identifying sectoral energy carbon water nexus characteristics of china abstract energy co2 emissions and water ecw are fundamentally linked holistic and in depth understanding of sectoral ecw nexus is essential to achieve socioeconomic sustainability this study employs environmental input output eio model to calculate the sectoral embodied ecw from 2002 to 2015 and adopts four indicators i e sectoral embodied ecw the proportion of direct ecw in embodied ecw and their changes to explore sectoral ecw nexus characteristics of china power egw and transport trs are key ecw nexus sectors in china with much larger embodied ecw and direct ecw sectors agriculture agr mining min and construction con show great changes in their ecw nexus characteristics between 2002 and 2015 sector agr is gradually becoming ecw intensive because agricultural modernization with the large scale adoption of modern water saving irrigation technologies leads to rapid increase in its energy and water use differentiated ecw related mitigation measures among sectors should be implemented through identifying their different ecw nexus characteristics as well as considering the synergies and co benefits of ecw related policies

a review of the water energy nexus abstract water and electricity are fundamentally linked at a basic level electricity generation requires water and water treatment and transportation use electricity historically there has been little reason to understand the nature of these links due largely to the presumption that water was not a threat to energy security nor electricity a threat to water security this presumption is now being challenged industry reforms increasing demand and more recently climate change are bringing into sharp focus the links between water and electricity in unprecedented ways general awareness of the links between water and electricity is increasing daily as the ramifications of the links are being felt the world over society s ability to deal with the challenges and uncertainties arising from the links between water and electricity is being hindered by limited understanding of the nature of the links and seeming lack of policy tools to effectively analyze them this paper reviews comprehensively the links between water and electricity presents a classification system for identifying links using the classification system this study further discusses these links by drawing upon examples from literature and follows with a synopsis of the nature of these links with this background the paper reviews and compares water energy studies in terms of scope objectives methodologies and key findings discusses major limitations of these studies and identifies important areas that would benefit from more in depth research this research contends that this type of approach is unsuitable in the longer term particularly when examining complex and multidimensional issues like the water energy nexus this work suggests that the nature of the nexus should and can be explored from a wider perspective by developing a suitable integrated methodological framework to serve as a platform for such exploration the purpose of this paper therefore is to outline the development of such a framework introduces integral theory and discusses how integral theory has shaped the development of the methodological framework employed in this research presents the framework and describes the suite of methods

water and energy price impacts on residential water demand in copenhagen while water price effects on residential water demand have been studied for several decades the impact of energy prices does not seem to have received much attention in this paper a residential water demand function derived from a model of household production of final consumption goods taking water energy and an aggregate of other goods as inputs is estimated on pooled time series data we find negative energy cross price elasticities around 0 2 and water price elasticities in the order of 0 1 or smaller

the effects of energy prices on agricultural groundwater extraction from the high plains aquifer we examine the effects of energy prices on groundwater extraction using an econometric model of a farmer s irrigation water pumping decision that accounts for both the intensive and extensive margins our results show that energy prices have an effect on both types of margins increasing energy prices would affect crop selection decisions crop acreage allocation decisions and farmers demand for water our estimated total marginal effect which sums the effects on the intensive and extensive margins suggests that a 1 per million btu increase in the energy price would decrease water extraction by an individual farmer by 5 89 acre feet per year a decrease of 3 6 percent of the average annual extraction rate our estimated elasticity of water extraction with respect to energy price is 0 26

the consequences of minimum wage laws some new theoretical ideas economists generally agree that the effect of a binding minimum wage law is to move firms backward along the demand curve for low skill workers however this prediction of worker displacement depends critically on the assumption that the productivity of firms labor is not dependent on the wage in this paper we show that in a conventional efficiency wage model a minimum wage may increase the level of employment in low wage jobs the formal logic of our model is similar to the case of labor demand under monopsony but arises in a model with a large number of employers

impact of electricity prices and volumetric water allocation on energy and groundwater demand management analysis from western india abstract in recent years power tariff policy has been increasingly advocated as a mean to influence groundwater use and withdrawal decisions of farmers in view of the failure of existing direct and indirect regulations on groundwater withdrawal in india many researchers argue that pro rata electricity tariff with built in positive marginal cost of pumping could bring about efficient use of the resource though some argue that the levels of tariff in which demand becomes elastic to pricing are too high to be viable from political and socio economic points of view the paper presents a theoretical model to analyze farmers response to changes in power tariff and water allocation regimes vis a vis energy and groundwater use it validates the model by analyzing water productivity in groundwater irrigation under different electricity pricing structures and water allocation regimes water productivity was estimated using primary data of gross crop inputs cost of all inputs and volumetric water inputs the analysis shows that unit pricing of electricity influences groundwater use efficiency and productivity positively it also shows that the levels of pricing at which demand for electricity and groundwater becomes elastic to tariff are socio economically viable further water productivity impacts of pricing would be highest when water is volumetrically allocated with rationing therefore an effective power tariff policy followed by enforcement of volumetric water allocation could address the issue of efficiency sustainability and equity in groundwater use in india

