how much are we willing to contribute for better educational outcomes evidence from a survey experiment we use a survey experiment on a sample of argentine households to elicit willingness to contribute toward improving the performance of public school students in international educational assessments households are presented with a sequence of bids that they can accept or reject information is presented in vignettes that vary in the proportion of children who benefited from the gains in educational attainment we find a higher willingness to contribute for larger gains in total households would be willing to contribute an additional 12 8 of current educational expenditure to guarantee improved education quality jel i22 i25 c83 h52

the perceived returns to education and the demand for schooling economists emphasize the link between market returns to education and investments in schooling though many studies estimate these returns with earnings data it is the perceived returns that affect schooling decisions and these perceptions may be inaccurate using survey data for eighth grade boys in the dominican republic we find that the perceived returns to secondary school are extremely low despite high measured returns students at randomly selected schools given information on the higher measured returns completed on average 0 20 0 35 more years of school over the next four years than those who were not

perceptions of inevitability and demand for redistribution evidence from a survey experiment abstract believing that inequality is inevitable may limit demand for redistribution we explore this idea with a survey experiment in south africa one of the most unequal countries in the world inevitability beliefs can be influenced by learning about lower inequality elsewhere we find that the demand for redistributive policies reacts to this information while it is insensitive to other types of information messages our analysis suggests a promising and heretofore unexplored avenue of research for refining our understanding of the determinants of demand for redistribution

group loyalty and the taste for redistribution interpersonal preferences preferences that depend on the characteristics of others are typically hard to infer from observable individual behavior as an alternative approach this paper uses survey data to investigate interpersonal preferences i show that self reported attitudes toward welfare spending are determined not only by financial self interest but also by interpersonal preferences these interpersonal preferences are characterized by a negative exposure effect individuals decrease their support for welfare as the welfare recipiency rate in their community rises and racial group loyalty individuals increase their support for welfare spending as the share of local recipients from their own racial group rises these findings help to explain why levels of welfare benefits are relatively low in racially heterogeneous states

the energy and co2 emissions impact of renewable energy development in china the authors are grateful for the support provided by the national key technology r d program from ministry of science and technology of grant no 2012bac20b07 we acknowledge the support of the national key technology r d program and the institute for energy environment and economy at tsinghua university which is supporting tianyu qi s doctoral research as a visiting scholar at the massachusetts institute of technology we acknowledge the support of eni icf and shell initial founding sponsors of the china energy and climate project this consortium of sponsors has provided support for researchers in the mit joint program to engage in a five year program of research focused on china none of the sponsoring organizations played a role in the study design collection analysis or interpretation of the data used for this study nor did they influence our decisions to submit the article for publication and all errors are our own

alternative designs for tariffs on embodied carbon a global cost effectiveness analysis in the absence of effective world wide cooperation to curb global warming import tariffs on embodied carbon have been proposed as a potential supplement to unilateral emissions pricing we consider alternative designs for such tariffs and analyze their effects on global welfare within a multi region multi sector computable general equilibrium cge model of global trade and energy our analysis suggests that the most cost efficient policy could be region specific tariffs on all products based on direct plus electricity emissions in the end however the potential cost savings through carbon tariffs must be weighed against the administrative costs as well as legal issues and political considerations

aspiring for change a theory of middle class activism we propose a regime change model in which people are uncertain about both the quality of a specific regime and governance in general the poor perceive the current regime as bad rationally infer that all govern ments are bad and therefore believe mass movements are futile the mid dle class are more sanguine about the prospect of good government and believe that collective action is effective because they expect many fellow citizens to share the same view this coordination game with incomplete information does not admit monotone equilibrium but exhibits multiple interval equilibria where middle class people are more likely to attack the regime

spend it like beckham inequality and redistribution in the uk 1983 2004 a main activity of the state is to redistribute resources standard political economy models predict that a rise in inequality will lead to more redistribution this paper shows that for the uk in the period 1983 2004 a plausibly exogenous rise in income inequality has not been associated with increased redistribution we explore this example of the paradox of redistribution using attitudinal data we show that standard political economy models of the individual demand for redistribution do have explanatory power but that other attitudes and beliefs are also very important moreover these attitudes and beliefs change quite quickly so are very important in explaining variation in the demand for redistribution

