged men and women spend 17 percent of their day in leisure activities and 5 and 13 percent of their time respectively in unpaid housework compared to 23 and 13 percent of their time respectively in paid work the quantity of nonmarket goods is rising over time in the united states life expectancy at birth is now 77 years having risen by 29 years since 1900 in los angeles county between 1980 and 1998 average annual daily exceedences of the national smog standard declined by 60 days from 71 to 11 falling big city murder rates merit national news headlines studies of living standards have focused on the tremendous change in the quantity of nonmarket goods but have assumed that the value of nonmarket goods except for unpaid labor has remained constant this assumption underlies most health studies e g david cutler and elizabeth richardson 1997 kevin m murphy and robert h topel 2003 william t nordhaus 2003 nordhaus 2003 valued declines in mortality since 1900 using a constant value of life even the boskin cpi commission michael j boskin et al 1998 discussed trends in the quantity of nonmarket goods i e pollution and crime progress without mentioning incorporating such goods implicit prices into a broader cpi measure there is no reason to think that implicit prices or the willingness to pay for nonmarket goods has remained constant rising real and shadow wages have made both leisure and unpaid household labor more expensive rising incomes have also made such normal goods as safety health a temperate climate and the environment more valuable we document the price dynamics of nonmarket goods by estimating repeat cross sectional hedonic regressions we focus on two important and measurable nonmarket goods job fatality risk and climate in both cases we find that both price and quantity have been rising this evidence is consistent with rising valuation we use our estimates of job risk compensating differentials to construct new evidence on long run trends in value of life accounting for price changes affects how we view the retrospective and prospective benefits of medical innovations a rising value of life implies that marginal improvements in safety and in longevity are becoming more valuable we report evidence that the price of living in a temperate winter and summer climate has significantly increased over time

compensating differentials in emerging labor and housing markets estimates of quality of life in russian cities abstract the purpose of this paper is to see if an equilibrium model of compensating differences for amenities can be applied to a major transition economy russia we analyze russian labor and housing markets using data from the russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms augmented by city and regional specific characteristics from other sources our estimated wage and housing value equations suggest that workers are compensated for differences in climate environmental conditions ethnic conflicts crime rates and health conditions after controlling for worker characteristics occupation industry and economic conditions and various housing characteristics we find evidence that these compensating differentials exist even after controlling for the regional pay differences regional coefficients used by the russian government to compensate public sector workers for living in regions that are designated as less desirable quality of life as measured by a group of eleven amenities varies substantially the highest ranked cities tend to be in relatively warm areas and areas in the western european part of the country our quality of life index is positively correlated with net migration into a region suggesting workers are attracted to amenity rich locations overall we find that a model of compensating differentials with controls for disequilibrium yields useful information about compensation for location specific amenities and quality of life in this large transition economy

the index of sustainable economic welfare isew as an alternative to gdp in measuring economic welfare the results of the austrian revised isew calculation 1955 1992 abstract although the inadequacy of gdp to measure economic welfare is widely accepted theoretically it is still used as the key indicator for economic policy this article s aim therefore is to give some empirical evidence to the theoretical critique economic welfare or at least its change over time is estimated by the index of sustainable economic welfare isew which takes account of gdp unpaid household labor social costs environmental damage and income distribution the concept of the isew which was originally developed by herman daly and john cobb is entirely reformulated with special regard to questions of inner consistency and clarity in structure as an illustration the methods of the calculation in the austria case study and its results are presented the main result is that gdp and economic welfare as measured by the isew differ significantly up until the 1970s gdp only slightly overestimated the growth of economic welfare but since then it has been completely misleading while gdp continues to rise sustainable economic welfare has been stagnating since the middle of the 1980s the main causes have been growing future welfare reductions increasing income inequality and a stagnation in the value of unpaid household labor as gdp neglects those aspects it systematically misinterprets economic welfare however the isew does not intend to simply replace gdp as a unique welfare measure but should form part of a more holistic social reporting system