a multisector model of efficiency wages the pattern of effort and wages is derived in a multisector efficiency wage model firms choose effort endogenously easily monitored or low turnover jobs have high effort and may have low wages in equilibrium empirical wage differentials from a measure of supervision are smaller than observed industry differentials that have been attributed to efficiency wage models and are closer to those predicted by the model workers can search for and avail of on the job offers if sectors grow at different rates or the unemployment rate changes the pattern of wage differentials is unaffected

political internalization of economic externalities and environmental policy abstract this paper derives the characteristics of endogenous environmental policy in a common agency model of politics and proceeds to show that competition between lobby groups is an important source of internalization of economic externalities our analysis generalizes bhagwati s principle of targeting to the case of distorted political markets moreover we show that the politically optimal structure of environmental taxes incorporates a pigouvian adjustment however since lobby groups care about the distribution of income as well as about efficiency the equilibrium structure of taxes differs considerably from the pigouvian rule

heating technology and energy use a discrete continuous choice approach to norwegian household energy demand abstract the aim of this paper is to describe the structure of the household s energy demand as a discrete continuous choice and on this basis establish an econometric model suitable for the data available in the norwegian energy surveys the discrete appliance choice is specified as a multinomial logit model with a mixture of appliance attributes operating costs and individual characteristics income housing unit characteristics etc as explanatory variables in the next step the continuous choice of energy use is modelled conditional on the appliance choice the energy prices turn out to be significant both when estimating the appliance choice and the conditional energy demand the estimated price elasticity for energy exceeds minus unity the paper discusses how this relatively strong price response should be interpreted in the context of other econometric analysis with no explicit appliance dependence finally the significance of the many household characteristics at both stages of the model signals a high degree of heterogeneity within the households which justifies the use of detailed micro data in the modelling of the energy demand

ecological public functions and fiscal equalisation at the local level in germany abstract the concept of sustainability requires the acknowledgement and appropriate financing of ecological economic and social public functions at all levels of government whereas the significance of socio economic functions has a comparably long tradition in federal systems the respective consideration of ecological functions is still waiting to be fully realised the aim of this article is to analyse the roles fiscal federalism and fiscal instruments can play in addressing ecological public functions assigned to decentralised jurisdictions in federal systems for this purpose an investigation of intergovernmental fiscal relations and their significance for the local level is carried out by way of example for the federal republic of germany based on a status quo analysis of the various german fiscal equalisation laws at the local level the article presents options for systematically integrating neglected ecological functions and indicators into the existing legal framework the empirical analysis shows that end of the pipe and infrastructure related ecological functions are already strongly integrated by way of conditional grants however precautionary functions such as nature and resource conservation issues are still largely absent therefore a comprehensive consideration of ecological public functions in germany calls for the integration of nature conservation issues and respective indicators into the system of intergovernmental fiscal relations

competition in regional environmental policies when plant locations are endogenous abstract a two region model is presented in which an imperfectly competitive firm produces a good with increasing returns at the plant level production of the good causes local pollution the firm decides whether to maintain plants in both regions serve both regions from a single plant or shut down if the disutility of pollution is high enough the two regions will compete by increasing their environmental taxes standards until the polluting firm is driven from the market alternatively if the disutility from pollution is not as great the regions will usually compete by undercutting each other s pollution tax rates

environmental policy in a federation with special interest politics and inter governmental grants the paper explores the potential effect of intergovernmental grants igg on sub national local environmental policy in a federal structure in the model a politically inclined local government receives campaign contributions from the polluters lobby in return for lower pollution taxes a benevolent federal government uses igg as an incentive to reduce the resulting distortion in the local pollution tax igg are formulaic transfers that are conditional on pollution levels lower pollution in a sub national jurisdiction relative to others translates into a higher share of the grant and vice versa in equilibrium the grant effect reduces the distortion created in the pollution tax by the lobby effect and may even lead to a higher than pigouvian tax when the local government assigns a large enough weight on social welfare and or when the grant is large enough further igg result in the tax levels of jurisdictions becoming interdependent in an interesting way environmental policies in two jurisdictions may become strategic complements or substitutes depending on their relative pollution levels the possibility of strategic substitution implies that federal welfare may not increase even when environmental policy becomes stricter in one state

