efficient and durable decision rules with incomplete information we compare six concepts of efficiency for economies with incomplete information depending on the stage at which individuals welfare is evaluated and on whether incentive constraints are recognized an example is shown in which an incentive efficient decision rule may be unanimously rejected by the individuals in the economy we define durable decision rules which can resist such unanimous rejection and show that efficient durable decision rules exist

the environmental kuznets curve environmental protection policy and income distribution abstract the effect of economic growth on pollution emissions differs substantially among high income countries i address this issue by analyzing public environmental policy decisions individual heterogeneity relative income effect and the political framework in which policy decisions are taken determine the emergence of the downward sloping segment of the environmental kuznets curve ekc income inequality produces a gap between the country s ability to pay for environmental protection and a country s willingness to pay i test this result by using oecd data on public r d expenditure for environmental protection the conclusion is that contrary to the ek hypothesis moments of the income distribution function other than the mean may be important for the emergence of a virtuous path of sustainable growth in high income countries

income distribution and environmental quality in china a spatial econometric perspective abstract paying heed to a surge of concern about the serious and continuous environmental degradation that is currently being witnessed in china in this paper we investigate whether income distribution contributes to environmental deterioration environmental degradation can be linked not only to income growth we argue but also to increases in income inequality the study calculated the gini coefficient of 31 province using a data set of 403 city level data in mainland china and estimated the linkage between income distribution and environmental deterioration utilizing balanced data for 31 chinese provinces during the period 1996 2015 first the degree of environmental pollution was calculated by constructing a comprehensive index system which was formulated using the entropy method based on six environmental indicators then a spatial panel regression model was also employed in order to estimate whether income inequality is likely to be a relevant factor in environmental deterioration in china the estimation results showed that using the index and spatial analysis techniques significant spatial positive agglomeration were found existing between chinese provinces in terms of their levels of environmental degradation the influencing factors estimation results substantiated the existence of an invert u shaped relation lending support to the environmental kuznets curve theory more importantly the study found that income inequality played a significant role in preventing environmental degradation suggesting that an appropriate level of income inequality over a delimited period is beneficial to improving environmental quality it should however also be emphasized that optimizing the country s income distribution is remains an important long term task for the chinese government other factors were found to exert different types and magnitudes of impacts on environmental pollution results showed that many factors for instance energy intensity the share of secondary industry population density and foreign direct investment contribute to environmental deterioration conversely our findings also indicate that rising urbanization levels can have a positive effect on environmental quality in addition no clear evidence was found to suggest that local government expenditure is related to environmental degradation

does income inequality harm the environment empirical evidence from the united states abstract this study revisits the growth inequality environment nexus in the context of country specific time series data the short and long run effects of income inequality economic growth and energy consumption on co2 emissions in the u s are examined using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach we find that more equitable distribution of income in the u s results in better environmental quality in the short and long run it is also found that in both the short and long run economic growth has a beneficial effect on environmental quality whereas energy consumption has a detrimental effect on the environment

openness central bank independence and the sacrifice ratio traditional explanations of the negative correlation between openness and inflation presume that an inverse relationship between the degree of openness and the sacrifice ratio reduces the inflation bias of descretionary monetary policy temple 2002 concludes however that such a relationship fails to emerge in cross country data our analysis of the same cross country data considered by temple indicates that once the degree of central bank independence and its interaction with greater openness and the sacrifice ratio in addition increased openness lessens the positive effect of central bank independence on the sacrifice ratio

inequality and the environmental kuznets curve abstract is income inequality harmful to the environment the answer to this question has not reached a consensus in the literature this study seeks to provide insight into this question by examining the influence of income inequality on the environmental kuznets curve ekc i e the impact of income inequality on the ekc turning point two potential mechanisms through which inequality may affect the ekc turning point by reducing public demand for environmental protection and by increasing a power of capital owners to prevent such protection using a large sample n 170 174 of countries we find evidence of the ekc for so2 emissions and income inequality has a significant impact on the ekc turning point income inequality increases the ekc turning point suggesting that high inequality can be damaging to the environment the results are robust to potential outliers different data sources of income inequality a different so2 emissions measure changes in model specification different samples and an alternative estimation method we also find that inequality appears to be more important than corruption in determining the ekc turning point

the determinants of an environmentally responsive firm an empirical approach abstract our empirical results indicate that a firm s formulation of an environmental plan is positively influenced by customer pressure shareholder pressure government regulatory pressure and neighborhood and community group pressure but negatively influenced by other lobby group pressure sources and a firm s sales to asset ratio firms which view environmental issues as important in the next 5 years are also more likely to have a plan relative to the manufacturing sector firms in the natural resource sector are more likely to formulate environmental plans while firms in the service sector are less likely to have plans our results provide insight into how firms react to environmental issues they also offer policymakers a list of determinants which can be used either as an alternative or complement to environmental regulation