the role of site and job characteristics in hedonic wage models recent economic analyses of wage rate differentials have generally used some form of hedonic framework in explaining the observed wage structure while these studies have adopted this common theoretical justification the models have been used to serve two distinct objectives the first of these is an empirical test of the theory of equalizing differences originally introduced by adam smith in such applications see brown 7 lucas 26 olson 28 thaler and rosen 36 and viscusi 40 as examples specific job characteristics measured with technical information or with worker perceptions have been used to explain differences in wage rates across individuals and jobs while there are a number of these studies there has not been a consistent pattern of support for the theory indeed with the exception of job risks many characteristics that a priori would be expected to lead to equalizing differences have often exhibited incorrect and or statistically insignificant measured effects on wages the second use for wage models has been as the basis for an index of the quality of life in urban areas in this framework households are assumed to select residential locations so as to maximize their individual welfare migration between cities provides the mechanism for an equilibrium household assignment under ideal conditions the pattern of equilibrium wage rates reflects the attributes of the cities involved see hoch 20 izraeli 23 cropper lo cropper and arriaga salinas 111 and rosen 31 as examples the purpose of this paper is to develop a model for wage rate differentials that includes both job and site characteristics and to estimate the model with a large micro data set our wage models provide estimates of a market clearing envelope which includes each of two types of past analyses as a

well being and or quality of life in eu countries through a multidimensional index of sustainability abstract the aim of my paper is to demonstrate that sen s theory of well being can be applied to make the concept of sustainable human development operational through the building of a multidimensional index of sustainability which takes into account at the same time economic social and environmental variables this index may be considered an alternative to the current measures of welfare sustainability since not only conventional measures such as gdp but also multi attribute indices such as human development index hdi genuine savings index of sustainable economic welfare isew etc are found to be inadequate to make the concept of sustainable development operational therefore the limitations of these measures of welfare sustainability justify the search for a new index of sustainability this index will show at the operational level how sen s theory of well being can be useful to sustainable development it was applied to eu countries using the standardised deviation methodology being the closest and most suitable methodology to be adopted for building multidimensional indices the factor analysis methodology will also be used in my paper lastly the comparison between sen s trend of sustainability and gdp trend index number which are both of them applied to italy will show how much the criticisms and the limitations directed towards the indicator of gdp are founded

union membership in the united states 1973 1981 this paper reports estimates of union membership gathered from may current population surveys from 1973 to 1981 the authors present data by occupation industry selected states and smsas race gender and educational attainment the paper both extends and differs from that by freeman and medoff which presents unionism estimates for the private sector for 1968 75 to facilitate longitudinal analysis this paper reports three year moving averages of occupational and industry data and annual estimates of demographic classifications the data include public sector as well as private sector workers and they exclude workers not covered by the national labor relations act also the authors provide only union membership estimates not estimates on workers covered by union contracts this paper suggests that the percentage of all workers that are unionized in the united states remained fairly constant over the 1973 81 period

which hedonic models can we trust to recover the marginal willingness to pay for environmental amenities abstract the hedonic property value model is among our foremost tools for evaluating the economic consequences of policies that target the supply of local public goods environmental services and urban amenities we design a theoretically consistent and empirically realistic monte carlo study of whether omitted variables seriously undermine the method s ability to accurately identify economic values our results suggest that large gains in accuracy can be realized by moving from the standard linear specifications for the price function to a more flexible framework that uses a combination of spatial fixed effects quasi experimental identification and temporal controls for housing market adjustment

the price of virtue this article offers new evidence on the determinants of u s unwed birth rates from 1981 to 1990 we show that illegitimacy rates are positively and significantly correlated with payments under the aid to families with dependent children program over a period in which real afdc payments declined we attribute this result to a decline in the social sanctions for illegitimacy because social sanctions declined so did the cost of deviance as well as the price for which unwed women sold their virtue

the impact of site characteristics on housing cost estimates abstract hedonic housing regressions using micro data for owners and renters from the 1972 1973 consumer expenditure survey are presented by including tract characteristics and public goods in these regressions evidence is presented which indicates sensitivity of the physical housing variable coefficients to the choice of included site related characteristics furthermore omission of public good variables can result in misleading and possibly perverse coefficients on access intermetropolitan housing cost estimates however are shown to be relatively insensitive to the choice of site related characteristics

optimal land development with endogenous environmental amenities a spatially explicit model of the optimal timing and location of land development is presented that incorporates dynamic interactions between land development and water quality ignoring two way interactions leads to a lower level of water quality more development and lower social welfare the optimal pace and pattern of development can be achieved through the assessment of an impact fee that internalizes pollution damages and irreversibility costs our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for the spatial dimension of land use the interdependence between land use and environmental quality and development irreversibility in models of urbanization and amenity driven growth copyright 2008 oxford university press

