social security pensions and retirement behavior within the family this paper estimates a structural model of family retirement using us data from the health and retirement study hrs it provides further insight into household retirement decision making and the reasons for interdependence in the retirement decisions of each spouse improvements in hrs data and matched employer provided pension histories allow more precise identification of key parameters governing interdependent behaviour within the household in an earlier study we found that interdependence was due to preferences rather than coordination of retirement incentives in the budget and in particular that it is not a correlation in preferences but the appearance of the spouse s retirement status in the husband s and wife s utility function that is largely responsible for coordination of retirement between spouses we now find that a measure of how much each spouse values being able to spend time in retirement with the other accounts for a good portion of that apparent interdependence for the wife the husband s retirement status influences her retirement decision only if she values spending time in retirement with her husband for husbands the effect of having the wife already retired on his retirement decision is roughly doubled if he enjoys spending time in retirement with his wife but there is some effect even if he does not this is consistent with our earlier findings that the husband is more influenced by having a retired spouse than the wife is the increase in the extent of the dependence of the wife s labour supply on the husband s retirement from our past work probably is traceable to better measurement of the opportunity set facing the husband in hrs data once estimated we use the model to investigate the labour supply effects of alternative social security policies examining the effect of dividing credit for earnings evenly between spouses or of basing social security benefits on the amounts accumulated in private accounts both policies change the relative importance of spouse and survivor social security benefits within the household and both raise the relative reward to work later in the life cycle the incentives created are modest and retirement responds accordingly nevertheless at some ages such as 65 there may be as much as a 6 increase in the old age work force under privatized accounts copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

retirement in dual career families a structural model a structural econometric model of retirement of dual career couples is specified and estimated with panel data from the national longitudinal survey of mature women a coincidence of spouses retiring together despite the younger ages of wives suggests explicit efforts at coordination the estimates suggest that one reason is a correlation of tastes for leisure more important each spouse and perhaps husbands in particular values retirement more once their spouse has retired the opportunity set accounts for peaks in the retirement hazards of each spouse individually but not for peaks in the simultaneous retirement of both spouses

missing culture energy efficiency and lost causes abstract largely to the credit of brookes this journal has over the past few years carried a discussion that challenges the complacency of environmentalists and others over the role that improvements in energy efficiency can play as policy tools designed to mitigate the eco social costs of energy production transmission and consumption in this communication i will briefly review the main arguments in this debate with the intention of highlighting their reliance upon a self limiting set of assumptions that make any informed analysis of the relationship between people and energy technologies highly questionable this is particularly the case in the domestic and transport sectors here only a more culturally sensitive investigation of the possibilities and problems afforded by various technologies and of the public s growing awareness of socio environmental problems can support or counter the arguments raised by brookes and his adversaries

investigating meso economic rebound effects production side effects and feedback loops between the micro and macro level abstract research on the rebound effect has so far mainly considered micro economic rebound effects at the level of consumers and households as well as macro economic rebound effects in the sense of energy efficiency induced economic growth effects this article focuses on an area of rebound research that has not yet received sufficient attention namely on meso economic rebound effects as production side and sector level rebounds the article summarizes and systematizes reasons why companies generate rebounds distinguishes market and sector level rebounds from macro economic growth effects identifies a number of feedback loops by which production side and sector level rebounds multiply or nullify consumer side rebound effects and finally discusses some conclusions on the potential quantitative dimension of production side rebound effects

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

the implications of competition among jurisdictions does tiebout need politics the paper investigates whether compensation among local jurisdiction is by itself sufficient to ensure efficient provision of local public goods jurisdictions have fixed boundaries and each has an entrenched government with the power to tax and supply the public good residents can move costlessly among jurisdictions it is shown that competition among numerous jurisdictions is not sificient to guarantee public sector efficiency though residents can vote with their feet land is immobile hence governments can unsurp some land rents for their own ends increasing the number of jurisdictions limits but cannot completely eliminate the ability to exercise discretionary governmental power

a theory of interregional tax competition a general equilibrium model is constructed to study tax competition where local governments compete for capital by holding down property tax rates and public expenditure levels an exact definition of tax competition is provided and both the existence and nonexistence of tax competition are shown to be theoretically possible it is argued however that tax competition must occur under empirically reasonable conditions inefficiency in public production is also explicitly modeled the amount of capital used to produce a given level of public service output is shown to be greater than that which is required to minimize costs evaluated at the prices facing private firms

retirement effects on health in europe what are the health impacts of retirement as talk of raising retirement ages in pensions and social security schemes continues around the world it is important to know both the costs and benefits for the individual as well as the governments budgets in this paper we use the survey of health ageing and retirement in europe share dataset to address this question in a multi country setting we use country specific early and full retirement ages as instruments for retirement behavior these statutory retirement ages clearly induce retirement but are not related to an individual s health exploiting the discontinuities in retirement behavior across countries we find significant evidence that retirement has a health preserving effect on overall general health our estimates indicate that retirement leads to a 35 percent decrease in the probability of reporting to be in fair bad or very bad health and an almost one standard deviation improvement in the health index while the self reported health seems to be a temporary impact the health index indicates there are long lasting health differences