growing state federal conflicts in environmental policy the role of market based regulation abstract in recent years cases in which state governments chose to override federal environmental regulation with tighter regulations of their own have become increasingly common even for pollutants that have substantial spillovers across states this paper argues that this change arose at least in part because of a shift in the type of regulation used at the federal level from command and control regulation toward more incentive based regulation under an incentive based federal regulation a state imposing a tighter regulation will bear only part of the additional cost and thus has more incentive to tighten regulation than it does under federal command and control this difference helps to explain observed patterns of regulation in addition it has implications for the choice of regulatory instruments for a pollutant that causes both local and spillover damage a federal pollution tax is likely to yield a more efficient outcome than federal command and control policy or a federal system of tradable permits

on environmental federalism and direct emission control abstract a theoretical exception to the race to the bottom contends that if decentralized environmental policy is comprised of direct controls on each firm emissions standards are set too high when compared to a centralized optimum herein we examine potential distortions in decentralized decision making by reconciling two recent views of direct environmental controls we show that differences in direct control policy can arise from differences in the number of symmetric jurisdictions in an economy our results suggest the race is on once the number of jurisdictions competing for a fixed number of firms increase we see the race is off when few jurisdictions can exploit their form of environmental market power

inequality control rights and rent seeking sugar cooperatives in maharashtra this paper presents a theory of rent seeking within farmer cooperatives in which inequality of asset ownership affects relative control rights of different groups of members the two key assumptions are constraints on lump sum transfers from poorer members and disproportionate control rights wielded by wealthier members transfers of rents to the latter are achieved by depressing prices paid for inputs supplied by members and diverting resulting retained earnings the theory predicts that increased heterogeneity of landholdings in the local area causes increased inefficiency by inducing a lower input price and a lower level of installed crushing capacity predictions concerning the effect of the distribution of local landownership on sugarcane price capacity levels and participation rates of different classes of farmers are confirmed by data from nearly 100 sugar cooperatives in the indian state of maharashtra over the period 1971 93

analysis of u s residential wood energy consumption 1967 2009 the residential sector consumes about 23 of the energy derived from wood wood energy in the u s an estimated error correction model with data from 1967 to 2009 suggests that residential wood energy consumption has declined by an average 3 per year in response to technological progress urbanization accessibility of non wood energy and other factors associated with a time trend such as increasing income per capita and number of houses but the rising price of non wood energy has had a positive effect on the consumption and offset the downward trend effect in the last decade residential wood energy consumption has also been sensitive to changes in wage rate in both long run and short run but the total estimated wage rate effect since 1967 is negligible wood energy is expected to continue to account for a small share of residential energy consumption unless public policies improve wood energy cost competitiveness relative to non wood energy

quebec residential electricity demand a microeconometric approach in this paper we use a micro approach to model quebec residential demand for electricity the model incorporates a joint continuous discrete decision framework which allows for interrelationships between decisions on electricity related durable holdings and those on usage in the spirit of recent studies which used a continuous discrete frame work the model parameters are estimated using a two stage approach at the first stage the decisions regarding space and water heating systems are modelled with a very flexible multinomial probit mnp framework then at the second stage the demand for electricity conditional on the chosen heating system is estimated using ordinary least squares and a correction is applied in order to eliminate a potential estimation bias the estimated short run and long run price and income elasticities have the correct signs and are rather small as is expected under such circumstances

unemployment and product market competition in a cournot model with efficiency wages this paper analyzes the impact of product market competition on unemployment wage and welfare in a model where unemployment is caused by the efficiency wage consideration and oligopolistic firms compete in quantity it is shown that while more intense competition in the product market increases output and reduces price it does not necessarily lead to a lower unemployment rate or a higher wage for workers depending on the technologies the relationship between the intensity of competition and the level of employment respectively wage welfare is not always monotonic and in some instances has an inverted u shape resume chomage et concurrence dans le marche du produit dans un modele a la cournot en presence de salaires d efficience ce texte analyse l impact de la concurrence dans le marche du produit sur le chomage le salaire et bien etre dans un modele ou le chomage est cause par des considerations de salaires d efficience et ou les firmes oligopolistiques se concurrencent par les quantites on montre que meme si une concurrence plus intense dans le marche du produit accroit la production et reduit le prix ceci n entraine pas necessairement un taux de chomage plus bas ou un niveau de salaire plus eleve pour les travailleurs selon les technologies la relation entre l intensite de la concurrence et le niveau de l emploi respectivement salaire bien etre n est pas toujours monotone et parfois a la forme d un u inverse