biased perceptions of income distribution and preferences for redistribution evidence from a survey experiment abstract individual perceptions of income distribution play a vital role in political economy and public finance models yet there is little evidence regarding their origins or accuracy this study examines how individuals form these perceptions and explores their potential impact on preferences for redistribution a tailored household survey provides original evidence on systematic biases in individuals evaluations of their own relative position in the income distribution the study discusses one of the mechanisms that may generate such biases based on the extrapolation of information from endogenous reference groups and presents some suggestive evidence that this mechanism has significant explanatory power the impact of these biased perceptions on attitudes toward redistributive policies is studied by means of an experimental design that was incorporated into the survey which provided consistent information on the own ranking within the income distribution to a randomly selected group of respondents the evidence suggests that those who had overestimated their relative position and thought that they were relatively richer than they were tend to demand higher levels of redistribution when informed of their true ranking

preferences for inter regional redistribution what explains individual support for inter regional redistribution few studies examine support for regional redistribution even though such issues are politically salient in many democracies we test models that hypothesize that such preferences are affected by regional and individual income as well as other arguments beyond the traditional political economy framework we focus on informational assumptions and implications of these models with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey in spain we randomly inform some citizens of the true relative income of their region to assess the impact of this information on regional redistribution preferences we find that citizens learning about their region s relative position affects these preferences in a manner consistent with some of the political economy models we also find some support for out group concerns as an important factor the findings have implications for the applicability of economic models to explaining support for region

will economic restructuring in china reduce trade embodied co2 emissions we acknowledge the support of the national social science foundation of china project no project no 09 zd029 and the institute for energy environment and economy at tsinghua university which is supporting tianyu qi s doctoral research as a visiting scholar at the massachusetts institute of technology we further acknowledge the support of eni s p a icf international and shell international ltd initial sponsors of the china energy and climate project in the mit joint program on the science and policy of global change at mit none of the sponsoring organizations played a role in the study design collection analysis or interpretation of the data used for this study nor did they influence our decisions to submit the article for publication and all errors are our own we also acknowledge general industrial and government sponsors of the joint program on the science and policy of global change http globalchange mit edu sponsors all

choosing your pond location choices and relative income do individuals care about their relative income while this is a long standing hypothesis revealed preference evidence remains elusive we provide a unique test by studying residential choices in

regional heterogeneity of china s energy efficiency in new normal a meta frontier super sbm analysis abstract this study aims at investigating regional heterogeneity of china s energy efficiency in the new normal a model combining meta frontier method and super sbm is proposed which has higher discriminatory power under the group frontier the energy efficiencies of the eastern central western and northeastern china and each provinces were estimated during 2006 2016 we also discussed the technology gaps of different regions the changes in energy efficiency and the main influencing factors of energy efficiency the results show that the highest energy efficiency lied in eastern china surprisingly the technology levels of central and western china have improved rapidly furthermore as china enters a new normal period more regions showed a strong decoupling relationship between energy consumption and economic growth meanwhile the regression results indicate that both state intervention and market openness had negative impacts on energy efficiency in different study periods finally according to the local conditions of different regions several policy recommendations to promote china s regional energy efficiency improvement are proposed

carbon emissions in china how far can new efforts bend the curve while china is on track to meet its global climate commitments through 2020 china s post 2020 co2 emissions trajectory is highly uncertain with projections varying widely across studies over the past year the chinese government has announced new policy directives to deepen economic reform to protect the environment and to limit fossil energy use in china to evaluate how new policy directives could affect energy and climate change outcomes we simulate two levels of policy effort a continued effort scenario that extends current policies beyond 2020 and an accelerated effort scenario that reflects newly announced policies on the evolution of china s energy and economic system over the next several decades we perform simulations using the china in global energy model c gem a bespoke recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model with global coverage and detailed calibration of china s economy and future trends importantly we find that both levels of policy effort would bend down the co2 emissions trajectory before 2050 without undermining economic development specifically in the accelerated effort scenario we find that coal use peaks around 2020 and co2 emissions level off around 2030 at 10 bmt without undermining continued economic growth consistent with china reaching the status of a well off society by 2050