toward a neoclassical theory of sustainable consumption eight golden age propositions abstract popular trends in ecological economics increasingly consign neoclassical economics to the sidelines of modern day relevancy the neoclassical tradition is often seen as reliant for its authenticity on a presumption of human avarice both unbridled consumerism and corporate cupidity and demanding for its real world applicability an assumption of continuous economic growth in a world of hard limits this article examines the question of whether neoclassical theory could instead provide keys to deeper understanding of sustainable consumption by combining in a single framework neoclassical growth theory general equilibrium theory and duality theory and by explicitly considering leisure time the analysis demonstrates that neoclassical economics yields several useful insights bearing on long term sustainability the analysis confirms several tenets of ecological economics and challenges others eight propositions emerge from this analysis that could help speed the development of a robust neoclassical theory of sustainable consumption here branded golden age propositions as they strongly echo the golden rule discoveries of edmund phelps

international tax competition and the deficit bias i analyze the dynamic effects of tax competition on public budget deficits i find that stronger tax competition leads to a fiscal deficit bias at the early stages of financial liberalization when countries differ in terms of capital mobility further liberalization leads to external imbalances and diverging fiscal deficits while corporate tax rates converge consistent with theory i find that stronger tax competition increases deficits in a sample of oecd countries controlling for tax revenues and other standard determinants of fiscal deficits jel e62 f62

imperfectly mobile households and durable local public goods does the capitalization mechanism work abstract a complication in the decision making of local governments is that a community s residents may move before the future benefits associated with current tax and expenditure policies are fully realized it has been argued that the capitalization of these benefits into current property values can induce local governments to behave efficiently this paper drops two assumptions behind the capitalization hypothesis perfect labor mobility and the absence of uncertainty about the future benefits it is shown that these benefits may be overcapitalized or undercapitalized depending on a critical aspect of the uncertainty consequently there is underinvestment in some projects but overinvestment in others

where should the elderly live and who should pay for their care we consider a model with a population consisting of earners and retired persons elderly care is publicly provided there is one big city where congestion effects and agglomeration forces are at work and a number of small villages we show how the externalities related to population mobility lead to an inefficient spatial distribution of earners and retirees and we characterize the second best solution decentralization of this solution in a fiscal federalism structure requires the use of taxes and subsidies proportional to the number of earners and retired persons living in the city and the villages

the rebound effect on road freight transport empirical evidence from portugal abstract because a large proportion of total operating costs for transportation companies goes towards energy a reduction in energy operating costs brought about by an increase in fleet fuel efficiency or an increase in operational efficiency results in a change in the relative cost of road freight transportation this fact could result in an increase in the demand for such services if this is true the result would be an increase in total fuel consumption consequently that part of the energy savings obtained through the increased energy efficiency would be lost the existence of a rebound effect is especially important in the road freight transportation sector and is crucial for the definition of a national energy policy in this study data from the road freight transportation sector in portugal for the years of 1987 through 2006 was analyzed it was determined that an increase in energy efficiency did not cause a backfire but did cause a total direct rebound effect of 24 1 in addition fleet operators were more inclined to adopt operational efficiencies than technological fuel efficiencies as a means of increasing the total operational efficiency

the macro economic rebound effect and the uk economy abstract this paper examines the macroeconomic rebound effect for the uk economy arising from energy efficiency policies 2000 2010 using the macroeconomic model mdm e3 the literature distinguishes between three types of rebound effect direct indirect and economy wide the macroeconomic rebound effect considered here is the combination of the indirect and economy wide effects policies for the domestic business commercial and public and transport sectors of the economy are analysed for 2000 2010 overall the policies lead to a saving of about 8 of the energy which would otherwise have been used and a reduction in co2 emissions of 10 or 14 mtc by 2010 there are also favourable macroeconomic effects lower inflation and higher growth we find that the macroeconomic rebound effect arising from uk energy efficiency policies for the period 2000 2010 is around 11 by 2010 averaged across sectors of the economy when this is added to the assumed direct rebound effect of around 15 this gives a total rebound effect of around 26 arising from these policies thus the findings of the study support the argument that energy efficiency improvements for both consumers and producers stimulated by policy incentives will lead to significant reductions in energy demand and hence in greenhouse gas emissions

effects of social security policies on benefit claiming retirement and saving abstract an enhanced version of a structural model jointly explains benefit claiming wealth and retirement including reversals from states of lesser to greater work the model is estimated with health and retirement study data alternative beliefs about the future of social security affect claiming behavior effects of three potential policies are also examined increasing the early entitlement age increasing the full retirement age and eliminating the payroll tax for seniors predicted responses to increasing the full entitlement age are sensitive to beliefs