protected areas local governments and strategic interactions the case of the icms ecologico in the brazilian state of parana various conservation initiatives have been implemented in developing countries with increasing involvement on the part of local governments a concern in entrusting decisions to local governments is that the effectiveness of the conservation instrument can be threatened by interactions among these local governments we examine this concern with respect to an ecological fiscal transfer mechanism the icms ecologico implemented in brazil in the early 1990 s in order to reduce biodiversity loss the mechanism enables states to reward municipalities for the creation and management of protected areas we describe this mechanism present a conceptual framework aimed at understanding the potential sources and consequences of interactions among local governments on the effectiveness of a decentralized mechanism aimed at promoting the creation of protected areas and propose an empirical application using a bayesian spatial tobit model our empirical investigation on the creation of protected areas in the state of parana between 2000 and 2010 reveals strategic substitutability in municipalities conservation decisions this finding also leads us to discuss the issue of identification of a negative spatial lag coefficient when there is a positive spatial error correlation

does delegation of fiscal policy to an independent agency make a difference evidence from intergovernmental transfers in india abstract one area of fiscal policy in which several countries have delegated responsibility to an independent agency is the distribution of national resource transfers across regional and local governments such delegation is expected to promote equity and efficiency and mitigate distortions created by political incentives this paper tests whether delegation to an independent agency indeed makes a difference by contrasting the impact of partisan politics on two types of fiscal transfers to states in the indian federation over a period of time 1972 1995 the pattern of evidence shows that while the transfers that are determined by the central political executive are indeed distributed to favor particular states that are politically important for the central ruling party the transfers that are delegated to an independent agency serve to constrain such partisan impact

how pollution taxes may increase pollution and reduce net revenues this paper develops a positive theory of pollution taxation by a federal authority when pollution abatement subsidies are used by local governments environmental and industry lobby groups influence governments with campaign contributions first pollution may increase in the pollution tax because the abatement subsidy increases decreases with the tax and pollution increases decreases in the abatement subsidy this occurs because the lobbying incentives change at a pollution tax reform second pollution taxes may reduce net revenues because subsidy expenditures rise third pollution may increase simultaneously as net revenues fall finally the welfare effect of a pollution tax may be negative

unemployment and other nonemployment benefits unemployment benefit systems in most oecd countries have become more generous since the early 1960s the coverage rate has increased the level of benefits has increased relative to the predisplacement wages and maximum benefit periods in unemployment insurance systems have become longer moreover work availability and willingness to work requirements have most likely been enforced less effectively in the high unemployment environment since the late 1970s the changes in benefit systems have contributed to higher unemployment but may also have increased labor force participation the article stresses the potential importance of invalidity early retirement and sickness benefit systems for labour market outcomes in half of oecd countries the number of recipients of these benefits exceeds the official numbers of unemployed higher replacement ratios in these alternative systems than in unemployment insurance may encourage a migration towards the higher benefit systems but the extent to which this happens depends on administration of the schemes copyright 1995 by oxford university press

job queues and wages this paper uses job applications data to investigate the relationship between job queues and wage differentials the main finding is that openings for jobs that pay the minimum wage attract more job applicants than jobs that pay either slightly more or slightly less than the minimum wage this spike in the job application rate distribution suggests that ex ante rents generated for employees by an above market level minimum wage are not completely dissipated by reductions in nonwage benefits in addition we find that highly unionized firms large firms and firms in high wage industries tend to receive relatively many job applicants for openings

interindustry wage differentials technology adoption and job polarization abstract based on observations that high wage industries in 1980 experienced more evident job polarization between 1980 and 2009 we hypothesize that the persistent structure of interindustry wage differentials leads to heterogeneity in job polarization across industries as the relative price of ict capital declines firms respond to exogenous wage differentials by replacing routine workers with capital our empirical analysis shows that during the last three decades the annualized growth rate of ict capital per worker increased by 0 34 percent and that of routine employment decreased by 0 41 percent in the u s industries that paid 10 percent higher wages in 1980