self rated economic welfare in russia abstract most of those russian adults who feel that they are poor are not classified as such in the poverty statistics and most of those who are classified as poor don t feel that way we study the determinants of peoples perceptions of their economic welfare in an unusually rich socioeconomic survey while income is a highly significant predictor subjective economic welfare is influenced by many other factors including health education employment assets relative income in the area of residence and expectations about future welfare insights are obtained into how objective data should be weighted in assessing economic welfare

social mobility and redistributive politics just like economists voters have conflicting views about redistributive taxation because they estimate its incentive costs differently we model rational agents as trying to learn from their dynastic income mobility experience the relative importance of effort and predetermined factors in the generation of income inequality and therefore the magnitude of these incentive costs in the long run left wing dynasties believing less in individual effort and voting for more redistribution coexist with right wing dynasties this allows us to explain why individual mobility experience and not only current income matters for political attiitudes and how persistent differences in perceptions about social mobility can generate persistent differences in redistribution across countries

misconceptions and political outcomes a large literature shows that strategic interactions among actors with conflicting objectives can cause the political process to produce outcomes that lower welfare this paper investigates an alternative explanation of such outcomes if individuals errors in assessing the likely effects of proposed policies are correlated democratic decisionmaking can produce welfare reducing outcomes even in the absence of conflicting objectives under plausible assumptions choosing candidates from among the best informed individuals does not remedy the problems created by such errors but subsidising information and exposing representatives to information after their election do concentration of power has ambiguous effects

perceptions of equity and the distribution of income this article develops a model in which quit rates and thus the income distribution depend on employee perceptions of the accuracy of employer assessments of individual productivity because these latter assessments affect wages when employees believe that these assessments are accurate income inequality tends to be high the model can account for the negative correlation across some countries of inequality and the extent to which inequality is deemed to be excessive it also fits the contrast in u s and french experiences concerning the tenure of highly educated workers with high wages relative to the tenure of lower paid workers

sector decomposition of china s national economic carbon emissions and its policy implication for national ets development abstract uncovering the contributions of each sector s driving factors to the growth of national economic carbon emissions has great significance for china in developing its nationwide emission trading scheme ets the paper applies the index decomposition analysis ida and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model to discuss the underlying drivers behind china s national economic carbon emissions during the period 1996 2012 from both sector and factor decomposition perspectives and accordingly offers policy proposals for china s national ets development major conclusions include 1 six heavy industry sectors the transport storage post sector and the construction sector are the largest contributors and hence proposed for incorporation into the ets s coverage 2 the rapid expansion of economic output dominantly increases carbon emissions the design of cap on emissions should allow for a proper increment and establish a new entrant reserve to coordinate economic development 3 as the dynamics of carbon emissions vary markedly across sectors allowance allocation needs to consider the changing sectoral structure of emissions 4 the combined effects of sectoral energy intensity and structure changes largely offset carbon emissions benchmarking is suggested as an ideal allocation mechanism and the setup of sectoral carbon intensity benchmark should synthetically evaluate the potential impacts of related factors 5 manufacturer based manner and carbon offset mechanism are respectively recommended for the initial implementation of carbon trading in the transport storage post sector and the construction sector

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

labor market concerns and support for immigration abstract do labor market concerns affect support for immigration using a large representative sample of the us population we first elicit beliefs about the labor market impact of immigration to generate exogenous variation in beliefs we then provide respondents in the treatment group with research evidence showing no adverse labor market impacts of immigration treated respondents update their beliefs and become more supportive of immigration as measured by self reported policy views and petition signatures treatment effects also persist in an obfuscated follow up study our results demonstrate that information about the labor market impact of immigration causally affects support for immigration

belief in a just world and redistributive politics international surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate at the same time social ethnographies and experiments by psychologists demonstrate individuals recurrent struggle with cognitive dissonance as they seek to maintain and pass on to their children a view of the world where effort ultimately pays off and everyone gets their just deserts this paper offers a model that helps explain i why most people feel such a need to believe in a just world ii why this need and therefore the prevalence of the belief varies considerably across countries iii the implications of this phenomenon for international differences in political ideology levels of redistribution labor supply aggregate income and popular perceptions of the poor the model shows in particular how complementarities arise endogenously between individuals desired beliefs or ideological choices resulting in two equilibria a first american equilibrium is characterized by a high prevalence of just world beliefs among the population and relatively laissez faire policies the other european equilibrium is characterized by more pessimism about the role of effort in economic outcomes and a more extensive welfare state more generally the paper develops a theory of collective beliefs and motivated cognitions including those concerning money consumption and happiness as well as religion