early retirement and economic incentives in norway early retirement programmes have gradually reduced the retirement age from 67 to 62 for a majority of the labour force based on micro data for 1990 and 1992 we estimate a competing risk model with three states full retirement partial retirement part time work and full time work we then use the estimated model in simulations to study how financial incentives can be strengthened to extend working life financial incentives educational background and industry affiliation are found to influence retirement behaviour for low and medium incomes the tax system shifts the incentives heavily towards early retirement and in particular towards partial retirement combined with part time work

a general equilibrium assessment of rebound effects in this paper we use a general equilibrium model applied to a national economy norway to explore the potential for energy efficiency improvements to trigger economic forces that offset potential savings from using more efficient technologies rebound effects two types of energy efficiency improvements electricity and oil are introduced into various sectors of the economy our results suggest significant and surprising differences across sectors concerning both energy use and consequences for the build up of greenhouse gases rebound effects are found to be quite significant for manufacturing sectors since long term consumption of energy undergoes minor reductions or increases in response to efficiency improvements in other sectors rebound effects appear to be weak or almost absent

optimal fiscal policy for a state or local government abstract state and local government services are enjoyed by and taxes borne by two groups residents and non residents this paper addresses the question if state and local governments maximize their residents welfare and cannot distinguish between individual residents and non residents but know the aggregate characteristics of the two groups what set of taxes subsidies and public goods should they choose some of the results obtained are i even when all commodities are taxable and equity is ignored the existence of non resident consumption makes uniform taxation non optimal ii in some cases whether a commodity should be taxed or subsidized is independent of its own price elasticity iii central cities may be subsidized by suburban residents and iv the ability of state and local governments to redistribute is inversely proportional to the openness of the economy

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

tax competition with heterogeneous capital mobility in this paper we look at corporate fiscal policies set by two competing regions in an environment where firms are heterogonous regarding to their mobility costs we show that if regions are allow to tax domestic and foreign capital at different rates they will offer a preferential treatment to foreign firms even if mobility costs are symmetrically distributed across regions preventing such type of preferential treatment raises revenues for both regions unless there exist a high density of firms with low moving costs because preferential tax treatment promotes firms movement for fiscal raisons such tax regime always generates more social loss due to unnecessary delocalization we also investigate the effect of heterogeneity among regions

interjurisdictional capital mobility fiscal externality and a corrective subsidy abstract recent studies emphasize that local property taxation may result in inefficiently small amounts of local public spending this paper shows that the inefficiency can be traced to a fiscal externality when one jurisdiction increases its taxes it causes a flow of capital to other jurisdictions that increases their tax revenues the inefficiency can be corrected with a subsidy that internalizes the externality key empirical parameters determining the magnitude of the externality are identified illustrative calculations indicate that subsidy rates on the order of 40 might be required to achieve efficiency

changes in labor force participation in the united states the labor force participation rate in the united states increased almost continuously for two and a half decades after the mid 1960s pausing only briefly during economic downturns the pace of growth slowed considerably during the 1990s however and after reaching a record high of 67 3 percent in the first quarter of 2000 participation had declined by 1 5 percentage points by 2005 this paper reviews the social and demographic trends that contributed to the movements in the labor force participation rate in the second half of the twentieth century it also examines the manner in which developments in the 2000s reflect a break from past trends and considers implications for the future

property value maximization and public sector efficiency abstract this paper analyses the efficiency implications of property value maximization communities are open so that utilities are parametric to housing producers and the local government each local government chooses its public good output to maximize aggregate property value in the community ignoring feedback effects on the composition of the housing stock it is shown that this type of government behavior generates an equilibrium in which all communities are internally pareto efficient

taxation and the tiebout model the differential effects of head taxes taxes on land rents and property taxes on the theory of state and local public finance is the seminal paper by charles tiebout 1956 tiebout constructed a multijurisdictional model in which independent local governments offer a wide variety of expenditure and tax policies and perfectly mobile consumers reveal their preferences for local public goods through their choice of residential community he argued that under such circumstances local public service provision would be efficient the tiebout model has formed the basis of a vast number of subsequent articles in the state and local public finance literature and has also been very influential in urban and regional economics the efficiency properties of various tiebout type models of local public good provision have been examined and the role of politics in these models has been debated at length in this literature of more direct relevance to this paper however is the fact that although tiebout had little to say directly about taxation simply assuming the existence of head taxes subsequent analyses have used adaptations of this model to examine the effects of local head taxes land taxes and property taxes it is the literature on the efficiency and distributional effects of alternative local taxes that is the subject of this survey 1