explaining peak inflation rates prior to disinflationary policy adjustments or what got us into this mess this study investigates using annual data from 1974 2004 whether unionization rates trade openness and central bank independence can help explain cross national and inter temporal variations in level of peak inflation prior to a disinflationary policy adjustment i find that unionization is positively associated with both peak inflation rates whereas more independent central banks and trade openness are correlated with lower inflation levels these results are robust to controlling for the high inflation decade of the 1970s and to using average rather than peak inflation as the explanatory variable

income inequality and co2 emissions in the g7 1870 2014 evidence from non parametric modelling abstract we examine whether income inequality effected carbon emissions in what are now the world s wealthiest countries over the period 1870 2014 employing a non parametric panel estimation method with cross sectional and time varying coefficients we find that the relationship between income inequality and co2 emissions is highly non linear in terms of signs and significance the nonparametric coefficient function for income inequality is found to vary over the period 1870 2014 income inequality exhibits a significant positive effect from 1870 to 1880 and a significant negative impact from 1950 to 2000 on co2 emissions we also find that for extended periods between 1881 and 1949 and between 2000 and 2014 there is no significant relationship between the two variables

policy options to improve the effectiveness of the eu emissions trading system a multi criteria analysis abstract this paper considers several policy options which have been proposed to improve the functioning of the ets these options require an intervention either on the ets cap 30 target set aside carbon central bank long term target or on the carbon price european and national price floor we analyse the impact of each policy on the ets carbon price and emissions a multi criteria evaluation method is applied to compare the policy options against a plurality of environmental economic and procedural criteria we find that the final ranking depends on the goals to be achieved i e the relative weights attributed to the criteria when policymakers want mainly to support the carbon price both in the short and long run while improving ets flexibility and harmonization the ccb and the eu price floor are respectively ranked as first and second best options as the preference for environmental and implementation goals gradually increases the position of the eu price floor and ccb options tend to invert the 30 target should be adopted when reducing emissions is the priority goal while a national price floor is the worst option in this case nevertheless self interested states looking for a relatively quick feasible solution may find it optimal

toward a theoretical model of voluntary overcompliance abstract we explain why some firms voluntarily overcomply with environmental regulation in our model all consumers value environmental quality but differ in their willingness to pay which depends on their income levels publicly available information on environmental performance of firms enables consumers to identify clean firms firms participate in a two stage duopoly game where they first choose their levels of cleaning technology and next engage in price competition the market gets segmented by income levels a minimum standard binding on the dirty firm has the effect of improving the performance of the cleaner firm a subsidy obtains the same competitive outcome

income inequality and the environment aggregation bias in environmental kuznets curves abstract the environmental kuznets curve assumes an inverted u shaped relation between environmental damage and per capita income recently it has been argued in the literature that in addition to income levels the inequality in the distribution of power and income is positively related to environmental degradation we provide an additional argument based on simple aggregation for including a measure of income dispersion in empirical analyses when the relationship between environmental damage and household income is concave e g resembles an environmental kuznets curve then income inequality is negatively related to total environmental damage results from an empirical analysis of cross national variation indicate that the aggregation effect can run counter to and outweigh the political economy effect for some environmental indicators

political and economic inequality and the environment abstract this paper analyzes and tests the hypothesis that political and economic equality result in lower levels of environmental degradation based on formal statements of the argument put forward by boyce r 1994 ecological economics 11 169 178 i show that equality may or may not be necessary to minimize degradation under some plausible conditions greater inequality may even be conducive to lower degradation actual results depend primarily on the intersection between the distribution of preferences across groups and the institutional rules two cross national empirical tests tend to support the contention that distributional issues do not systematically explain variations in environmental quality the results reinforce the conclusion that assumptions about the structure of preferences and workings of social choice institutions ignore complex interactions which influence the relationship between degradation and equality

openness exchange rate regimes and the phillips curve abstract recent research suggests that the phillips curve slope measured using sacrifice ratios from the period 1961 88 is positively related to trade openness contradicting the romer 1993 openness and inflation theory and evidence quarterly journal of economics 108 869 903 hypothesis that disinflations are less costly in open economies in this paper i consider sacrifice ratios and output inflation trade offs from 1981 98 and allow their dependence on openness to vary with the exchange rate regime sacrifice ratios are weakly negatively related to openness but the strength of the relationship does not increase with exchange rate flexibility output inflation trade offs are negatively related to openness and the strength of the relationship increases with exchange rate flexibility

voluntary agreements as an environmental policy instrument evaluation criteria abstract as the resource to voluntary action grows wider a question must be held on the factors that influence the performance of a voluntary agreement as an environmental policy instrument our goal in this paper is to answer that question outlining the main variables that make a voluntary agreement simultaneously efficient effective and just using several articles on the subject of voluntary action under the themes of economic regulation and of contracts under asymmetric information as well as available reports on the portuguese and european experience on the use of voluntary agreements we will undertake this objective following three steps i we begin by underlining the main factors that justify the private and public option for voluntary action ii we then present an analysis of the co regulation process under the requirements of the three e criteria efficiency effectiveness and equity iii finally we conclude by presenting an evaluation table that summarises the elements that we found to be the most important for the performance of the voluntary action in each one of those criteria