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

the human development index a critical review since 1990 the united nations development programme undp has published a series of annual human development reports hdrs in which the human development index hdi is computed for each country this index has become an important alternative to the traditional unidimensional measure of development i e the gross domestic product although the index still fails to include any ecological considerations it has broadened the discussion surrounding the evaluation of development unfortunately over the years the hdrs seem to have become stagnant repeating the same rhetoric without necessarily increasing the hdi s utility this paper evaluates how well these reports have lived up to their own conceptual mandate and assesses the ability of the hdi to further the development debate we find that the reports have lost touch with their original vision and the index fails to capture the essence of the world it seeks to portray in addition the index focuses almost exclusively on national performance and ranking but does not pay much attention to development from a global perspective we propose the incorporation of three simple modifications for the index as a first step to overcome these shortcomings 1998 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

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

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

consumer prices the consumer price index and the cost of living after presenting major findings and recommendations the cpi commission reiterates the estimate of a 1 1 percentage point per annum upward bias it rejects the contention that the bls already makes substantial corrections for quality change that quality improvements and new products accrue only to the rich and that procedures to make more extensive quality adjustments valuations of new products and adjustments for commodity and outlet substitution are impractical the bias in the cpi can be sharply reduced as the authors detail in this paper coauthors are ellen r dulberger robert j gordon zvi griliches and dale w jorgenson

ethics economics and environmental management individuals derive utility from their access to resources provided by the biosphere through the satisfaction of a number of needs and necessities these needs however cannot often be met simultaneously since they compete with each other this conflict is not just relevant at an individual or even intragenerational level indeed it implies a number of uncertainties and irreversibilities into the future which should not be left to oblivion from an extended anthropocentric ethical position in which only human beings have immanent value and are therefore subjects of moral consideration the identification of economic values can be of great use to allocate resources and make decisions on the environment economic analysis provides a number of decision tools than can be used to optimise efficiency and equity the purpose of this paper is to reflect on some of the ethical constraints to the ability of conventional economic valuation techniques to inform decision making processes affecting the environment it will be argued that depending on the stage of development some environmental and natural assets might well be seen as a common heritage either from a natural or a cultural viewpoint rather than just a pool of economic resources that could be used to satisfy basic needs and depleted or transformed accordingly whether directly or indirectly furthermore this boundary is not static the same environmental asset will be demanded as a resource at lower stages of development both individual and socially and as a part of the common heritage at a later stage again individual and socially in the former the use of conventional methods to value environmental goods and services will be warranted whereas this would not be the case in the latter we will also stress upon the fact that this is something quite different from the approach taken in social project appraisal where the introduction of efficiency prices and distributive factors also provides a move from individual to social welfare maximization but without breaking away from the market logic

political macroeconomics a survey of recent developments the paper surveys political macroeconomics covering its development from rogoff s conservative central banker to the most recent discussions of monetary policy and institutional design topics include the inflation stabilization trade off central bank independence with escape clauses and overruling with costs inflation targets performance contracts for monetary authorities and the consequences of output persistence for these issues further topics are the political business cycle when output is persistent the political macroeconomics of fiscal policy the government spending bias and the game theoretic interaction between fiscal and monetary policy all work is discussed within a coherent analytical framework

the build up of local sustainable development politics a case study of company leaders in france abstract the purpose of this study is to examine business leaders perceptions on sustainable development and their expectations about local governments using a questionnaire on a cross section of 32 french business leaders we examine the following questions can issues related to sustainable development extend beyond questions of profit and future economic dynamism the modern global economic crisis in combination with the ongoing ecological one makes regional attractiveness more topical than ever if local governments invest in sustainable development policy it might satisfy not only citizens but also firms in the territory while attracting new ones as well to determine if firms are really interested in such a policy as well as understand their expectations this research undertook interviews with 32 business leaders we found that local governments should act with firms as partners to increase resilience and sustainability the expectations of business leaders and their sensitivity to sustainable development suggest that sustainable development policies could improve the attractiveness of a local economy especially in the context of the current environmental and economic crises

comparing augmented sustainability measures for scotland is there a mismatch we estimate and compare two empirical measures of the weak sustainability of an economy for the first time the change in augmented green net national product gnnp and the interest on augmented genuine savings gs yearly calculations are given for each measure for scotland during 1992 1999 augmentation means including using projections to 2020 changed production possibilities enabled by exogenous technical progress or changing oil prices the change in augmented gnnp and the interest on augmented gs are both always positive showing no sustainability problem for scotland then according to the assumptions underlying our weak sustainability calculations however the former greatly exceeds the latter even when macroeconomic fluctuations are taken into account this is a mismatch which poses an unresolved problem with the theory resolving it may require respecifying the utility functions used in mainstream growth theory