experienced inequality and preferences for redistribution abstract we examine whether individuals experienced levels of income inequality affect their preferences for redistribution we use several large nationally representative datasets to show that people who have experienced higher inequality during their lives are less in favor of redistribution after controlling for income demographics unemployment experiences and current macroeconomic conditions they are also less likely to support left wing parties and to consider the prevailing distribution of incomes to be unfair we provide evidence that these findings do not operate through extrapolation from own circumstances perceived relative income or trust in the political system but seem to operate through the respondents fairness views

synergy between pollution and carbon emissions control comparing china and the united states abstract we estimate the potential synergy between pollution and climate control in the u s and china summarizing the results as emissions cross elasticities of control in both countries ancillary carbon reductions resulting from so 2 and no x control tend to rise with the increased stringency of control targets reflecting the eventual need for wholesale change toward non fossil technologies when large reductions are required under stringent pollution targets the non target effects tend to be higher in china than in the u s due to china s heavy reliance on coal this result suggests that china may have greater incentives to reduce so 2 and no x with locally apparent pollution benefits but related efforts would at the same time reduce co 2 emissions significantly we also find strong non target effects of co 2 abatement in both countries but the cross effects in this direction depend less on the stringency of control and are stronger in the u s than in china

natural gas pricing reform in china getting closer to a market system the authros are thankful to industry representatives in china shell cnpc for their valuable contribution regarding natural gas information the mit joint program on the science and policy of global change where the authors are affiliated is supported by the u s department of energy office of science under grants de fg02 94er61937 de fg02 08er64597 de fg02 93er61677 de sc0003906 de sc0007114 xeu 0 9920 01 the u s department of energy oak ridge national laboratory under subcontract 4000109855 the u s environmental protection agency under grants xa 83240101 pi 83412601 0 rd 83427901 0 xa 83505101 0 xa 83600001 1 and subcontract uta12 000624 the u s national science foundation under grants ags 0944121 efri 0835414 iis 1028163 eccs 1128147 arc 1203526 ef 1137306 ags 1216707 and ses 0825915 the u s national aeronautics and space administration under grants nnx06ac30a nnx07ai49g nnx11an72g and sub agreement no 08 sfws 209365 mit the u s federal aviation administration under grants 06 c ne mit 09 c ne mit agmt no 4103 30368 the u s department of transportation under grant dtrt57 10 c 10015 the electric power research institute under grant ep p32616 c15124 ep p8154 c4106 the u s department of agriculture under grant 58 6000 2 0099 58 0111 9 001 and a consortium of 35 industrial and foundation sponsors for the complete list see http globalchange mit edu sponsors all

the role of china in mitigating climate change abstract we explore short and long term implications of several energy scenarios of china s role in efforts to mitigate global climate risk the focus is on the impacts on china s energy system and gdp growth and on global climate indicators such as greenhouse gas concentrations radiative forcing and global temperature change we employ the mit integrated global system model igsm framework and its economic component the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model we demonstrate that china s commitments for 2020 made during the un climate meetings in copenhagen and cancun are reachable at very modest cost alternative actions by china in the next 10 years do not yield any substantial changes in ghg concentrations or temperature due to inertia in the climate system consideration of the longer term climate implications of the copenhagen type of commitments requires an assumption about policies after 2020 and the effects differ drastically depending on the case meeting a 2 c target is problematic unless radical ghg emission reductions are assumed in the short term participation or non participation of china in global climate architecture can lead by 2100 to a 200 280 ppm difference in atmospheric ghg concentration which can result in a 1 1 c to 1 3 c change by the end of the century we conclude that it is essential to engage china in ghg emissions mitigation policies and alternative actions lead to substantial differences in climate energy and economic outcomes potential channels for engaging china can be air pollution control and involvement in sectoral trading with established emissions trading systems in developed countries

