future biodiesel policy designs and consumption patterns in latvia a system dynamics model abstract decarbonisation of transport has become central to european union policy biofuels are expected to represent a substantial part of the overall strategy towards diversifying europe s energy supplies and curbing greenhouse gas emissions in a cost effective way this research deals with the dynamic simulation modeling of a biodiesel market as a part of transportation fuel market and analyses of various policy support instruments on increasing the proportion of biofuel in total transport fuel demand the study is carried out for latvia s road transport sector after it had experienced generous financial support from the government allowing the industry to develop support was abruptly stopped creating stagnation in both biodiesel supply and demand this threatened the national transport policy goals the goal of this research is to find the most effective policy strategies for achieving the national transport policy goals by applying system dynamics modeling to the current market conditions of transport fuels specifically the primary focus of this paper is an attempt to gain insight into the long term dynamic behavior of the biodiesel market in latvia the principal policy tools and mechanisms implemented can be summarized as i state subsidies at different levels and stages i e the biodiesel production sector the agricultural sector and the end consumer sectors ii increasing the excise taxes on fossil fuels iii increasing the share of the biodiesel in the transportation fuel blend the results obtained from model simulations confirm that promoting biofuel acceptance among end users is the primary key issue

the interdependence of european russian energy relations abstract the aim of this article is to explore this dynamic interdependent relationship between russia and europe in the field of energy based on the concept of interdependence and perspectives on the political aspects of trade relations we discuss how russia can exercise power based on its energy resources and how the eu can compensate for its lack of power in the energy game with other trade related capabilities in particular we explore the implications of the lack of a full fledged eu foreign energy policy towards russia with the somewhat counter intuitive conclusion that the eu countries on average not necessarily are better off with a common foreign energy policy

crime and poverty a search theoretic approach numerous studies document that criminal activity is positively related to unemployment and negatively related to educational attainment levels within given communities we study this phenomenon in the context of a search equilibrium model in which agents choose between formal employment and pursuing crimerelated activities theft prior to their occupational choices agents undertake costly schooling raising their productivity crime acts in essence as a tax on human capital by affecting the probability that a worker s earnings possessions are subsequently appropriated there are multiple equilibria high crime low levels of educational attainment long spells of unemployment and poverty are correlated across them

the effect of taxes on labor supply in the underground economy this paper uses micro data from a randomized survey carried out in the metropolitan area of quebec city canada to analyze the decision to evade taxes and work in the underground economy the results indicate that taxes distort labor market activities away from the regular sector to the underground sector but the distortion is small for the average worker the distortion is large however for particular groups of the population such as welfare claimants copyright 1994 by american economic association

education work and crime a human capital approach this article develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work and expected costs associated with incarceration older more intelligent and more educated adults should commit fewer street unskilled crimes white collar crimes decline less or increase with age and education predictions for age crime and education crime relationships receive broad empirical support in self report data from the national longitudinal survey of youth and arrest data from the uniform crime reports the effects of education training and wage subsidies as well as enforcement policies on criminal behavior are discussed

crime rates and local labor market opportunities in the united states 1979 1997 the labor market prospects of young unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s crime rates show a reverse pattern increasing during the 1980s and falling in the 1990s because young unskilled men commit most crime this paper seeks to establish a causal relationship between the two trends previous work on the relationship between labor markets and crime focused mainly on the relationship between the unemployment rate and crime and found inconclusive results in contrast this paper examines the impact of both wages and unemployment on crime and uses instrumental variables to establish causality we conclude that both wages and unemployment are significantly related to crime but that wages played a larger role in the crime trends over the last few decades these results are robust to the inclusion of deterrence variables controls for simultaneity and controlling for individual and family characteristics

street crime and street culture a model shows how reputation concerns can support widespread street crime a street culture where the direct incentives for such behavior are weak there are social benefits to street reputations but those benefits are dominated when reputation concerns draw into crime those who obtain no direct gain from it the model matches facts about violent crime that a standard model cannot easily explain including low monetary returns disproportionate victimization of the young and poor and high variance in rates across small distances the model generates novel implications for policy and social science including a negative effect of social capital