distributional impacts of investment subsidies for residential energy technologies abstract this study analyses the distributional impacts of investment subsidies paid to households that install residential energy technologies based on renewable energy sources the subsidies covering a significant part of the total investment play a considerable role in households energy decisions depending on their design support measures may provide the most benefits to certain groups of society and thus may cause increasing inequality the potential distributional impacts of the investment subsidies are determined by the combination of technologies targeted and their costs household income support intensity subsidy design restrictions and the availability of additional measures this study examines the support system for residential renewable energy technologies in the lithuanian case by employing a microsimulation model this analysis of existing measures provides more general results and highlights the policy features that cause distributional impacts therefore the results are applicable in other countries as well the analysis shows that although the support is efficient from an energy point of view it provides the most benefits to households with higher income and thus increases inequality moreover the subsidies fail to reduce energy poverty due to the poorest households low capacity to invest to obtain a flatter distribution of benefits the design of support measures should consider the current situation of lower income households and affordability issues

time inconsistency in environmental policy tax earmarking as a commitment solution tax earmarking imposes a constraint on government policymaking and may be desirable if i t solves a time inconsistency problem in tax policy in a two period economy in which the policy decisions regarding taxes public goods provision and pollution abatement are taken by a majority elected individual we show how the time inc onsistency problem in environmental policy arises we demonstrate that the commitment equilibrium under no earmarking rules cannot be as fully implemented as a no commitment equilibrium under earmarking rules however th e earmarking rules do act as a partial commitment mechanism

labor market dynamics when unemployment is a worker discipline device efficiency wage models of the effort elicitation type have important implications for labor market dynamics these models have a wide array of discontinuous sunspot equilibria driven by extraneous variables in addition to well behaved equilibria characterized by continuous slowly adjusting patterns of employment many aspects of actual labor markets can be replicated by these models for example the longer run movements they predict in employment allow macroeconomic evidence for a large labor supply elasticity to be reconciled with panel data evidence for a small labor supply elasticity many testable but as yet untested predictions about labor market dynamics can also be generated this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

supervision and wages across industries this paper uses supervision data from a supplement to the 1977 wave of the panel survey of income dynamics to examine differences in supervision and wages across industries and to evaluate relationships between supervision practices and interindustry wage differentials the results demonstrate that workers in high wage industries are supervised with equal or greater stringency than secondary sector workers further the results offer no evidence that interindustry differences in monitoring contribute to interindustry wage differentials such findings appear to contradict explanations for industry wage premiums that are motivated by efficiency wage models of shirking copyright 1993 by mit press

linking action situations coordination conflicts and evolution in electricity provision for irrigation in andhra pradesh india abstract actor centred institutional analysis can gain through an expanded focus from a focal action situation to the adjacent situations that make up its structure equilibrium outcomes in game models of a focal action situation may not be explainable without considering linked games the concepts of an ecology of games nested games or economic network analysis indicate the relevance of this move but a structured approach to heterogeneous networks of adjacent action situations encountered in resource and infrastructure governance has only recently been developed this paper draws on the adjacency concept and proposes four types of links a potential boundary for adjacency networks and a condition for bidirectional causation between linked action situations the relevance of the theoretical propositions laid out is empirically supported for the analysis of electricity governance of irrigation in andhra pradesh the actual and empirically observed outcomes as well as the potential capacity of an adjacent action situation to influence focal outcomes are analysed through a set of stylised game theory models and their links

energy consumption for space heating a discrete continuous approach energy demand for space heating is estimated using a discrete continuous choice model which focuses on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and energy consumption the model is estimated on norwegian micro data and the two stages of the model are estimated simultaneously the capital cost and the operating cost of the heating systems are both found to have a significant impact on the choice of heating system furthermore the results show that household characteristics are important variables in residential energy models energy price elasticities and income elasticities are also estimated

free riding on tax credits for home insulation in france an econometric assessment using panel data abstract this econometric study assesses the efficiency of the income tax credit system introduced in france in 2005 on investment decisions for household retrofits focusing on insulation measures a logit model with random individual effects is estimated using an unbalanced panel of 23 879 households surveyed over the period 2002 2011 an estimation in difference is performed to identify the impact of the policy the tax credit is found to have had no significant effect during the first two years suggesting a latency period related to inertia in households investment decisions possibly due to the complexity of the tax credit scheme the tax credit had an increasing significant positive effect from 2007 to 2010 before slightly decreasing in 2011 this is in line with changes in the tax credit rates suggesting a correlation with the level of subsidy defined as the situation in which the subsidized household would have invested even in the absence of the subsidy free ridership progressively decreased over the period was lower for insulation of opaque surfaces roofs walls etc than for insulation of windows and depended on individual characteristics the estimated average proportion of free riders varies between 40 and 85 after 2006 in addition we assess the potential bias caused by time varying unobservable variables and conclude that our estimates of the impacts of the policy are conservative