tax competition uniform assessment and the benefit principle abstract in previous discussions it has been argued that tax competition between local governments results in a tax burden on business that is less than the cost of public services for business and in suboptimal levels of public expenditures for residents however this conclusion has never been substantiated by a full theoretical treatment here a theoretical model of tax competition is developed between metropolitan areas with labor perfectly immobile and two local public goods one for residents and one for business for plausible parameter values numerical solutions of the optimality conditions are computed by means of a nonlinear programming algorithm

technological progress and energy rebound effect in china s textile industry evidence and policy implications abstract although energy efficiency improvement can reduce energy consumption reduction of the effective price will also increase the demand for energy services part of this reduction is then offset because of the energy efficiency improvement the magnitude of this energy rebound effect is one of the important factors that must be considered in the formulation and implementation of energy policies the textile industry is a traditional pillar industry in china it is an important part of the national economy and contributes significantly to international trade this study uses the morishima elasticities of substitution mes model combined with asymmetric energy prices trans log cost function and other econometric methods to establish a framework to measure the rebound effect in china s textile industry the empirical results of this paper indicate that the rebound effect for china s textile industry is 20 991 this reveals that energy efficiency improvement is conducive for energy saving to a certain degree notwithstanding these results also prove that energy efficiency improvement is not the only way for china s textile industry to realize energy saving and emission reduction finally based on the analysis future policy priorities are suggested

a test for allocative efficiency in the local public sector abstract this paper develops a test for pareto efficiency in the local public sectorusing the analytical result that aggregate property value is maximized at the public output level which satisfies the samuelson condition for efficiency by using cross section data it is possible to deduce whether a representative community provides its public goods in a property value maximizing and hence efficient fashion the empirical results show no systematic tendency to either under or over provide public goods in a sample of massachusetts communities

communication energy efficiency and economic fallacies abstract the sharpening energy efficiency debate has revived claims that the apparent savings from using more efficient technologies would be largely offset by the macroeconomic response the tendency to use more energy services because they are made cheaper when energy price or availability constrains demand this is correct in more normal circumstances it may be true for efficiency changes which occur as part of general economic trends but not for policy driven measures aimed at bringing more efficient technologies into imperfect markets in such cases there will usually be real net energy savings only slightly smaller than those suggested by a simple engineering analysis and clear economic benefits

clubs local public goods and transportation models a synthesis abstract clubs local public goods and transportation models are analyzed within a unified model the emphasis is on the derivation of optimal allocation pricing and the size of the sharing group we derive the conditions under which optimal prices will yield surplus or deficit as well as those under which competitive provision will be efficient given heterogeneous tastes we prove that segregation according to tastes is generally efficient although several cases where this result does not hold are also discussed we show that the existing literature is unnecessarily restrictive and that the unified approach suggested here considerably extends the existing analysis of clubs local public goods and the transportation problems

international tax coordination regionalism versus globalism tax competition for mobile capital can undermine the attempts of governments to redistribute income from rich to poor i study whether international tax coordination can alleviate this problem using a general equilibrium model synthesizing recent contributions to the tax competition literature the model highlights the crucial distinction between global tax coordination and regional coordination with high capital mobility between the tax union and the rest of the world the welfare gain from regional capital income tax coordination is only a small fraction of the gain from global coordination even if the tax union is large relative to the world economy

can social security explain trends in labor force participation of older men in the united states after a long decline the labor force participation rate lfpr of older men in the united states leveled off in the 1980s and began to increase in the late 1990s we examine how changes in social security rules affected these trends we attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s 80s to the increasing generosity of social security over this period increases in the full retirement age and the delayed retirement credit explain one quarter to one half of the recent increase in the lfpr increasing educational attainment and increasing lfpr of married women also contributed to the recent rise

on the rebound feedback between energy intensities and energy uses in iea countries abstract the interaction or feedback between energy efficiencies or energy intensities and energy use has long been the topic of debate some have argued that energy efficiency improvements by reducing energy intensities and therefore lowering the cost of energy services would lead to rebound effects offsetting much or all of any initial savings in energy in this paper we analyse historical data on energy use efficiency and pricing in different sectors to try and identify rebounds for the period of our data since about 1970 we show that key measures of activity car use manufacturing output and structure house area etc have changed little in response to changes in energy prices or efficiency instead continuing their long term evolution relative to gdp or other driving factors while our analysis cannot disentangle more macro level economic feedbacks in a detailed way we show indirectly that such effects also appear to have been small over the 1970s and 1980s overall our analysis of disaggregated sectoral and subsectoral energy use and activity trends in a variety of iea economies suggests that any feedback effect is small compared to both the effects on energy use of changes in energy intensities and overall economic growth we conclude that most of the improvements in energy efficiencies led to reductions in energy intensities observed in the 1970s and 1980s weighted by 1990 activity levels intensities were roughly 15 20 lower in 1994 5 than in 1973 which in turn meant real savings of energy energy demand in iea countries is roughly this much below what it would have been for the same gdp had these savings not occurred rebounds may have taken back some of the overall savings but most remain even after the fall of oil prices in 1986 any boost to gdp as a result of these savings could not have been sufficient to increase energy demand enough to significantly alter these conclusions that the savings remained after the fall in oil prices supports the notion that net savings restrained energy growth relative to gdp in some formulations arise from technological progress even if energy prices do not increase how far this effect can reach however is a matter of considerable debate