an on the job search model of crime inequality and unemployment we extend simple search models of crime unemployment and inequality to incorporate on the job search this is valuable because although simple models are useful on the job search models are more interesting theoretically and more relevant empirically we characterize the wage distribution unemployment rate and crime rate theoretically and use quantitative methods to illustrate key results for example we find that increasing the unemployment insurance replacement rate from 53 to 65 percent increases unemployment and crime rates from 10 and 2 7 percent to 14 and 5 2 percent we show multiple equilibria arise for some fairly reasonable parameters in one case unemployment can be 6 or 23 percent and crime 0 or 10 percent depending on the equilibrium

interdependent international relations and the expansion of ethanol production and consumption the brazilian perspective abstract the global production and consumption of ethanol are expected to increase the growing interdependence of markets and nations producers and consumers of biofuels has led actors to seek and devise mechanisms intended to develop the sector this paper aims to analyze the interdependent international relations between brazil and other ethanol biofuel producer and consumer countries to do so the paper explores the theory of complex interdependence and the game theory a quali quantitative study was conducted involving the application of two questionnaires to experts on biofuels and documentary analysis aided by qda miner software the results show that brazil shares highly interdependent relations with the united states an intermediate degree of interdependence with europe and a low degree of interdependence with china the dimensions of those interdependent relations can be ranked according to importance in the following order first the political then the economic technical and finally the social environmental dimensions a number of actions can be envisaged that could lead ethanol to achieve an increasingly strategic position in the diversification of the energy matrix in different countries technological efforts to improve production efficiency the creation of globally integrated policies designed to provide security and develop the production and consumption infrastructure the reduction of international tariffs on the product and the transformation of ethanol into a global commodity with a large number of countries buying and selling the product this paper faced the challenge of integrating approaches and concepts from two complex theoretical areas complex interdependence theory and game theory the research methodology and the insights gained from the ethanol case contribute to the literature on the applicability of these two theoretical approaches

education and crime over the life cycle we compare two large scale policy interventions aimed at reducing crime subsidizing high school completion and increasing the length of prison sentences to this purpose we use a life cycle model with endogenous education and crime choices we apply the model to property crime and calibrate it to u s data we find that targeting crime reductions through increases in high school graduation rates entails large efficiency and welfare gains these gains are absent if the same crime reduction is achieved by increasing the length of sentences we also find that general equilibrium effects explain roughly one half of the reduction in crime from subsidizing high school

employment deterrence and crime in a dynamic model using maximum likelihood techniques and monthly panel data we solve and estimate an explicitly dynamic model of criminal behavior where current criminal activity impacts future labor market outcomes we show that the threat of future adverse effects in the labor market when arrested acts as a strong deterrent to crime moreover such forward looking behavior is estimated to be important hence policies that weaken this deterrence will be much less effective in fighting crime this suggests that prevention is more powerful than redemption since anticipated redemption allows criminals to look forward to negating the consequences of their crimes

brazilian biofuels and social exclusion established and concentrated ethanol versus emerging and dispersed biodiesel increasing interest in biofuels trade between developed and developing countries has spurred worldwide discussions on issues such as subsidies and the food for fuel crisis one issue missing in recent discourse is the pressure exerted on developing countries to adopt large scale mechanized farming practices to increase economic efficiencies such approaches often exclude small scale farmers from participating in the emerging biofuels market thus exacerbating poverty and social exclusion drawing on both qualitative and technical data we discuss such pressures using brazilian ethanol and biodiesel production pressure from international markets to become more economically efficient may contribute towards the erosion of recent schemes to encourage social benefits for small farmers in biodiesel production we conclude with trade and policy implications

development of the wind power in brazil political social and technical issues abstract this paper aims to present a review of the increasing contribution of wind power to the brazilian electric matrix and an analysis of the main impact on technical political and social aspects this work takes into account the state of art of the wind power technology the wind resource potential and the evolution of installed capacity in the country the institutional programs and the fiscal incentives provided by the brazilian government are also discussed in this paper including its impacts on the society we have reviewed national and international reports and relevant scientific papers to realize this work the analysis shows that electric crisis in 2001 led the brazilian government to develop new energy policies that supported the rapid growth of the wind industry from imported technology later on in the year 2004 the government mandated that the technology be developed within the country it is expected that from 2011 of approximately 1500 mw until 2021 the installed wind capacity would increase by a factor of 600 however the national technology acquisition and development is still incipient it is important to produce locally wind turbine components and is highly desirable to increase collaboration between industries and universities in the country