pure public goods and income redistribution in a federation with decentralized leadership and imperfect labor mobility abstract we examine the non cooperative provision of a pure public good by regional governments in a federation similar to the european union where regional governments are stackelberg leaders and the central government is a stackelberg follower a federation with decentralized leadership the center makes interregional income transfers after it observes the contributions to the pure public good imperfectly mobile workers react to regional and central governments policies by establishing residence in their most preferred region despite the degree of labor mobility we show that the pure public good and interregional transfers are generally allocated efficiently in a federation with decentralized leadership

the political economy of refunded emissions payment programs abstract we study the effects on the equilibrium tax of refunding firms pollution tax payments can lobbying yield stricter environmental policy do imperfect property rights affect policy clean firms may favor higher pollution levies but insecure property rights reduce this incentive

efficiency wages and wage dispersion the efficiency wage hypothesis has normally been used to generate an equilibrium level of unemployment the authors use it instead to generate an equilibrium wage distribution this paper starts by generalizing the previous work of r m solow in this area they then use their results on effort wage elasticities to derive a model of wage dispersion the wage rate is shown to be an increasing function of the damage potential of workers that is workers with the highest damage potential receive the highest wage the analysis of the equilibrium of the wage distribution provides interesting qualitative insights into the nature of actual wage differentials copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

mobility and the return to education testing a roy model with multiple markets self selected migration presents one potential explanation for why observed returns to a college education in local labor markets vary widely even though u s workers are highly mobile to assess the impact of self selection on estimated returns this paper first develops a roy model of mobility and earnings where workers choose in which of the 50 states plus the district of columbia to live and work available estimation methods are either infeasible for a selection model with so many alternatives or place potentially severe restrictions on earnings and the selection process this paper develops an alternative econometric methodology that combines lee s 1983 parametric maximum order statistic approach to reduce the dimensionality of the error terms with more recent work on semiparametric estimation of selection models e g ahn and powell 1993 the resulting semiparametric correction is easy to implement and can be adapted to a variety of other polychotomous choice problems the empirical work which uses 1990 u s census data confirms the role of comparative advantage in mobility decisions the results suggest that self selection of higher educated individuals to states with higher returns to education generally leads to upward biases in ols estimates of the returns to education in state specific labor markets while the estimated returns to a college education are significantly biased correcting for the bias does not narrow the range of returns across states consistent with the finding that the corrected return to a college education differs across the u s the relative state to state migration flows of college versus high school educated individuals respond strongly to differences in the return to education and amenities across states

a note on environmental federalism interpreting some contradictory results abstract this paper reconciles some conflicting interpretations of recent literature on interjurisdictional environmental regulatory competition 6 7 present a model in which competition to attract investment by lowering environmental standards leads to a pareto optimal equilibrium 3 and 4 describe a model in which such competition can result in a suboptimal nash equilibrium while it would be possible to draw opposite policy implications from the two models regarding the appropriate degree of environmental federalism such a conclusion would be incorrect this paper reconciles the different results by showing that they depend in large part on monopoly profits and tax exporting not the nature of the pollution externality or environmental federalism

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

empirical tests of efficiency wage models two digit manufacturing industry level production functions are used to test efficiency wage propositions conclusive tests require functional forms which allow differences in elasticities of substitution between observable human capital wage premia and other inputs results demonstrate that unexplained industry wage premia and higher unemployment rates raise productivity wage premia and the human capital wage component cannot be aggregated into a single human capital index nevertheless 88 of the productivity effect associated with industry wages can be tied to observable human capital in the industry with only 12 associated with the wage premium

locational choices of firms and decentralized environmental policy with various instruments abstract suppose there exists a federation with a given number of mobile firms generating waste emissions in the jurisdiction in which they locate this paper demonstrates that if jurisdictions use emission taxes or marketable emission rights to control pollution within their boundaries and distribute the revenues captured by these instruments in a socially efficient way firms locate efficiently taking their pollution externalities into account decentralized environmental policy relying on direct controls however prevents locational efficiency of mobile firms furthermore if jurisdictions are small decentralized environmental policy with emission taxes and marketable pollution rights also support an efficient environmental quality while a policy using direct controls sets too high emission standards

the inefficiency of unemployment the supervision perspective we study an example economy with costly labor monitoring under a wage cum supervision arrangement where workers utilities are not equalized across sectors workers are identical to each other our main task is to look for and find a set of flat taxes and subsidies that bring about a pareto improvement over the laissez faire solution we show that any of such welfare improving schemes involves a tax on labor income from those workers whose utility is the lowest