the informational structure of migration decision and migrants self selection abstract we analyze the pattern of migrants self selection in unobservables when there is uncertainty about foreign wages negative selection becomes more likely and a greater dispersion of wages at destination no longer suffices to predict that immigrants will outperform natives

can voluntary approaches ever be efficient abstract despite their growing use only a few theoretical descriptions on the efficiency of voluntary approaches can be found this paper summarises the findings in this field so far it analyses the efficiency of voluntary approaches in three different ways 1 voluntary approaches as a bargaining process over abatement levels 2 voluntary approaches as a way to diminish informational asymmetries and 3 voluntary approaches as a voluntary over compliance mechanism from the models it seems as if the efficiency of voluntary approaches depends on several factors public supply of information auditing and the exchange of information between the negotiating parties are important elements further positive and negative inducements by the regulator can create incentives for the industry to engage in voluntary approaches also consumers demand for environmental quality can affect the environmental performance by industry either by the lobbying of interest groups or by a demand for products produced under environmental considerations

voluntary agreements with white certificates for energy efficiency improvement as a hybrid policy instrument in this paper we examine the implementation of a combined policy scheme that consists of a traditional instrument the voluntary agreements vas and an innovative one the white certificates whc the basic structure of this scheme is that energy suppliers who undertake an energy efficiency obligation under a white certificate scheme can make use of voluntary actions to enhance investments in innovative energy savings projects energy suppliers and other market parties can additionally or in parallel participate in voluntary agreements and set energy efficiency targets for fulfilling their voluntary agreement target these market parties can receive tax exemptions or receive white certificates that they can sell in the market transaction costs and baseline definition for demonstrating energy efficiency improvement deserve special attention this policy can assist a country to enhance energy efficiency improvement while it stimulates innovation cost effectiveness can be higher than the case of stand alone policy instruments since more financing options are available for more expensive projects nevertheless the added value of the scheme lies more in the implementation of innovative measures for enhanced energy efficiency furthermore market parties can discover more business opportunities in energy efficiency and establish a green image hence an integrated scheme should achieve higher political acceptability

reducing inequalities toward the development of a market for income inequality abstract the objective of this study is to propose the development of a market for income inequality by specifying a firm s contribution to income inequality and outlining a simple model to find the equilibrium price for a given target of income inequality reduction the paper reviews the concepts of firm heterogeneity and externalities in relation to income inequality it then proposes a model by establishing income inequality reduction targets for a population of firms presenting a marginal income inequality reduction cost curve and matching demand and supply to derive the equilibrium price and ends by simulating a market for income inequality reduction using data from a sample of fifteen firms this paper shifts the focus of income inequality research and policy to the firm and proposes a market based mechanism for firms to reduce income inequality

instrument choice when regulators and firms bargain abstract we compare outcomes with an emissions tax and an emissions standard when a firm and regulator engage in cooperative bargaining over the stringency of the regulation bargaining is motivated by giving the firm a choice of abatement technologies if the firm s preferred technology differs from the regulator s the first best outcome is not an equilibrium of the traditional noncooperative game in which the regulator is a stackelberg leader the regulator may therefore choose to offer the firm a more lenient regulation if it agrees to switch technologies we find that the resulting bargaining outcomes differ for a tax and a standard even though information is symmetric and we identify conditions under which each instrument yields lower social costs

inequality as a cause of environmental degradation abstract this paper advances two hypotheses first the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners who derive net benefits from the activity and the losers who bear net costs second greater inequalities of power and wealth lead all else equal to more environmental degradation

revisiting the concept of environmental kuznets curve in period of energy disaster and deteriorating income empirical evidence from japan this study investigates the position of the japanese environmental kuznets curve in period of natural disaster and deteriorating income following the recent fukushima energy crisis the study aim to establish whether the ekc exist in period of energy disaster and deteriorating income to ensure this data from 1961 to 2012 was used while the zivot andrew structural break test the ardl bounds test were applied and these were validated using the innovation accounting test the finding of the study established the existence of inverted u shape suggesting the presence of ekc despite the deteriorating income of the country with the discovery of the existence of ekc in this study despite the dwindling productivity and revenue in japan this study challenged the ekc hypothesis and all existing studies on ekc by establishing that natural disasters are in themselves strong causative agents for the ekc to unfold and it is immaterial whether the economic fortunes of a country is increasing or decreasing the study further discovered energy consumption to be the major contributor of environmental degradation in japan while exports declines co2 emissions but imports adds to environmental degradation on the growth prospects of the japanese economy after the crisis the study discovered how energy consumption exports and imports contribute 33 55 1 027 and 7 126 to the country s economic growth respectively in return a minimum of 16 24 23 89 and 44 18 of co2 emissions was discovered the study proposed policy instruments that will help in realizing a balanced environment amidst efficient energy consumption and environmental management among others

power distribution the environment and public health a state level analysis abstract this paper examines relationships among power distribution the environment and public health by means of a cross sectional analysis of the 50 us states a measure of inter state variations in power distribution is derived from data on voter participation tax fairness medicaid access and educational attainment we develop and estimate a recursive model linking the distribution of power to environmental policy environmental stress and public health the results support the hypothesis that greater power inequality leads to weaker environmental policies which in turn lead to greater environmental degradation and to adverse public health outcomes