energy efficiency economics and policy energy efficiency and conservation are major factors in the reduction of the environmental impact of the energy sector particularly with regard to climate change energy efficiency also contributes to reducing external dependence and vulnerabilities in the energy domain in this paper we discuss the factors that influence energy efficiency and conservation decisions and the most appropriate policies for their promotion although not all public policies seem justified we argue that specific policies for promoting energy conservation may be required preferably based on economic instruments or on the provision of information to consumers

labor market integration investment in risky human capital and fiscal competition this paper presents a general equilibrium model where human capital investment increases specialization and exposes skilled workers to region specific earnings risk interjurisdictional mobility of skilled labor mitigates these risks state contingent migration of skilled labor also improves efficiency with perfect capital markets labor market integration raises welfare and reduces ex post earnings inequality if instead human capital investment can only be financed through local taxes labor market integration leads to interjurisdictional fiscal competition shifting the burden of taxation to low skilled immobile workers decentralized public provision of human capital investment creates earnings inequalities and is inefficient

technological progress and sustainable development what about the rebound effect abstract sustainability concepts that rest on the idea of resource or energy efficiency improvements due to technological progress tend to overestimate the potential saving effects because they frequently ignore the behavioral responses evoked by technological improvements efficiency improvements also affect the demand for resources and energy and often an increase in efficiency by 1 will cause a reduction in resource use that is far below 1 or sometimes it can even cause an increase in resource use this phenomenon is commonly labeled the rebound effect which is well known among energy economists but never attracted much attention in ecological economics the paper starts with the traditional neoclassical analysis of the rebound effect in a partial equilibrium framework that concentrates on the demand of one particular energy service such as mobility or room temperature it also provides an overview of some of the main empirical studies based on this model that mostly confirm the existence of the rebound effect but are controversial about its actual importance however we have to go beyond the neoclassical single service model in order to take care of the variety of possible feedback affecting energy use the paper presents two important expansions of the single service model in order to show the potential relevance of the rebound effect to ecological economics first it is shown that in a multi services model it proves to be difficult to make general statements about the relevance of the rebound effect in this case the overall effect of an increase in energy efficiency on total energy use depends on the on the assumptions about the substitutability between the services considered and the direction of the income effect second the paper also tries to take care of the fact that changes in resource use or energy use are frequently just side effects of other forms of technological progress especially technological change of a time saving nature can have a large influence on energy use as many time saving devices for example faster modes of transport require an increase in energy consumption that is frequently reinforced by a rebound effect with respect to time this effect will be especially strong when wages are high and at the same time energy prices are low as is currently the case in most industrialized countries consequently the paper also provides a strong argument for the introduction of energy taxes

the rebound effect an evolutionary perspective the rebound effect presents a major flaw in to energy conservation policies that aim to reduce energy consumption through energy efficiency development economics and energy related disciplines have thus far developed tools to measure such a phenomenon this paper attempts to explain this seeming paradox using a thermodynamic evolutionary theoretical framework in addition to the traditional economic approach we here propose that evolutionary systems such as biological or even economic systems may rearrange themselves in a more complex fashion under the pressure of an increasing flux of energy driven by the higher conversion rate of greater efficiency higher complexity due to a greater energy density rate counteracts the positive effects of energy efficiency we investigated this hypothesis in the context of the road freight transport system and the productive structure the qualitative analysis in this paper further substantiated by figures provides a link between the dynamics of production patterns and the effect of efficiency in the light of the macro economic effects of increased energy demand the analysis departs from a rigorous investigation of the actual energy efficiency evolution in the road freight transport system to develop through a survey of the subsequent worldwide economic revolution in the production system it is then shown how outsourcing the key feature of globalization can be identified as the main source of traffic density growth finally four paradigms are used to stress how the shift in the production system must be considered a leap in structural complexity that consequently serves to increase the frequency of components interactions

fuel conserving and using production functions abstract this article compares eight production cost functions used or potentially useful for exploring how energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption we show the practitioner s choice of function can inadvertently pre determine results and make recommendations as to which functions are flexible enough to prevent this we also show pre selected factor substitution elasticities can similarly pre determine results to aid the comparison we decompose the energy consumption rebound effect into intensity and output income effects which also delivers insight into the mechanisms of rebound we conclude by recommending practitioners restrict themselves to either the gallant fourier or the generalized leontief symmetric generalized barnett cost functions as being sufficiently rebound flexible the translog cost function may be suitable given certain conditions and a particular form of the ces solow function is a possible but problematic candidate along the way the article provides a general methodology for similarly examining any arbitrarily defined constant returns to scale production or cost function