game theoretic analysis of competitive agri biomass supply chain abstract this research aims to explore the optimal strategies for managing competitive agri biomass supply chain first a game model of a supply chain consisting of one supplier and two buyers is used to develop the optimal strategies for the supplier and buyers as well as the total equilibrium profit then the industrial coexistence conditions are analyzed and the effects of the model parameters on game equilibrium are evaluated finally the methodology is illustrated with a case study in china

analysis of energy embodied in the international trade of uk interest in the role embodied energy plays in international trade and its subsequent impact on energy security has grown as a developed nation the uk s economic structure has changed from that of a primary producer to that of a primary consumer although the uk s energy consumption appears to have peaked it imports a lot of energy embodied in international trade alongside the more obvious direct energy imports the uk has seen increasing dependency on imported fossil energy since the uk became a net energy importer in 2005 in this paper an energy input output model is established to calculate not only the amount of fossil energy embodied in uk s imports and exports but also the sector and country distributions of those embodied fossil energy the research results suggest the following uk s embodied fossil energy imports have exceeded embodied fossil energy exports every year since 1997 uk embodied energy imports through the so called made in china phenomena are the largest accounting for 43 of total net fossil energy imports if net embodied fossil energy imports are considered the gap between energy consumption and production in uk is much larger than commonly perceived with subsequent implications to the uk s energy security

what accounts for the decline in crime in this article we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the united states we propose a dynamic equilibrium model that guides our quantitative investigation of the major determinants of observed patterns of crime our main findings can be summarized as follows first the model is capable of reproducing the drop in crime between 1980 and 1996 second the most important factors that account for the observed decline in property crime are the higher apprehension probability the stronger economy and the aging of the population third the effect of unemployment on crime is negligible fourth the increased inequality prevented an even larger decline in crime overall our analysis can account for the behavior of the time series of property crime rates over the past quarter century

incarceration length employment and earnings this paper estimates effects of increases in incarceration length on employment and earnings prospects of individuals after their release from prison i utilize a variety of research designs including controlling for observable factors and using instrumental variables for incarceration length based on randomly assigned judges with different sentencing propensities the results show no consistent evidence of adverse labor market consequences of longer incarceration length using any of the analytical methods in either the state system in florida or the federal system in california

import demand for brazilian ethanol a cross country analysis abstract this study presents an empirical analysis of the import demand for brazilian ethanol by its six major foreign buyers the primary objectives of this study were to identify the economic factors affecting the demand for ethanol imports and to derive long run price and income elasticities of import demand these elasticities could be used to analyze the impact of government policies such as mandatory gasoline ethanol blends and import tariffs import demand models were estimated with ordinary least squares ols using quarterly time series data for the 1997 2007 time period the results suggest that the factors influencing the import demand for ethanol vary across countries markets adopting mandatory blends of renewable fuels tend to have less price elastic import demand schedules ethanol imports were found to be price elastic and statistically significant in the caribbean region 1 66 mexico 2 08 japan 1 44 and nigeria 1 38 while import demand was price inelastic and not statistically different from zero in the us 0 76 and europe 0 21 the regression results could not determine the impacts of import tariffs for the united states mexico and nigeria on the quantity of imports because tariffs did not vary during the time period studied results show that mandatory gasoline ethanol blends have been an important determinant of ethanol imports

individual morality and reputation costs as deterrents to tax evasion abstract empirical evidence suggests some taxpayers never evade evasion increases with the tax rate and evasion decisions are interdependent these findings are not easily explained by the existing theory which models evasion as an independently made amoral gamble this paper uses nonpecuniary costs of evasion to reconcile theory with evidence once individuals are assumed to differ by an honesty characteristic taxpayers dichotomise into groups the more honest of which responds to a tax change as the evidence suggests a further extension is to introduce an endogenous reputation cost this suggests a positive relationship between the number of evaders and the tax rate