how does income inequality affect energy efficiency empirical evidence from 33 belt and road initiative countries abstract at present income distribution and environmental pollution are serious issues faced by the belt and road initiative bri countries and exploring the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is meaningful for the sustainability of bri countries using the panel data of 33 bri countries from 2000 to 2016 we first evaluate the energy efficiency of the countries by dynamic dea model and then adopt the tobit regression model to investigate the nonlinear effect of income inequality on energy efficiency the results suggest that first during 2000 2016 the overall energy efficiency of 33 bri countries is relatively low falling to 0 38 while the overall energy efficiency of high income bri countries is much higher than that of the middle and low income bri countries second the average energy efficiency of the bri countries has declined since year 2013 third there is an inverted u type effect of income inequality on energy efficiency in the whole sample but the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is heterogeneous for countries at different income levels specifically in high income bri countries income inequality shows a u type effect on energy efficiency while in middle and low income bri countries the relationship between income inequality and energy efficiency is an inverted u type moreover economic growth positively impacts the energy efficiency while industrialization and energy structure negatively influence the energy efficiency

openness inflation and the phillips curve a puzzle models of open economies with nominal rigidities are often thought to predict a correlation between openness to trade and the slope of the output inflation trade off or phillips curve using a variety of measures of the trade off and a standard measure of openness this paper argues that the direct evidence for a correlation is not strong in turn this calls into question the usual explanation for the negative correlation between openness and inflation that was documented by romer 1993 the paper considers some alternative explanations for the romer evidence

environment and development theory and international evidence the environmental effects of economic development have significant implications for a wide array of policy questions facing both low and high income countries today internationally agricultural research centers are considering how to incorporate sustainability issues into their research agendas while international lending institutions are taking a close look at the environmental consequences of industrial projects domestically the north american free trade agreement has brought the relationship between economic development and environmental quality to the forefront of u s public policy debate it is surprising that despite the postwar growth of development economics the genesis of environmental economics and the fusion of ideas from both fields into the theme of sustainable development economists have not made much progress in describing the impacts of long term economic growth on environmental quality yet a vigorous public debate has arisen between individuals who maintain that environmental degradation is a necessary outcome of economic growth and those who believe that economic growth and environmental quality go hand in hand this debate was highlighted at the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development in rio de janeiro in part this debate hinges on the properties of the aggregate demand for and supply of environmental quality if the income elasticity of demand for environmental quality or amenities is high then the increased prosperity engendered by economic growth could lead to significantly higher demand for environmental quality proponents of economic growth believe this demand will translate into a higher realized level of quality as both public and private institutions and organi

cost effective advantages due to clean technologies water compliance scenarios for a mexican paper mill abstract the limited water supply of the metropolitan area of mexico city has become a challenge for local companies the region s aquifer is listed as closed due to pressure on the water supply as a result of growth in manufacturing as well as increased domestic water use the environmental economic and legal benefits of a cleaner production scenario studied were highly encouraging implementation of cleaner technologies reduces water extraction by up to 16 times while initial investment is high the internal rate of return rate is approximately 35 per year implying a three year return on initial investment under this scenario the business complies with environmental regulations avoiding great amounts of water extraction and future wastewater discharge thus conserving this vital resource this study proves what silvo et al 2009 states that in the longer run the combination of the integrated pollution and prevention control permit approach with other regulatory and voluntary policy instruments taking into account the results of system assessments such as life cycle assessment could potentially produce eco efficient solutions thus for this industry cleaner production pays off in the long run

does inequality affect environmental quality evidence from major japanese cities abstract this study investigates whether income inequality affects environmental degradation we use city level data in japan where local governments have limited authority and often use voluntary agreements with private firms we test the hypothesis that inequality weakens residents bargaining power over polluters and has a negative effect on environmental quality our results show that inequality negatively affected air quality in residential and commercial areas during the 1990s but not in industrial areas this evidence suggests that the inequality pollution relationship is not just a correlation but reflects a causal effect of residents bargaining power on environmental quality this implies that equal communities can pressure firms into accepting pollution prevention agreements

can selective immigration policies reduce migrants quality destination countries can adopt selective immigration policies to improve migrants quality screening potential migrants on the basis of observable characteristics also influences their self selection on unobservables we propose a model that analyzes the effects of selective immigration policies on migrants quality measured by their wages at destination we show that the prevailing pattern of selection on unobservables influences the effect of an increase in selectivity which can reduce migrants quality when migrants are positively self selected on unobservables we also demonstrate that in this case the quality maximizing share of educated migrants declines with the scale of migration

carbon dioxide emission and income a temporal analysis of cross country distributional patterns the existence of a cointegrating relationship between income and co2 emission for individual country groups suggests existence of a corresponding relationship between the inter country disparities in the levels of income and co2 emission this paper explores the relationship between the patterns of cross country distribution of income and co2 emission and temporal shifts in such a relationship this paper also examines how the mean level of per capita co2 emission and its distributional inequality are related to the corresponding mean income level and the distributional inequality of income the analysis is based on a cross country panel data set at the level of country group environmental quality demanded is treated as a private good and not as a public good as done in most other studies the technique of lorenz and specific concentration curve analysis are used as the basic analytical framework to argue that a measure of relative distributional inequality of income should be used as an explanatory variable in the environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship along with the mean income level in the empirical exercise johansen s cointegration analysis technique is used to explore existence of statistically significant cointegrating vector s relating mean level of emission and specific concentration ratio scr of emission to mean income level and lorenz ratio lr of income the empirical results confirm that the pattern of cross country income distribution has significant effect on the mean level of emission for all the country groups considered