decentralization as a constraint to leviathan a panel cointegration analysis this paper extends the empirical literature about the effects of fiscal decentralization on the growth of government along three dimensions it distinguishes between the effects of the level of decentralization from the way local governments finance their expenditures common pool versus own resources it uses a panel cointegration approach to separate the long run effects of decentralization from the short run dynamics and it extends and revises the datasets generally used in these empirical analyses the results show that the amount of revenue raised by sub national governments leads to a long term fall in the size of government but grants have the opposite effect in addition a greater decentralization of expenditure leads to greater overall spending when the short term is considered these influences work slowly as the speed of adjustment towards the desired government size is relatively sluggish in addition in the short run there is also a clear effect from the role of local revenue raising powers that stimulates the growth of government these results appear robust to changes in the composition of the variables countries and periods included the sample

pigou tiebout property taxation and the underprovision of local public goods abstract pigou s proposition that the use of distorting taxes rather than neutral head taxes reduces public service levels is examined in this paper a simple model with a national system of competing local governments is utilized to demonstrate that the use of a distorting property tax on mobile capital decreases the level of residential public services the case where public services are an intermediate producer good is also considered

migration with fiscal externalities abstract this paper analyses the distribution of a country s population among regions when migration involves fiscal externalities the main question addressed is whether a decentralized decision making of regional governments can produce an optimal population distribution as recently asserted or a centralized intervention is indispensable as argued before in the literature in analysing this issue it is assumed that migration is costly and accordingly the problem is modelled in a dynamic setup it turns out that while with costless mobility the fiscal externality is fully internalized by voluntary interregional transfers with costly mobility centrally coordinated transfers still remain indispensable for achieving the socially optimal allocation

reviving leviathan fiscal federalism and the growth of government this article revisits the influential leviathan hypothesis which pos its that tax competition limits the growth of government spending in decentralized countries i use panel data to examine the effect of fiscal decentralization over time within countries attempting to distinguish between decentralization that is funded by intergovernmental transfers and local taxation first i explore the logic whereby decentralization should restrict government spending if state and local governments have wide ranging authority to set the tax base and rate especially on mobile assets in countries where this is most clearly the case decentralization is associated with smaller government second consistent with theoretical arguments drawn from wel fare economics and positive political economy i show that governments grow faster as they fund a greater portion of public expenditures through intergovernmental transfers

disability transfers self reported health and the labor force attachment of older men evidence from the historical record we use trends in self reported disability to gauge the impact of the growth of disability transfer programs on the labor force attachment of older working aged men our tabulations suggest that between 1949 and 1987 about half of the 4 9 percentage point drop in the labor force participation of men aged 45 54 and between one quarter and one third of the 19 9 point drop among men aged 55 64 represented a movement of men out of the labor force and onto the rolls of transfer programs targeted at the disabled since the expansion of transfer programs represents only one of the forces behind this movement these figures represent upper bounds on the impact of such programs on work force attachment

nimby taxes matter the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes this paper links the theoretical and empirical literatures on interjurisdictional tax and regulatory competition focusing on the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes it begins by demonstrating that local environmental taxes can be inefficient and that the inefficiency depends on the tax elasticity of polluters responses the paper then uses panel data from the toxics release inventory to estimate the magnitude of the tax elasticities and to demonstrate the empirical relevance of the theoretical inefficiency of local taxes 1999 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

the effects of health wealth and wages on labour supply and retirement behaviour this paper estimates a life cycle model of labour supply retirement and savings behaviour in which future health status and wages are uncertain individuals face a fixed cost of work and cannot borrow against future labour pension or social security income the method of simulated moments is used to match the life cycle profiles of labour force participation hours worked and assets that are estimated from the data to those that are generated by the model the model establishes that the tax structure of the social security system and pensions are key determinants of the high observed job exit rates at ages 62 and 65 removing the tax wedge embedded in the social security earnings test for individuals aged 65 and older would delay job exit by almost one year by contrast social security benefit levels health and borrowing constraints are less important determinants of job exit at older ages for example reducing social security benefits by 20 would cause workers to delay exit from the labour force by only three months

how technological efficiency improvements change consumer preferences towards a psychological theory of rebound effects abstract the use of technologies can influence consumer preferences and demand and hence impact on environmental sustainability this article contributes to research on rebound effects which focus on how energy efficiency improvements eei increase energy service demand most of 35 years of rebound research has been analyzed from micro and macro economic perspectives yet micro economic rebound research has so far investigated human behavior only on grounds of simple rational choice models and static assumptions about consumer preferences this article exposes the existing rebound discourse to psychological theories building on considerations of how eei can interfere with processes of decision making it develops a model of how eei via psychological processes may lead to motivational rebound effects as well as to beneficial effects which countervail rebounds the article then advances a typology of such rebound and beneficial effects that not only integrates the typology currently used in the micro economic rebound literature but goes beyond it model and typology explain how economic rebound research could benefit from psychological theory provide the basis for empirically investigating rebound effects on more solid theoretical grounds and empower a comprehensive discussion about policies and measures that aim at a sustainable use of technologies