electoral goals and center state transfers a theoretical model and empirical evidence from india we construct a model of redistributive politics where the central government is opportunistic and uses its discretion to make transfers to state governments on the basis of political considerations these considerations are the alignment between the incumbent parties at the central and state levels and whether a state is a swing state or not a testable prediction from the model is that a state that is both swing and aligned with the central government is especially likely to receive higher transfers we test this prediction using indian data for 14 states from 1974 75 to 1996 97 we find that a state which is both aligned and swing in the last state election is estimated to receive 16 higher transfers than a state which is unaligned and non swing

how do we know that real wages are too high it is common belief that the wages that we observe are above the level that would prevail in a competitive labour market and also it is common to believe that wage moderation should be encouraged as a way to keep unemployment down this paper considers whether we can have confidence in these beliefs it presents a number of models designed to cast doubt on the conventional wisdom first we show that in an efficiency wage model in which there is involuntary unemployment a binding minimum wage may increase employment we then present a general equilibrium matching model in which there is involuntary unemployment but wages are below market clearing levels and raising wages can reduce unemployment we then consider the empirical evidence on employment and wage determination to argue that it is just as consistent with this model as with models in which wages are at or above market clearing levels

water competition through the water energy nexus assessing the economic impacts of climate change in a mediterranean context abstract the impacts of climate change on water resources availability are expected to be adverse especially in drier climate regions such as the mediterranean increased water scarcity will exacerbate competition for water resources not only between sectors but also between countries sharing transboundary river basins due to the mutual dependence of the energy sector on water resources and of the water services provision sector on energy inputs the water energy nexus is acknowledged as a major challenge for the near future with hydropower representing one of the most direct links in this nexus the aim of this paper is to assess the economy wide impacts of the concurrent effects of climate change driven impacts on water availability and the sectoral and regional competition for scarcer water resources in order to accomplish that goal an integrated modelling approach is developed where a computable general equilibrium model including raw water as a production factor is linked to times pt a bottom up model of the energy sector a case study is provided for the mediterranean country of portugal results for 2050 show that macroeconomic impacts are significant and encompass important inter sectoral differences that in turn depend on the degree of competition between sectors impacts are stronger when water consumption by spanish sectors is considered as this intensifies water scarcity in portugal thus the paper allows to gain insight in the broader water energy economy nexus and the additional costs that the dependence on water resources availability in transboundary river basins represents to an economy both aspects being of utmost importance for climate adaptation and energy policy making

understanding the spectrum of domestic energy consumption empirical evidence from france abstract this article focuses on residential energy consumption in france using a bottom up statistical approach this analysis explores determinants of household energy consumption using data from the most recent national housing survey the primary objective is to tease out the impacts of various factors on the domestic energy consumption spectrum across different population groups the aim of this approach is to neutralize conventional factors affecting energy consumption age of house total area etc to finely analyze the impact of other determinants including those relating to household characteristics and other control variables first we define homogeneous consumption groups of households by using multivariate statistical techniques namely the multiple correspondence analysis and ascending hierarchical classification second we use standard ols regression to explore the effects of various factors on domestic energy consumption among homogeneous groups of households this multivariate analysis exercise has led us to identify four main consumption typologies results revealed that energy prices were the most important factors determining domestic energy consumption in addition this study showed that occupant characteristics significantly affect domestic energy use results of this research call for combine all efforts multiple strategies and smart policies to incorporate household and consumption behaviors in managing domestic energy consumption

federal acid rain games abstract federal environmental policy designed to control acid rain is shaped after the hierarchy of the system and is controlled simultaneously by regional and central governments each governmental level controls one of two policy instruments pollution abatement production and pollution tax in a two stage game where regional governments are stackelberg leaders and control pollution taxes the subgame perfect equilibrium is socially efficient but the subgame perfect equilibrium for a two stage game where the central government is the stackelberg leader and controls pollution taxes is inefficient it corresponds to the nash equilibrium for a game where regional governments control both policy instruments

households energy consumption and transition toward cleaner energy sources the paper investigates the factors influencing households energy choices and the drivers of switching toward cleaner energy we first present a theoretical framework to determine the factors that explain households energy consumption and highlight the motivations underlying their transition towards less polluting sources including their environmental preference using french household data from ademe we provide an econometric test of qualitative variables following studies by dubin and mcfadden 1984 our results show that income and prices are the main determinants of household energy consumption environmental considerations seem to influence the choice of energy sources more than consumption we also find evidence that income and relative capital cost are the most important variables for household energy switching