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

political consumerism and public policy good complements against market failures political consumerism has become over the past years an ever growing phenomenon by which citizens express through their consumption their political environmental and ethical opinions this paper discusses political consumerism from an economic science perspective focusing on the link between political consumerism and public policies it wonders to what extent political consumerism may represent an effective and fair instrument against market failures overall it seems that it would be better to consider it as a complement to conventional public policies

self selection and the earnings of immigrants comment in a recent article in this review borias 1987 george borjas uses a standard model of self selection to demonstrate that immigrants in the united states may not necessarily be positively selected as is commonly assumed borjas empirical results based on u s census micro data merged with country of origin characteristics for 41 sending countries however do not provide clear or consistent results with respect to the immigration selection issue although they do confirm earlier findings that the characteristics of the countries of origin of u s immigrants explain a substantial proportion of the differences in their economic status jasso and rosenzweig 1986b the purpose of this note is to show that borjas results are themselves subject to biases due to additional processes of self selection in particular his inconclusive findings with respect to immigration selectivity arise from the use of a choice based sample enlargement of his highly selective sample of countries based on the number of foreign born in the united states yields results that appear to conform much more closely and consistently to conventional wisdom namely that the united states appears to attract those persons with above average skills we also provide evidence that changes in the earnings of aggregate immigrant entry cohorts used by borjas to measure the assimilation of immigrants reflect another evidently important selection process namely selective emigration the effects of country characteristics on the wages of the foreign born at entry immigration selectivity are thus not comparable to the effects of such variables on the changes in the characteristics of an immigrant cohort over time emigration selectivity the effects via immigration self selection of country of origin characteristics on the quality q of immigrants who migrate to a destination country is neatly summarized by borjas in his equation 12 with unobservables determining earnings normally distributed the expected quality of immigrants in the united states is given by

inflation targeting matters evidence from oecd economies sacrifice ratios using data from oecd economies we show that inflation targeters suffered smaller output losses during disinflations when compared to nontargeters we also study why some countries choose to inflation target while others do not and find that higher average inflation and smaller debt levels render the adoption of the regime more likely applying heckman s procedure to control for selection bias does not alter the link between inflation targeting and less costly disinflations

combining voluntary agreements and taxes an evaluation of the danish agreement scheme on energy efficiency in industry abstract in this paper the danish agreement scheme on energy efficiency in industry is described and evaluated the basis for this evaluation is an implementation study of the agreement scheme and five evaluation criteria examining the practical considerations related to the choice of policy instruments a distinct feature of the danish scheme is that it is closely connected to a co2 tax on trade and industry this connection is important for the understanding and the functioning of the scheme the scheme has certain advantages the prevention of free riding is effective the scheme is flexible over time and the agreements do actually have an impact on firm behaviour but there are also drawbacks the administrative costs and search costs are high and the impact on innovation and networking among firms is low

industrial long term agreements on energy efficiency in the netherlands a critical assessment of the monitoring methodologies and quantitative results abstract long term agreements ltas with industry were added to the mix of energy policy instruments in the netherlands at the beginning of the 1990s within a few years these agreements have become very important for the industrial energy conservation policy in this study we assessed the extent to which the targets set out by the government were achieved to this end we studied 1 whether the original policy targets for industry were adequately translated to the contracted ltas 2 whether the ltas achieved the contracted goals and 3 whether the monitoring methodologies that were developed ensure a complete comparable and objective monitoring of the energy intensity developments in manufacturing industry the policy target for manufacturing industry was to decrease energy intensity by 19 in the period 1989 2000 excluding feedstocks it turned out to be possible to contract ltas that cover 72 75 of the energy consumption in manufacturing industry the average of the contracted lta targets amounts to an 18 intensity decrease the average goal achievement of the ltas in the period 1989 1997 turned out to be in accordance with the contracted targets although more than half of the lta sectors are lagging behind the agreed rate of intensity decrease for each of the ltas a monitoring methodology was developed some aspects of these monitoring methodologies have resulted in the fact that the lta monitoring does not ensure a comparable and objective monitoring of the energy intensity results in the ltas overall we conclude that the monitoring of the energy intensity developments in the long term agreements sectors is insufficiently transparent we recommend a stricter enforcement of uniform monitoring requirements in a new generation of ltas and independent supervision and verification of the monitoring results