juvenile incarceration human capital and future crime evidence from randomly assigned judges over 130 000 juveniles are detained in the united states each year with 70 000 in detention on any given day yet little is known about whether such a penalty deters future crime or interrupts social and human capital formation in a way that increases the likelihood of later criminal behavior this article uses the incarceration tendency of randomly assigned judges as an instrumental variable to estimate causal effects of juvenile incarceration on high school completion and adult recidivism estimates based on over 35 000 juvenile offenders over a 10 year period from a large urban county in the united states suggest that juvenile incarceration results in substantially lower high school completion rates and higher adult incarceration rates including for violent crimes in an attempt to understand the large effects we found that incarceration for this population could be very disruptive greatly reducing the likelihood of ever returning to school and for those who do return significantly increasing the likelihood of being classified as having an emotional or behavioral disorder jel codes k140 i210

social construction and physical nihilation of the keystone xl pipeline lessons from international relations theory abstract if a prime goal of energy policy is to achieve energy security why is there a controversy over the proposed keystone xl pipeline designed to deliver new supplies of oil from within north america this viewpoint seeks answers in the debate over the underlying purposes of energy policy how does one answers the question what do we want from energy policy perceptions of feasible answers and policy options change over time as witnessed in the 1970s analogous shifts in opinion are changing today s policy debates and widening the contradictions in policy purposes attention to the existence of these contradictions without illusions is necessary to meet the policy challenges of the future effectively

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

ban the box convictions and public employment ban the box btb policies mandate deferred access to criminal history until later in the hiring process however these policies chiefly target public employers the study is the first to focus on the primary goal of btb reform by measuring the impact of btb policies on the probability of public employment for those with convictions to execute the analyses the study uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1997 cohort 2005 2015 and difference in difference dd estimation the study finds that btb policies raise the probability of public employment for those with convictions by about 30 on average some scholars argue that btb policies encourage statistical discrimination against young low skilled minority males the study employs triple difference ddd estimation to test for statistical discrimination but uncovers no evidence to support the hypothesis jel j15 j71 j78 k4

tax evasion with labour income allingham and sandmo s 1972 classic paper on tax evasion set out a simple framework for looking at the effects of regular tax parameters and of the structure of penalties on the amount of tax dodging carried out by a tax evader subsequent papers have enriched the basic model of individual behaviour and have attempted to adduce some empirical evidence 2 but with few exceptions the essential nature of the assumed underlying problem has remained the same how much income shall i reveal to the authorities in the face of the known penalties and the known possibility of getting caught whilst this approach is useful for some types of tax evasion by individuals it is clearly inappropriate for others such as the phenomenon of working off the books rather than concealing a portion of a uniform lump of income that is undistinguished as to its source the person cheats the government by taking one or more different jobs either in addition to or as a replacement for his regular employment the income from which is administratively difficult to tax this paper examines the implications of the possible diversity of form of the tax evasion problem for the analysis of the fundamental questions which allingham and sandmo addressed the effect of government instruments on the incentives to participate in legal and illegal work activities to do this we must concentrate on one major development of the original model namely that where income is endogenous in effect we construct a particular version of the analysis of labour supply under uncertainty within which to

structural models of family labor supply a discrete choice approach a static neoclassical structural model is presented explaining labor supply of both spouses in two adult households in the netherlands family preferences are described with a direct translog utility function with the husbands leisure the wifes leisure and family income as its arguments we assume that the choice set of each family is finite account is taken of the dutch tax and benefits system we allow for hours restrictions and random preferences and account for unobserved wages of nonworkers the models are estimated using smooth simulated maximum likelihood results based upon dutch cross section data from 1987 are illustrated by confidence intervals for elasticities and by several policy simulations excerpt

how unregulated is the u s labor market the penal system as a labor market institution1 comparative research contrasts the corporatist welfare states of europe with the unregulated u s labor market to explain low rates of u s unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s in contrast this article argues that the u s state made a large and coercive intervention into the labor market through the expansion of the penal system the impact of incarceration on unemployment has two conflicting dynamics in the short run u s incarceration lowers conventional unemployment measures by removing able bodied working age men from labor force counts in the long run social survey data show that incarceration raises unemployment by reducing the job prospects of ex convicts strong u s employment performance in the 1980s and 1990s has thus depended in part on a high and increasing incarceration rate

the effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of young men many young men commit crime and many are arrested i estimate the effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of arrestees using a large longitudinal data set constructed by merging police records with ui earnings data i find that the effects of arrests are moderate in magnitude and rather short lived

the use of criminal record in employment decisions the rights of ex offenders employers and the public the evidence suggests that employers discriminate against ex offenders in the labour market the problem is potentially serious as it involves a substantial proportion of the population especially the male population since research has shown that most people with prior convictions stop offending by their late 20s or early 30s the validity of selection based on criminal record remains questionable this paper examines the need for legal protection of ex offenders by limiting employers access to and use of information on criminal background the rights and interests of the various parties involved employers ex offenders and the general public are discussed approaches to the legal protection of ex offenders in australia are reviewed and legislative changes proposed

an economic analysis of the age crime profile abstract the age crime profile is one of the most established and prominent empirical regularities in social science this paper formulates an economic dynamic model of illegal behavior to explain the age crime profile the model offers a new interpretation of the age crime profile that is entirely different from the prevailing one in the literature the implications of the model are testable and are consistent with the empirical evidence examined in the paper the analysis shows that intertemporal criminal decisions can be modeled as a dynamic consumption investment problem

the transition from school to jail youth crime and high school completion among black males abstract in this paper we study the relationship among schooling youth employment and youth crime the framework a multinomial discrete choice vector autoregression provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interactions among a youth s schooling work and crime decisions and arrest and incarceration outcomes we allow for observable initial conditions unobserved heterogeneity measurement error and missing data we use data from the nlsy97 on black male youths starting from age 14 the estimates indicate important roles both for heterogeneity in initial conditions and for stochastic events that arise during one s youth in determining outcomes as young adults

structural estimation of a becker ehrlich equilibrium model of crime allocating police across cities to reduce crime we develop a model of crime in which the number of police the crime rate the arrest rate the employment rate and the wage rate are joint outcomes of a subgame perfect nash equilibrium the local government chooses the size of its police force and citizens choose among work home and crime alternatives we estimate the model using metropolitan statistical area msa level data we use the estimated model to examine the effects on crime of targeted federal transfers to local governments to increase police we find that knowledge about unobserved msa specific attributes is critical for the optimal allocation of police across msa s

feedstock diversification for biodiesel production in brazil using the policy analysis matrix pam to evaluate the impact of the pnpb and the economic competitiveness of alternative oilseeds abstract while biodiesel feedstock diversification is a main objective of the brazilian national program for the production and use of biodiesel pnpb in portuguese its achievement has remained elusive and biodiesel is predominantly produced from soybean 75 this research uses the policy analysis matrix pam approach to evaluate the pnpb effects and compare the economic efficiency and the competitiveness of biodiesel from three oilseeds soybean rapeseed and sunflower in contrast to papers that present results of experimental biodiesel production initiatives this paper explores the case of representative production chains best available technology and management practices the findings indicate that biodiesel production is competitive from the three oilseeds but the profitability of biodiesel from the soybean is notably higher the tax breaks and subsidies provided by the pnpb have a positive impact on the profitability of biodiesel production chains 7 43 for soybean 3 88 for rapeseed 5 53 for sunflower these results are encouraging and suggest two actions i to review the incentive policies tax reduction and payments to farmers of the different crops pay for oil content instead of crop yield and ii to invest in organizational and managerial approaches in the alternative oilseed agricultural systems to improve their technical and economic efficiency

individual perceptions of the criminal justice system this paper empirically examines belief updating of the perceived probability of arrest and its criminal deterrence effects using two longitudinal data sources while beliefs about the probability of arrest are positively correlated with local official arrest rates they are unresponsive to information acquired from random individuals and local neighborhood conditions importantly perceptions respond to changes in an individual s criminal and arrest history young males who engage in crime without getting arrested revise their perceived probability of arrest downward while those who are arrested revise their probability upward estimates suggest that beliefs about the probability of arrest significantly deter crime jel k42