limited trading of emissions permits as a climate cooperation mechanism us china and eu china examples abstract recent multilateral climate negotiations have underlined the importance of international cooperation and the need for support from developed to developing countries to address climate change this raises the question of whether carbon market linkages could be used as a cooperation mechanism policy discussions surrounding such linkages have indicated that should they operate a limit would be set on the amount of carbon permits that could be imported by developed regions from developing countries this paper analyzes the impact of limited carbon trading between an ets in the eu or the us and a carbon market covering chinese electricity and energy intensive sectors using a global economy wide model we find that the limit results in different carbon prices between china and europe or the us although the impact on low carbon technologies in china is moderate global emission reductions are deeper than in the absence of international trading due to reduced carbon leakage if china captures the rents associated with limited permit trading we show that it is possible to find a limit threshold that makes both regions better off relative to carbon markets operating in isolation

corruption perceptions vs corruption reality abstract this paper examines the accuracy of corruption perceptions by comparing indonesian villagers reported perceptions about corruption in a road building project in their village with a more objective measure of missing expenditures in the project i find that villagers reported perceptions do contain real information and that villagers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between corruption in a particular road project and general corruption in the village the magnitude of the reported information however is small in part because officials hide corruption where it is hardest for villagers to detect i also find that there are biases in reported perceptions the findings illustrate the limitations of relying solely on corruption perceptions whether in designing anti corruption policies or in conducting empirical research on corruption

social mobility and the demand for redistribution the poum hypothesis this paper examines the often stated idea that the poor do not support high levels of redistribution because of the hope that they or their offspring may make it up the income ladder this prospect of upward mobility poum hypothesis is shown to be fully compatible with rational expectations and fundamentally linked to concavity in the mobility process a steady state majority could even be simultaneously poorer than average in terms of current income and richer than average in terms of expected future incomes a e rst empirical assessment suggests on the other hand that in recent u s data the poum effect is probably dominated by the demand for social insurance in the future everyone will be world famous for e fteen minutes andy warhol 1968

the role of information and social interactions in retirement plan decisions evidence from a randomized experiment this paper analyzes a randomized experiment to shed light on the role of information and social interactions in employees decisions to enroll in a tax deferred account tda retirement plan within a large university the experiment encouraged a random sample of employees in a subset of departments to attend a benee ts information fair organized by the university by promising a monetary reward for attendance the experiment multiplied by more than e ve the attendance rate of these treated individuals relative to controls and tripled that of untreated individuals within departments where some individuals were treated tda enrollment e ve and eleven months after the fair was signie cantly higher in departments where some individuals were treated than in departments where nobody was treated however the effect on tda enrollment is almost as large for individuals in treated departments who did not receive the encouragement as for those who did we provide three interpretations differential treatment effects social network effects and motivational reward effects to account for these results

educational inequality and public policy preferences evidence from representative survey experiments abstract to study how information about educational inequality affects public concerns and policy preferences we devise survey experiments in representative samples of the german population providing information about the extent of educational inequality strongly increases concerns about educational inequality it also affects support for equity oriented education policies which have high baseline support although effects are quantitatively small on average however instrumental variable estimates suggest substantial effects of concerns on policy preferences among the compliers whose concerns are shifted by the information treatment there are substantial effects on support for compulsory preschool which increases further if respondents are informed about policy effectiveness

carbon dioxide co2 emissions during urbanization a comparative study between china and japan as the world s largest emitter of co2 china is facing increasing domestic and international pressures on emissions mitigation considering japan s leading position in energy conservation this paper conducts a comparative study between china and japan at the urbanization stages to analyze the similarities as well as differences of influencing factors of co2 emissions results indicate that although co2 emissions in japan and china showed the similar characteristics of rigid growth during the urbanization processes significant differences exist in factors such as co2 emissions per capita energy structure and energy intensity between the two countries which are the determinants for co2 emissions growth a cointegration model is constructed to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between co2 emissions and factors including gdp urbanization level energy intensity and cement manufacture empirical results show that there is a quadratic relationship between income growth and co2 emissions granger causality test is then adopted to explore the causal relationships among the variables the future co2 emissions and emission reduction potentials in china are estimated based on scenario analysis finally japan s valuable experience of reducing energy intensity and optimizing energy structure is concluded to provide important policy implications for china s strategic low carbon planning and low carbon transition