extending environmental management beyond the firm boundaries an empirical study of dutch food and beverage firms consumer demand for environmental sustainability and for affordable prices calls for cooperation and information exchange in food chains to reduce joint environmental impact known as externally oriented environmental management e em e em is increasingly regarded as a management tool to simultaneously improve environmental operational and business performance understanding the factors that influence managers to develop e em helps to design environmentally and economically sustainable food chains the prior research regarding these factors is not exhaustive and demanded a multi period approach this study expands the understanding of the factors that influence managers to develop e em with a multi period empirical research we address the effects of external institutional pressures regulative normative and culturally cognitive and the level of in company environmental management i em on e em which involves information exchange in the chain cooperation with suppliers and customers the analysis relies on survey data of 255 and 96 dutch food and beverage f b processors from 2002 and 2010 respectively the findings indicate that respondents have considerably improved i em over time i em requires in company pzrocedures ranging from environmental strategy formulation to the managerial review of achieved results to assure continuous improvement of environmental performance f b processors that had already achieved a high level of i em are more likely to develop e em also growing normative and culturally cognitive pressures from supply chain partners and increasingly from long term public private environmental covenants significantly influenced e em implementation however regulative pressure from public authorities had no impact it appeared that e em is influenced mostly by institutional pressures when the firms are less experienced with i em

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

voluntary agreements in environmental policy an empirical evaluation for the chilean case abstract in this paper the author assesses and discusses the chilean approach on voluntary environmental agreements based on a survey questionnaire performed in 322 facilities belonging to four industrial sectors the author evaluated the effectiveness and static efficiency of five voluntary agreements vas using the propensity score method the study found out that vas had a significant effect in encouraging the implementation of environmental initiatives although most of them represent incremental rather than radical improvements moreover whilst it confirms that vas can suffer from regulatory capture it also reveals that capture can coexist with significant environmental improvements in other areas regarding the static efficiency impact it suggests that vas succeeded in encouraging cost minimization in terms of operational and transaction costs furthermore this research documented that participation in an industrial association is by far the most significant variable associated with voluntary agreements and that regulatory threats and governmental funding are incentives of secondary importance finally it concludes by highlighting that the lack of public participation together with several institutional and political factors that subdue the ambitiousness of targets are the most serious drawbacks which should be addressed in order to avoid credibility issues of vas in the near future

democracy and environmental quality we develop and estimate an econometric model of the relationship between several local and global air pollutants and economic development while allowing for critical aspects of the socio political economic regime of a state we obtain empirical support for our hypothesis that democracy and its associated freedoms provide the conduit through which agents can exercise their preferences for environmental quality more effectively than under an autocratic regime thus leading to decreased concentrations or emissions of pollution however additional factors such as income inequality age distribution education and urbanization may mitigate or exacerbate the net effect of the type of political regime on pollution depending on the underlying societal preferences and the weights assigned to those preferences by the state

identifying the impacts of income inequality on co2 emissions empirical evidences from oecd countries and non oecd countries abstract the emergence of environmental quality challenges is rooted in social problems which mainly come from income inequality and power gap income inequality and climate change have been highlighted as hindering the achievement of sustainable development and environmental protection globally though existing literature has estimated the influences of income inequality on co2 emissions relatively little is known about the long run and short run effects from a cross national perspective therefore the aim of this study is to shed light on the long run and short run relationships between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions based on balanced country level panel dataset for 78 countries from 1990 to 2017 in order to understand how a country s economic level affects the link between inequality and co2 emissions this study classified the sample countries into three groups oecd countries low income non oecd countries and high income non oecd countries the fmols and dols model is applied to examine the relationship between the income inequality and per capita co2 emission meanwhile the estimates of an ardl model revealed the long run and short run effects our empirical results indicate that there is a long term cointegration relationship between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions higher income inequality promotes emission reductions in oecd countries and high income non oecd countries while the influences are insignificant in low income non oecd countries in the long run per capita income carbon intensity population size and urbanization were also considered in this study the estimates of an ardl model indicate that whilst income inequality does not have a significant impact on co2 emissions in the short run per capita national income positively affects co2 emissions meaning that income growth will accelerate emissions carbon intensity positively affects co2 emissions in the long term indicating that increased income facilitates increased energy use and emissions but that progress in co2 recycling technology may ultimately reduce emissions neither population size nor urbanization rate exerted any obvious effects on per capita co2 emissions from a policy perspective governments have an onerous task ahead of them in balancing economic efficiency and distributary justice lastly we provide insights for policy makers that in order to realize the goal of emission reductions in the long run it may be best to proceed by making reasonable national income redistribution policies and by adjusting the welfare system

are immigrants favorably self selected one of the standard propositions in the migration literature is that migrants tend to be favorably self selected for labor market success that is economic migrants are described as tending on average to be more able ambitious aggressive entrepreneurial or otherwise more favorably selected than similar individuals who choose to remain in their place of origin in recent years there have been challenges to the general proposition of the favorable selectivity of migrants in addressing this issue this paper considers alternative specifications of the migration model that are relevant for the issue of migrant selectivity excerpt