the demand for ethanol as a gasoline substitute abstract this paper estimates household preferences for ethanol e85 as a gasoline e10 substitute i develop a theoretical model linking the shape of the ethanol demand curve to the underlying distribution among households of willingness to pay for ethanol i estimate the model using instrumental variables techniques and data from many retail fueling stations i find that a 0 10 per gallon increase in ethanol s price relative to gasoline leads to a 12 16 decrease in the quantity of ethanol demanded my findings imply that preferences for ethanol are heterogeneous and that a substantial fraction of households are willing to pay a premium for the fuel this reduces substantially the simulated efficiency cost of an ethanol content standard since some households choose ethanol without large subsidies mitigating deadweight losses

the effect of employment frictions on crime this article provides estimates on how long it takes for released inmates to find a job and when they find a job how less likely they are to be incarcerated an on the job search model with crime is used to model criminal behavior derive the estimation method and analyze policies including a job placement program the results show that the unemployed are incarcerated twice as fast as the employed and take on average 6 months to find a job the article demonstrates that reducing the average unemployment spell of previously incarcerated criminals by 3 months reduces crime and recidivism by more than 5

a game theory framework for cooperative management of refillable and disposable bottle lifecycles abstract firms engaged in industrial ecology hope to reduce environmental impacts and costs improve resource efficiency and create symbiotic relationships that reduce transaction costs and enhance information flow however current lca tools do not explain firms incentives to implement the principles of industrial ecology or how an individual or firm can affect the products and processes at other firms game theory on the other hand allows investigation of the willingness of producers and consumers to seek strategies that promote the common interest of the system while not harming their own interests this paper applies game theory to the lifecycle of bottle packaging and presents a framework for analysis of the choice between refillable and disposable bottles although refillable bottles may be more cost effective in the long run bottlers only have incentive to use refillable bottles when they are sure that consumer return rates will be reasonably high it has been found that consumers who keep or dispose of refillable bottles or respond to deposit refund return incentives by reducing their demand may drive costs up and encourage adoption of disposables a simple model is provided which finds the optimal bottler strategy as a function of the bottler s expectations for consumer cooperation

criminal deterrence revisiting the issue with a birth cohort we estimate the general deterrent effect of criminal justice resources on criminal behavior using panel data for a sample representative of young men in u s urban areas our data which combine individual level information on arrests and personal characteristics with aggregate information on criminal justice resources allow us to obtain deterrence measures that reflect theoretical concepts and are of potential policy relevance we find robust evidence of a general deterrent effect flowing from criminal justice particularly police resources the nature of our data also allows us to conduct extensive exogeneity tests and to explore a number of possible third causes for the deterrent effect we find strong evidence that our deterrence variables are exogenous and no evidence that our deterrence result stems from commonly hypothesized third causes copyright 1994 by mit press

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

utility based estimation of labour supply functions in the regular and irregular sectors recent theoretical work on labor supply has shown that the tax and transfer system can induce some individuals to work in the irregular labor market models designed to represent such behavior are unable to sign unambiguously the impact of the marginal tax rate as well as many key exogenous parameters on the hours supplied in the irregular market except under strong restrictions on preferences in this paper the authors estimate a simultaneous labor supply model that allows testing some of the more common assumptions found in the literature using a unique data set on the underground economy of the metropolitan area of quebec city canada estimates of elasticities with respect to predetermined variables are presented moreover they test and empirically reject the assumptions of perfect substitution between regular and irregular work activities as well as additive separability of the utility function copyright 1992 by royal economic society

crime rates and labor market opportunities in the philippines 1970 2008 abstract the paper estimates the impact of labor market variables on crime in the philippines using national level time series and regional level panel data the evidence suggests that wage rate and labor force participation rate have stronger effect on crime than criminal deterrence variables

market wages and youth crime to study the problem of widespread youth crime i analyze a timeallocation model in which consumers face parametric wages and diminishing marginal returns to crime the theory motivates an econometric model that i estimate using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth my estimates suggest that youth behavior is responsive to price incentives and that falling real wages may have been an important determinant of rising youth crime during the 1970s and 1980s moreover wage differentials explain a substantial component of both the racial differential in criminal participation and the age distribution of crime