assessing the importance of tiebout sorting local heterogeneity from 1850 to 1990 this paper argues that long run trends in geographic segregation are inconsistent with models where residential choice depends solely on local public goods the tiebout hypothesis we develop an extension of the tiebout model that predicts as mobility costs fall the heterogeneity across communities of individual public good preferences and of public good provision must weakly increase given the secular decline in mobility costs these predictions can be evaluated using historical data we find decreasing heterogeneity in policies and proxies for preferences across i a sample of u s municipalities 1870 1990 ii all boston area municipalities 1870 1990 and iii all u s counties 1850 1990

a critique of tiebout s theory of local public expenditures the last section of this paper presents a rigorous version of tiebout s theory of local public goods it is shown that equilibria exist and are pareto optimal this rigorous theory follows closely the more rigorous part of tiebout s work this rigorous theory makes a number of very special assumptions which make local public goods essentially private the body of this paper presents a series of examples which show that if one tries to generalize the rigorous version of tiebout s theory in a number of interesting directions then equilibria may no longer exist or may not be pareto optimal the conclusion is that tiebout s idea does not lead to a satisfactory general theory of local public goods the goal of this paper is to point out that tiebout s notion of equilibrium with local governments does not have the nice properties of general competitive equilibrium except under very restrictive assumptions tiebout 39 suggested that there are competitive forces which tend to make local governments allocate resources in a pareto optimal fashion consumers choose to live in those towns with the mix of taxes and public goods they prefer local governments choose this mix so as to attract inhabitants this idea may seem intriguing for it suggests that the invisible hand solves an important part of samuelson s perplexing public goods problem 32 tiebout in fact makes an argument which is nearly rigorous i give a rigorous version of his argument at the end of the paper however in this rigorous version so many restrictive assumptions are made that public goods become essentially private in the body of the paper i give a series of examples with which i try to convince the reader that one is forced to adopt tiebout s restrictive assumptions the idea is that if one changes any of his assumptions then either equilibria may not exist or may not be pareto optimal my examples are presented in the context of a general class of tiebout models i consider several subclasses one of which is the special case considered by tiebout in each of the subclasses except that considered by tiebout i give a counterexample either to the existence of equilibrium or to its pareto optimality the subclasses are so chosen that the difficulties they reveal would be shared by any reasonable tiebout model which differed from his special case i believe that my examples controvert tiebout s suggestion 39 last paragraph that his theory compares favorably with competitive equilibrium theory most of the examples in this paper have already appeared in the literature i cite related work as i go along what is new here is that i assemble the examples in a unified argument

the tiebout model bring back the entrepreneurs several recent papers in the literature have reformulltlated the nature of equilibrium in ifiebout mo lels by alssliuim ing an exogenous number of communities inflexible commullity l ou alaries anti in pirticular inactive lantlowners and developers ihis paper argues that these assumptions are unwarranted and resul1t iin in eterminate solutions and incorrect analyses determinate lon1g run1 solutions require equilibrium in intercommui land markets which in turn require giving lantlowners and or entrepreneurial leveloelers an active role in the models the role of politics in these models and its juxtaposition with entrepreneurial activities are also analyzed

sustainability economics where do we stand abstract environmental economics which is a branch of resource economics the environment as a scarce resource is essentially about market failures the costs of pollution and pollution abatement and the economics of regulation sustainability economics includes the problem of maintaining economic growth while reducing pollution and or its impacts with special attention to the linked problems of energy supply not to mention the supply other exhaustible resources climate change and most urgently fossil fuel consumption there is a need for integration of resource and environmental economics under a new rubric sustainability economics

imperfect mobility and local government behaviour in an overlapping generations model abstract this paper reconsiders the implications of land value maximizing local governments in an overlapping generations model with imperfect mobility specifically residents develop an attachment to place or location specific capital once they reside in a town for a single time period the analysis shows that attempts by governments to capture the resulting rents from less mobile individuals create inefficient migration leave all workers worse off in an ex ante sense and place relatively high burdens on those workers who have high migration costs public good levels are also inefficiently chosen

the rebound effect some empirical evidence from india abstract the present paper looks at the effect of technical efficiency gains on energy use in three sectors in india at varying levels of aggregation high positive rebound implies that efficient technology unless supplemented by appropriate pricing policy will not be successful in containing demand however the main purpose of the paper is to focus on the unique mechanism of rebound that may occur in developing countries with unmet demand