the relative efficiency of voluntary vs mandatory environmental regulations abstract increased use of voluntary programs for environmental protection as an alternative to mandatory approaches raises the issue of the relative efficiency of the two approaches this paper analyzes the efficiency of voluntary programs relative to mandatory programs in agriculture under the voluntary program producers adopt a land conservation practice and in turn the government provides technical and financial assistance the voluntary program is more efficient than a program that mandates adoption if and only if the deadweight losses of government expenditures under the voluntary program are less than the difference between private and public costs of government services plus the additional implementation costs of the mandatory program this necessary and sufficient condition is more likely to be satisfied when a the deadweight loss from raising government revenue is zero or small b government services are less rival c the costs of government services are lower than what farmers would have to pay for equivalent private services d the number of farms in the program is large and e the saving in implementation costs under the voluntary program is large and increases rapidly with program acreage

dutch sectoral energy intensity developments in international perspective 1987 2005 this paper makes use of a new dataset to investigate energy intensity developments in the netherlands over the period 1987 2005 the dataset allows for a comparison with 18 other oecd countries a key feature of our analysis is that we combine a cross country perspective with a high level of sectoral detail covering 49 sectors particularly innovative is our evaluation of energy intensity developments in a wide range of service sectors we find that across sectors energy intensity levels in the netherlands on average decreased only marginally and increased in services this performance is in general worse than the oecd average especially between 1987 and 1995 changes in the sectoral composition of the economy play an important role in explaining aggregate trends in the manufacturing sector about half of the efficiency improvements were undone by a shift towards a more energy intensive industry structure in contrast in the service sector efficiency decreased which was undone for about one third by a shift towards a less energy intensive sector structure

the relationship between energy resource depletion climate change health resources and the environmental kuznets curve evidence from the panel of selected developed countries abstract the objective of the study is to examine the relationship between energy resource depletion climate change health resources and the environmental kuznets curve ekc under the financial constraint environment in the panel of selected developed countries over the period of 2000 2013 the study employed panel generalized method of moments gmm estimate for robust inferences the results confirmed the existence of ekc hypothesis in the energy resource depletion model i e inverted u shaped relationship between energy resource depletion and gdp per capita in the selected developed countries the results of climate change model confirmed the u shaped relationship of perfluorocarbons pfc gas emission and particulate matter 2 5 micrometers pm 2 5 emissions with the per capita income the health resource model confirmed the existence of inverted u shaped relationship of infant deaths and health expenditures per capita with the per capita income while there is a u shaped relationship between incidence of tuberculosis tb and gdp per capita the other results indicate that carbon dioxide co 2 emissions increase sulfur hexafluoride sf 6 emissions and health expenditures fossil fuel energy consumption increases pfc gas emissions and pm 2 5 emissions energy demand increases pm 2 5 emissions and health expenditures and financial dummy d 2008 affected energy resource depletion pm 2 5 emissions greenhouse gas ghg emissions index infant deaths and health expenditures per capita

the nexus between income inequality and co2 emissions in turkey abstract environmental degradation and income inequality are two of the most important international debates that await immediate resolution despite that their interaction in the environmental economics literature has been very little analysis the aim of this study is to examine the impact of income distribution on the co2 emissions in turkey during 1984 2014 an autoregressive distributed lag model ardl test is employed to determine possible long term and short term nexus among the series the ardl test results show that the series are cointegrated and that income inequality has a positive effect on co2 emissions we also find that the environmental kuznets curve ekc is valid in turkey the toda yamamoto causality test denotes that gini coefficient is the granger cause of co2 emission the results show that deterioration in income distribution will reduce environmental quality in turkey which validates that political economy approach is valid in turkey study results can be an important guide for policymakers reducing income inequality for a new strategy in the fight against environmental problems may lead to a win win situation for turkey and the international community

policies influencing cleaner production the role of prices and regulation abstract low prices of inputs low costs associated with non product outputs and poor regulatory forcing have often not been conducive to diffusion of cleaner production however developments may be noted in the field of taxation subsidies liability and permits that tend to be more favourable to cleaner production extension thereof may favour cleaner production more in the future cleaner production stands to gain much by slashing subsidies and substantial ecotaxation of inputs and non product outputs similarly the regulatory enforcement of best available technologies liability for waste and tradable permits may help the diffusion of cleaner production

does skewed pattern of income distribution matter for the environmental quality evidence from selected brics economies with an application of quantile on quantile regression qqr approach abstract using annual data from 1980 to 2014 the study explores the relationship between carbon emissions and skewed pattern of income distribution among 4 selected brics economies e g brazil india china and south africa using quantile on quantile regression qqr technique of sim and zhou 2015 it tries to contribute towards an empirical understanding on the quantile structure of both the variables for the selected brics countries it finds for india and brazil that as income rises although both lower and upper income people degrade the environmental quality by releasing more co2 emissions but interestingly it is the poor who intensively degrade the environmental quality than the rich in sharp contrast for china and south africa it finds that it is the poor who relatively contribute less to the environmental degradation by reducing co2 emissions than the rich these findings have greater policy significances which are discussed at the concluding section in greater detail