neorealism and neoliberalism the classic dialectic between realist and liberal theories of international politics as expressed by robert o keohane ed in neorealism and its critics and richard rosecrance the rise of the trading state can be transcended neither paradigm singularly explains international behavior realism is the dominant approach but liberal theories of transnationalism and interdependence help to illuminate how national interests are learned and changed keohane and fellow critics argue that neorealism articulated definitively in kenneth waltz s theory of international politics 1979 elegantly systematizes realism but concentrates on international system structure at the expense of system process focused tightly on the concept of bipolarity waltz s theory tends toward stasis the unit state level unproductively becomes an analytical dumping ground as a neoliberal counterpoint rosecrance s argument does not go far enough in the tradition of commercial liberalism he argues that an open trading system offers states maneuverability through economic growth rather than through military conquest he tempers his argument with realist considerations of prudence but fails to clarify realist liberal links in his theory or to explore fully the connections between power and non power incentives influencing states behavior a synthesis of neorealism and neoliberalism is warranted a systemic theory using the former to analyze at the level of structure the latter more often at the level of process

the effect of education on crime evidence from prison inmates arrests and self reports we estimate the effect of high school graduation on participation in criminal activity accounting for endogeneity of schooling we begin by analyzing the effect of high school graduation on incarceration using census data instrumental variable estimates using changes in state compulsory attendance laws as an instrument for high school graduation uncover a significant reduction in incarceration for both blacks and whites when estimating the impact of high school graduation only ols and iv estimators estimate different weighted sums of the impact of each schooling progression on the probability of incarceration we clarify the relationship between ols and iv estimates and show that the weights placed on the impact of each schooling progression can explain differences in the estimates overall the estimates suggest that completing high school reduces the probability of incarceration by about 76 percentage points for whites and 3 4 percentage points for blacks we corroborate these findings using fbi data on arrests that distinguish among different types of crimes the biggest impacts of graduation are associated with murder assault and motor vehicle theft we also examine the effect of drop out on self reported crime in the nlsy and find that our estimates for imprisonment and arrest are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not educational differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime we estimate that the externality of education is about 14 26 of the private return to schooling suggesting that a significant part of the social return to education comes in the form of externalities from crime reduction

crime punishment and the market for offenses crime is a subject of intense emotions conflicting ideologies however economists have generally explained it as a reflection of individual choice and equilibrating market forces two major themes of the literature are outlined the evolution of a market model to explain the diversity of crime across time and space and the debate about the usefulness of positive versus negative incentives systematic analyses generally indicate that crime is affected on the margin by both positive and negative incentives there are serious limitations to the effectiveness of incapacitation and rehabilitation and optimal enforcement strategies involve trade offs between narrow efficiency and equity considerations

governing biofuels in brazil a comparison of ethanol and biodiesel policies over the last decade brazil has implemented a new and ambitious biofuel program the national program of production and use of biodiesel pnpb when launching this program in 2004 the government stated that it wanted to avoid the same kind of geographical concentration single crop focus dominance of agribusiness and exclusion of family farmers that have occurred with bioethanol production through the proalcool policy since 1975 this paper compares the life histories of the bioethanol and the biodiesel policies of brazil by analyzing their substantive policy content the power and politics of actors that struggle for the design and implementation of the policies and the polity in terms the organization and institutionalization of the policies the paper concludes that both policies have become submerged by and dependent on the polity and politics of primarily the energy and agricultural sectors that operate as the two semi autonomous governance fields this submerging has shaped the substantive contents of biofuels policies and explains why the 2004 biodiesel policy pnpb in spite of its objectives for social inclusion and rural development faces similar problems in implementation as its predecessor the 1975 bioethanol policy proalcool

does incarceration length affect labor market outcomes abstractthis paper studies how longer incarceration spells affect offenders labor market outcomes by using a reform that increased incarceration lengths by approximately 1 month i use detailed register data for offenders who predominantly serve incarceration spells of 1 2 months i analyze the sample for several years prior to and after incarceration and show that the reform led to an exogenous increase in incarceration lengths i find that the longer incarceration spells result in lower unemployment rates and higher earnings possibly because marginal increases in short incarceration spells improve conditions and incentives for rehabilitation while the costs of jail related to these outcomes are unaffected i show that the estimates are robust to different econometric specifications and further provide evidence that my results are not driven by changes in macroeconomic conditions