matching with contracts we develop a model of matching with contracts which incorporates as special cases the college admissions problem the kelso crawford labor market matching model and ascending package auctions we introduce a new law of aggregate demand for the case of discrete heterogeneous workers and show that when workers are substitutes this law is satisfied by profit maximizing firms when workers are substitutes and the law is satisfied truthful reporting is a dominant strategy for workers in a worker offering auction matching algorithm we also parameterize a large class of preferences satisfying the two conditions

decoupling co2 emission and economic growth in china is there consistency in estimation results in analyzing environmental kuznets curve china is one of the highest growth economies in the world and it has experienced a significant rise in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in recent decades its economic growth heavily depends on fossil fuels of coal and oil which led to huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions this study logically analyzes the nexus of co2 emissions economic growth and energy consumption by decoupling greenhouse gas emission of co2 and economic growth to provide more conclusive evidence on the phenomenon of the environmental kuznets curve ekc over the period 1970 2015 to achieve the objective of consistency in the estimation results the study applies different estimation techniques such as ardl auto regressive distributed lag model fmols fully modified ordinary least squares dols dynamic ordinary least squares and impulse response and variance decomposition in addition the business as usual inverted u shaped relationship between gdp per capita and an economy related co2 emission is hypothesized the result supports the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis from different techniques the turning point hovers around 744665 the estimation result indicates that china ekc turning point shows some inconsistencies when compared to other turning points obtained from different studies the inconsistency of the ekc turning point is attributed to the sensitivity of the result to different data source variables selection different pollutants and scope of the data although the ekc turning point of this present research differs from other china ekc turning points it gives a clear policy roadmap on the pursuance of long run economic growth in favour of environmental quality besides significance of the turning point lies with the need to explore other structural policies such as articulated demographic and energy policies rather than passively waiting for the arrival of the inflexion point one interesting findings of the analysis is the consistency of the estimation results from the different estimation techniques

preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities this paper explores how individual preferences for redistribution depend on future income prospects in addition to estimating the impact of individuals socioeconomic background and of their subjective perceptions of future mobility we employ panel data to construct dobjectivet measures of expected gains and losses from redistribution for different categories of individuals we find that such measures have considerable explanatory power and perform better than dgeneral mobilityt indexes we also find that preferences for redistribution respond to individual beliefs on what determines one s position in the social ladder ceteris paribus people who believe that the american society offers equal opportunities are more averse to redistribution d 2004 published by elsevier b v

sympathy for the diligent and the demand for workfare abstract we study the role of fairness concerns in the demand for redistribution through workfare in the first part of the paper we present new evidence from a survey we show that individuals are more generous towards poor people whom they perceive to be diligent workers relative to poor people whom they perceive to be non diligent a social preference that we label sympathy for the diligent this preference is much stronger than preferences regarding other characteristics of the poor such as race nationality and disability more important we show that subjects with higher sympathy for the diligent have a stronger preference for workfare programs in the second part of the paper we incorporate our empirical findings into a model of income redistribution we consider the case of a benevolent government with fairness concerns that prioritizes the well being of individuals who exert the most effort we characterize the optimal conditions under which the government introduces work requirements even if wasteful work requirements can be optimal because they allow for a better distinction between individuals who exert great effort and individuals who do not however if the government lacks commitment power the availability of screening through work requirements leads to a lower equilibrium effort and possibly a pareto dominated allocation

inequality and happiness in recent years there has been an accumulation of empirical evidence suggesting that individuals dislike inequality alesina and giuliano 2011 and dawes et al 2007 the literature has built upon estimating the degree of this dislike as well as its causes the use of self reported measures of satisfaction or well being as a proxy for utility has been one of the empirical strategies used to this end in this survey we review the papers that estimate or examine the relationship between inequality and self reported happiness to conclude that inequality correlates negatively with happiness in western societies some of the surveyed papers identify particular sources of heterogeneity on preferences over inequality the evidence for non western societies is more mixed and less reliable notwithstanding that trust in the institutions seems to play an important role in shaping the relationship between income inequality and subjective wellbeing we conclude with suggestions for further research

energy demand in greece abstract this paper examines the impact of the two energy crises 1973 74 and 1978 79 on energy demand in greece initially some specific characteristics of energy consumption patterns before and after 1973 are presented and compared then demand parameters for hydroelectric energy liquid fuels and solid fuels were estimated using data for the period 1963 1984 and alternative econometric methods ols 2sls fiml to ensure that estimates do not vary across different estimation methods appropriate tests were used to examine whether a structural change in energy demand has occured following either of the two crises the results indicate that while consumption patterns may be different due to price and income changes after the crises the parameters of energy demand in greece have remained unchanged