the political economy of pollution taxes in a small open economy abstract this paper develops a positive theory explaining pollution tax policy outcomes in a small open economy the equilibrium tax rate depends on lobby group membership the relative importance of lobbying activities and the tax elasticity of pollution the equilibrium properties are investigated the model is extended to incorporate pollution abatement and a pollution abatement subsidy we show that total pollution may be increasing in the pollution abatement subsidy rate this effect arises because the equilibrium pollution tax rate may be decreasing in the subsidy rate due to altered political influence of the lobby groups in the political equilibrium

ownership agency and wages an examination of franchising in the fast food industry this paper estimates the difference in compensation between company owned and franchisee owned fast food restaurants the contrast is of interest because contractual arrangements give managers of company owned outlets less of an incentive to monitor and supervise employees estimates based on two data sets suggest that employee compensation is slightly greater at company owned outlets than at franchisee owned outlets the earnings gap is 9 percent for assistant and shift managers and 2 percent for full time crew workers furthermore the tenure earnings profile is steeper at company owned restaurants these findings suggest that monitoring difficulties influence the timing and generosity of compensation

factors affecting wood energy consumption by u s households about 23 of energy derived from woody sources in the u s was consumed by households of which 70 was used by households in rural areas in 2005 we investigated factors affecting household level wood energy consumption in the four continental u s regions using data from the u s residential energy consumption survey to account for a large number of zero observations i e households that do not burn wood left censored tobit models were estimated urban rural location is a key determinant of level of household wood energy consumption wood energy consumption elasticity with respect to non wood energy price changes was 1 55 at the u s level and a much higher 2 30 among rural households while household wood energy consumption was affected primarily by non wood energy price in rural areas it was influenced mainly by household size and level of income in urban areas elasticity of wood energy consumption with respect to income can be positive or negative depending on household urban rural location region and income level newer houses were found to use less wood energy than older ones and greater urbanization was found to have negative effect on wood energy use our findings suggest that policies reducing relative wood energy cost or increasing non wood energy prices in the residential sector will result in greater wood energy consumption in the u s the effect of policies may vary by region and are likely to be more effective in u s rural areas and in the u s midwest in particular

on interjurisdictional competition and environmental federalism herein we construct a competitive interjurisdictional model that reconciles two recent exceptions to the race to the bottom j publ econ 35 1988 333 354 j urban econ 37 1995 290 310 our results suggest that since environmental rents from local production are likely not captured 100 percent by local residents devolved command and control environmental regulation is inefficient moreover faced with the reality of fiscal constraints local governments adopt property tax structures that serve to compound inefficiencies within such a second best setting if a jurisdiction underprovides non environmental public goods and jurisdictional capital productivity and emissions are strong complements a race to the bottom equilibrium is supported

household energy choices and fuelwood consumption an econometric approach using french data this study proposes an econometric analysis of household fuelwood demand in france the choice concerning the energy used for heating is modeled stressing the combination between one type of energy used as a main source and another one used as a back up this endogenous decision has an impact on fuelwood consumption and is taken into account to avoid biased estimates of price and income elasticities the results show that the choice of energy mix is determined by the income and the socio economic characteristics of households and that fuelwood consumption is price sensitive in the case where wood is the main source of energy

the impact of the minimum wage on other wages in this paper i explore how changes in the minimum wage affect various occupational wages i postulate that other wages increase for two reasons first firms try to mitigate the deterioration in a worker s relative wage which would cause him to reduce his work effort and second there is an increase in the demand for nonminimum wage workers wage adjustment patterns are examined to ascertain whether wage comparisons play a role in the adjustment process the empirical work shows a short run wage compression among white collar occupations which is consistent with the wage comparison model however large standard errors make inferences weak

the elementary economics of social dilemmas a social dilemma is in essence a prisoners dilemma in a continuous strategy space i discuss a number of social dilemmas that have caught my attention offer an elementary diagrammatic synthesis of them and discuss some of the economic insights that the diagrams capture including incentives for pre commitment finally i model pre commitment via delegation and link results to the literature on the evolution of preferences l economie elementaire des dilemmes sociaux un dilemme social est essentiellement un dilemme du prisonnier dans un espace continu de strategie l auteur discute d un certain nombre de dilemmes sociaux qui ont retenu son attention il en propose une synthese graphique elementaire et discute certaines des suggestions economiques qui decoulent de ces diagrammes comme par exemple les incitations a se pre engager finalement l auteur construit un modele de pre engagement par delegation et relie ses resultats a la litterature sur l evolution des references