how effective is redistribution under the social security benefit formula abstract this paper uses earnings histories from the social security administration linked to the survey responses for participants in the health and retirement study to investigate redistribution under the current social security benefit formula as advertised own benefits are significantly redistributed from individuals with high to those with low lifetime earnings however redistribution is roughly halved when spouse and survivor benefits are taken into account and redistribution is measured among families when families are arrayed by total earnings during years when both spouses are engaged in substantial work there is very little redistribution from families with high to low earnings capacity

trends in male labor force participation and retirement some evidence on the role of pensions and social security in the 1970 s and 1980 s this article estimates the effects of changes in pension plans and social security in the 1970s and 1980s on the steady state retirement of men work incentives associated with pension coverage and plan characteristics are calculated primarily from the 1969 79 retirement history study and the 1983 and 1989 surveys of consumer finances simulations with a structural retirement model suggest that the long run effects of changes in pension plans and social security account for about a quarter of the reduction in full time work by men in their early sixties but cannot explain the reduction by those age 65

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

the trend in retirement a model with leisure production and endogenous retirement is used to explain declining labor force participation rates of elderly males the model is calibrated to cross sectional data on labor force participation rates of u s males by age their drop in consumption and leisure good expenditure share in 2000 running the calibrated model for the period 1850 2000 a prediction of the evolution of the cross section is obtained the model accounts for more than 87 of the increase in retirement of men over 65 the increase in retirement is driven by rising wages and falling prices of leisure goods

why do most countries set high tax rates on capital abstract we consider tax competition in a world with tax bases exhibiting different degrees of mobility modeled as mobile and immobile capital an agreement among countries not to give preferential treatment to mobile capital results in an equilibrium where mobile capital is nevertheless taxed relatively lightly in particular one or two of the smallest countries measured by their stocks of immobile capital choose relatively low tax rates thereby attracting mobile capital away from the other countries which are then left to set revenue maximizing taxes on their immobile capital this conclusion holds regardless of whether countries choose their tax policies sequentially or simultaneously in contrast unrestricted competition for mobile capital results in the preferential treatment of mobile capital by all countries without cross country differences in the taxation of mobile capital nevertheless our main result is that the non preferential regime generates larger expected global tax revenue despite the sizable revenue loss from the emergence of low tax countries by extending the analysis to include cross country differences in productivities we are able to resurrect a case for preferential regimes but only if the productivity differences are sufficiently large

a note on the dynamic analysis of fiscal competition this note presents an analysis of dynamic aspects of fiscal competition in a model with local capital accumulation this shows that even when a head tax is available the optimal capital tax rate is generally non zero in addition a decentralised equilibrium without a head tax might be characterised by overprovision of local public goods in a dynamic fiscal competition model the source of inefficiency is overaccumulation of local capital

trade in a tiebout economy the purpose of this paper is to explore both the positive and normative aspects of commodity trade in a tiebout economy by tiebout economy i mean an economy with a large number of small regions for example communities or states and no impediments to the mobility of individuals between these regions this type of economy has received widespread attention since the appearance of charles tiebout s classic 1956 article on local public goods in part because it bears a close relation to the standard competitive model this relation suggests that tiebout economies may serve as an

migration between home country and diaspora an economic analysis this paper investigates the distribution of a population group between a home country and diaspora given sequential decision making regarding migration at the individual level the home country is attractive to the members of the group yet their presence there requires a fixed amount of public spending e g on defense the per capita tax burden depends then on the size of the domestic population reflecting a case of fiscal externality this results in an inefficient distribution of the group between the home country and the diaspora encouraging immigration to the home country is an interest not only of those individuals who are currently in the home country but also of those residing in the diaspora however only when the burden of public spending in the home country is large enough do the latter volunteer to bear part of it even then in general this part is smaller than socially optimal

income taxes property values and migration we consider the effects of income redistribution when people can migrate from one country to another and when land within each country is heterogeneous taxes related to income can then affect property values and can induce migration which further affects property values we show that under these conditions a utilitarian government should never equalize after tax incomes if migration is impossible it may even transfer income from the poor to the rich reducing the rents earned by absentee landlords the redistributive tax on the rich may be higher or lower when the rich can migrate than when they cannot a rawlsian government in the absence of mobility will equalize after tax incomes under mobility rawlsian governments cut their taxes if and only if the relative pre tax income of the poor is sufficiently low

on the consequences of government objectives for economies with mobile populations abstract we compare the efficiency and social welfare properties of equilibria resulting from different governmental objectives in a federal system with a mobile population the objectives considered are total utility average utility representative resident s utility and profit maximization the representative resident approach is unique in that it depends only on utility it yields the best efficient allocation from the perspective of a government s residents average utility yields an efficient allocation that non residents prefer both the profit maximizing and total utility approaches may lead to inefficient allocations we also show that the representative resident approach is socially preferred to a total utility approach