social preferences self interest and the demand for redistribution preferences for redistribution may be influenced by values and beliefs about distributive justice as well as by self interest people may prefer more redistribution to the poor if they believe that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond individual control therefore beliefs about the causes of income may affect demand for redistribution alternatively the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences may be spurious if they are correlated with income and self interest is not properly controlled for they may also measure incentive cost concerns using social survey data i find that self interest cannot explain the effect of these beliefs on redistributive preferences 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

attitudes toward highly skilled and low skilled immigration evidence from a survey experiment past research has emphasized two critical economic concerns that appear to generate anti immigrant sentiment among native citizens concerns about labor market competition and concerns about the fiscal burden on public services we provide direct tests of both models of attitude formation using an original survey experiment embedded in a nationwide u s survey the labor market competition model predicts that natives will be most opposed to immigrants who have skill levels similar to their own we find instead that both low skilled and highly skilled natives strongly prefer highly skilled immigrants over low skilled immigrants and this preference is not decreasing in natives skill levels the fiscal burden model anticipates that rich natives oppose low skilled immigration more than poor natives and that this gap is larger in states with greater fiscal exposure in terms of immigrant access to public services we find instead that rich and poor natives are equally opposed to low skilled immigration in general in states with high fiscal exposure poor rich natives are more less opposed to low skilled immigration than they are elsewhere this indicates that concerns among poor natives about constraints on welfare benefits as a result of immigration are more relevant than concerns among the rich about increased taxes overall the results suggest that economic self interest at least as currently theorized does not explain voter attitudes toward immigration the results are consistent with alternative arguments emphasizing noneconomic concerns associated with ethnocentrism or sociotropic considerations about how the local economy as a whole may be affected by immigration

how information affects support for education spending evidence from survey experiments in germany and the united states to study whether current spending levels and public knowledge of them contribute to transatlantic differences in policy preferences we implement parallel survey experiments in germany and the united states in both countries support for increased education spending and teacher salaries falls when respondents receive information about existing levels treatment effects vary by prior knowledge in a manner consistent with information effects rather than priming support for salary increases is inversely related to salary levels across american states suggesting that higher salaries could explain much of germans lower support for increases information about the tradeoffs between specific spending categories shifts preferences from class size reduction towards alternative purposes additional german experiments indicate that information effects extend to specific reform proposals and to other areas of public spending

quantifying regional economic impacts of co2 intensity targets in china we acknowledge the support of the ministry of science and technology of china through the institute for energy environment and economy at tsinghua university and the support from graduate school of tsinghua university which is supporting zhang da s doctoral research as a 22 visiting scholar at the massachusetts institute of technology we are also grateful for the support provided by rio tinto china and social science key research program from national social science foundation china of grant no 09 zd029 we further acknowledge the support of eni s p a icf international and shell founding sponsors of the china energy and climate project for supporting this model development work we would further like to thank dr john reilly dr sergey paltsev dr kyung min nam dr henry chen paul kishimoto and tianyu qi at joint program on the science and policy of global change and participants in the annual meeting of china energy and climate project and ecomod 2012 conference for helpful comments and discussion 23

measurement of income inequality experimental test by questionnaire abstract we reconsider some of the basic assumptions of the literature on inequality analysis students views on the meaning of inequality comparisons were elicited by means of a questionnaire involving both numerical and verbal questions the responses suggest that two important axioms the principle of transfers and decomposability are not universally accepted

personal experiences and expectations about aggregate outcomes using novel survey data we document that individuals extrapolate from recent personal experiences when forming expectations about aggregate economic outcomes recent locally experienced house price movements affect expectations about future u s house price changes and higher experienced house price volatility causes respondents to report a wider distribution over expected u s house price movements when we exploit within individual variation in employment status we find that individuals who personally experience unemployment become more pessimistic about future nationwide unemployment the extent of extrapolation is unrelated to how informative personal experiences are is inconsistent with risk adjustment and is more pronounced for less sophisticated individuals