values ideology and politics in ecological economics abstract ecological economics is built on a value commitment to study environmental issues and to contribute constructively to a more sustainable development path however many ecological economists still hesitate it appears to depart too much from other scholars by openly addressing issues of values and ideology in this essay the role of the scholar s orientation with respect to values and ideology is addressed it is observed that not only scholars but also actors in society are guided by their ideological orientation this leads to the idea that some of the weaknesses of economic man and profit maximising firm assumptions can be mitigated by introducing a political economic person and a political economic organisation

steps towards indicators of sustainable development linking economic and ecological concepts abstract conceptions of defining and measuring sustainable development can broadly be placed in two categories weak and strong sustainability the concept of weak sustainability is based on neo classical economic theory and assumes that manufactured and natural capital are close substitutes this means that costs of environmental deterioration e g forest damage can be compensated by benefits from manufactured capital e g income thus environmental damages are valued in monetary units the concept of strong sustainability denies the degree of substitution that weak sustainability assumes at least for some critical elements of natural capital this paper pledges for strong sustainability indicators especially for critical loads and critical levels since the costs and benefits of avoiding critical impacts have to be taken into account a combination of strong and weak sustainability indicators means a linkage of ecological physical and economic monetary approaches should be suggested

wages rents and amenities differences among workers and regions what explains persistent regional earnings differences this paper argues that regional differences in amenities can account for the wage differences in contrast cost of living variations do not account for wage differences but actually exacerbate them this conclusion results from a model in which variations in rents and wages are equalizing differences for amenity differences empirical results are consistent with the model

internal consistency of choice internal consistency of choice has been a central concept in economics decision theory and social choice this idea is essentially confused we cannot determine whether a choice function is consistent without referring to something external to choice e g objectives values the standard results have to be reexamined in this light kenneth j arrow s general possibility theorem is extended in this paper without demanding any internal consistency of social choice or any notion of social rationality copyright 1993 by the econometric society

macroeconomic measures of sustainability this paper reviews the policy need for indicators of sustainable development and the impetus behind recent moves to establish official indicators the range of indicators available from current economic theory is then examined these measures may be divided into those based on flows and those based on stocks flow based measures are essentially attempts to adjust net national product to transform it into an indicator of sustainability stock based measures revolve around the concept of the natural and man made capital stocks we also consider the idea of safe minimum standards as a sustainability indicator the paper concludes that no currently available single measure of sustainability is likely to be adequate

observed choice estimation and optimism about policy changes a policy will be used more heavily in a time and place where its cost is lower the analyst who treats times and places as identical will overestimate the policy s net bene t especially for policy intensities greater than exist in his sample in regression analysis the problem can be solved by weighted instrumental variables using state level data the technique substantially increases the estimated responsiveness of illegitimacy to transfers indiana university school of business rm 456 1309 e 10th street bloomington indiana 47405 1701 o ce 812 855 9219 fax 812 855 3354 email erasmuse indiana edu jel numbers and

intra regional amenities wages and home prices the role of forests in the southwest forests provide non market goods and services that people are implicitly willing to pay for through hedonic housing and labor markets but it is unclear if compensating differentials arise in these markets at the regional level this empirical question is addressed in a study of arizona and new mexico hedonicregressionsofhousingpricesandwagesusing census and geographic data show that forest area carries an implicit price of between 27 and 36 per square mile annually compensating differentials at the regional level suggest that care must be taken when applying the travel cost method to value regionallydelineated characteristics jel q23 r14

migration and household adaptation to climate a review of empirical research abstract this paper reviews empirical research on migration and land use impacts associated with climate change household migration arises due to changes in economic opportunities and climate amenities resulting from climate change throughout the paper efforts are made to highlight key empirical findings as well as areas in need of additional research the existing literature is discussed through the lens of reduced form and structural approaches paying particular attention to preference heterogeneity and the often complex interconnections between economic sectors in determining household migration areas in need of additional research include improving our understanding of the coupling between human and natural systems accounting for endogenous attributes and payoffs and incorporating richer characterizations of the tradeoffs driving migration across multiple economic sectors