study on labour supply when tax evasion is an option with box cox functional forms and random parameters labour supply when tax evasion is an option is analysed within a discrete choice framework which incorporates random parameters and box cox functional forms using mixed logit models deviates in parameters and in some cases correlation between alternatives in the evasion group are found to be significant the models utilized yield good predictions in terms of labour supply and taxes paid by nonevaders the goodness of fit and quality of prediction is improved by the introduction of correlation between random coefficients

imprisonment and labor market outcomes evidence from a natural experiment because of racially disproportionate imprisonment rates the literature on mass incarceration has focused on the labor market consequence of imprisonment and the implications of those effects for r

sectoral labour supply choice restrictions and functional form this is the authors submitted article version which is the pre peer reviewed version of the article the article changed title in the peer reviewing process from analyzing labor supply behavior with latent job opportunity sets and institutional choice constraints later published as discussion paper no 399 http brage bibsys no ssb handle urn nbn no bibsys brage 21006

tax evasion and occupational choice this paper is concerned with the combined effect of tax compliance and tax audit policy on the occupational choice of individuals and on public policy objectives such as tax revenue total production and social welfare individuals are assumed to have a choice between riskless work and a risky entrepreneurial occupation they are only differentiated according to their attitudes towards risk more risk averse individuals go into the safe occupation and less risk averse people become entrepreneurs tax evasion is only accessible to the latter and therefore its control tends to discourage risk taking whether control of tax evasion is desirable for the economy as a whole depends on the objective function of the government it is shown that tax audit policy has conflicting effects on tax revenue per capita income and social welfare these conflicts are illustrated through a numerical example in this paper the emphasis is placed on the clarity and the simplicity of the presentation so as to argue that even though the tax schedule can hardly be differentiated across individuals tax evasion and its control can be used by policymakers to introduce variability in the individual s tax treatment

security independence and sustainability imprecise language and the manipulation of energy policy in the united states abstract this article examines the impact of imprecise terminology on the energy policymaking process in us focusing on the manipulation of discourse by different political economic interests seeking to sway popular opinion using the 2012 us presidential elections as a backdrop the analysis highlights the cooption of the concepts security independence and sustainability in energy debates by different and often opposing interest groups the article s first section traces the malleability of energy terminology to the vagueness of the term energy itself and notes how qualifying words like security independence and sustainability have been selectively exploited to introduce further ambiguity to an already fungible concept the second section notes that while energy is a critical and complex factor of macroeconomic production its main public visibility comes via a few partially representative numbers like gasoline prices this mismatch of broad social importance and piecemeal public understanding enables organized interests to leverage vague terminology in support of particular policy ideas the third section examines three policymaking tools 1 taxation 2 regulation and 3 technology promotion and compares these administrative instruments ultimately the article concludes that loosely defined terminology inhibits energy policy discussion and stifles meaningful public debate over and action on energy issues

opportunities and barriers for international bioenergy trade recently the international trade of various bioenergy commodities has grown rapidly yet this growth is also hampered by some barriers the aim of this paper is to obtain an overview of what market actors currently perceive as major opportunities and barriers for the development of international bioenergy trade the work focuses on three bioenergy commodities bioethanol biodiesel and wood pellets data were collected through an internet based questionnaire the majority of the 141 respondents had an industrial background geographically two thirds were from mainly western europe with other minor contributions from all other continents results show that import tariffs and the implementation of sustainability certification systems are perceived as potentially major barriers for the trade of bioethanol and biodiesel while logistics are seen mainly as an obstacle for wood pellets development of technical standards was deemed more as an opportunity than a barrier for all commodities most important drivers were high fossil fuel prices and climate change mitigation policies concluding to overcome some of the barriers specific actions will be required by market parties and policy makers import tariffs for biofuels could be reduced or abolished linked to multinational trade agreements and harmonization including provisions on technical standards and sustainability requirements