selective immigration policies migrants education and welfare at origin abstract destination countries are increasingly adopting selective immigration policies these can effectively increase migrants average education even if one allows for endogenous schooling decisions and education policies at origin still more selective immigration policies can reduce social welfare at origin

new economic theories this paper analyses some of the most important spillovers of recent developments of economic theory into environmental economics attention is given to the anlaysis of sustainable economic development paths where endogenous growth models are used the implications of environmental dumping and more generally of policies concerning global environmental issues where new trade theories are very useful and the effectiveness of environmental policy instruments when markets are imperfectly competitive where industrial organisation theory is employed the paper does not only note recent developments in environmental economics but also relates these to the previous environmental economics literature thus it can be assessed whether new results actually improve our knowledge of crucial economic and environmental issues

income inequality and the development of environmental technologies within rich countries a large dispersion in the capacity of generating environmental innovations appears correlated to the level of inequality previous works analyze the relationship between inequality and environmental quality in a static setting this paper builds a dynamic model more suitable to analyze technological externalities driven by the emergence of a new demand for green products under fairly general assumptions on technology and preferences we show that 1 the relationship between inequality and environmental innovation is highly non linear and crucially depends on per capita income 2 an excessive inequality harms the development of environmental technologies especially in rich countries key to our results is the fact that externalities generated by pioneer consumers of green products benefit the entire population only for relatively low income distances the empirical analysis robustly confirms our theoretical results that is whereas for rich countries inequality negatively affects the diffusion of innovations per capita income is paramount in poorer ones

self selection and the earnings of immigrants reply my 1987 paper addresses a central question in the economics of immigration who are the immigrants it has been traditionally assumed that immigrants are positively selected that is immigrants are more skilled on average than the typical person in the source country one contribution of my theoretical analysis was to show that this assumption is not necessarily consistent with wealth maximizing behavior in fact under some conditions the immigrant flow may be negatively selected my original study focused only on the selection bias caused by immigrants endogenously sorting themselves out of the source country s population 2 guillermina jasso and mark rosenzweig point out that i ignored other types of selection biases in both my theoretical development and empirical framework these additional biases are due to 1 the selective emigration of the foreign born in the united states and 2 the fact that my empirical work was limited to immigrants originating in 41 source countries regarding the first of these points jasso and rosenzweig restate the well known fact that emigration or return migration is an important characteristic of the immigrant experience robert warren and jennifer marks peck 1980 for instance estimate that perhaps as many as 30 percent of immigrants leave the united states within a decade or two after their arrival jasso and rosenzweig however do not examine systematically how the selective emigration of the foreign born affects either the theory or the empirical analysis in essence their criticism simply asserts that selective emigration is likely to cause problems my 1987 paper however already made note of that fact p 538 moreover the biases caused by emigration were an integral part of my earlier critique of the econometric methodology used by most studies of immigrant earnings determination borjas 1985 pp 466 67 what is obviously needed is the generalization of both my theoretical and empirical frameworks to account for the emigration of the foreign born such a generalization however is not provided by jasso and rosenzweig and does not yet exist 3 the second point made by jasso and rosenzweig deals with the empirical results presented in my paper because i limited my analysis to immigrants originating in 41 countries the sample is not representative and serious selection biases may be at work obviously it is always better to use a more representative sample in the empirical analysis the data were limited to 41 source countries because i was concerned not only with immigrant wage levels but also with immigrant wage growth as recorded by the 2 10

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

heaven s swing door endogenous skills migration networks and the effectiveness of quality selective immigration policies a growing number of oecd countries are leaning toward the adoption of selective immigration policies which are expected to raise the quality or education level of migrants this view neglects two important dynamic effects the role of migration networks which could reduce the quality of migrants and the responsiveness of education decisions to the prospect of migration we propose a model of self selection into migration with endogenous education choices which predicts that migration networks and the quality of migrants can be positively associated when destination countries adopt sufficiently selective immigration policies empirical evidence presented as background motivation suggests that this is indeed the case

the role of negotiating tools in the environmental policy mix instruments determinants and effects of the environmental agreement abstract the environmental agreement ea is a policy instruments to address the need to protect and improve environmental quality from a legal point of view the ea represents different types of agreement which are mainly based on a contractual agreement between an individual and a third party to improve environmental performance to contribute to the current debate on this topic our research paper aims through a quantitative analysis to answer the questions on how effective a stringent environmental agreement is in terms of a facility s environmental performance and what the role of stakeholders is on its impact on production activities the econometric analysis shows that the impact of the environmental agreement on production activities significantly improves the facilities environmental performance and that it is influenced by several external influence groups

international migration self selection and the distribution of wages evidence from mexico and the united states we use the 1990 and 2000 mexican and u s population censuses to test borjas s negative selection hypothesis that the less skilled are those most likely to migrate from countries with high skill premia earnings inequality to countries with low skill premia earnings inequality we find that mexican immigrants in the united states are more educated than nonmigrants in mexico and were mexican immigrants to be paid according to current skill prices in mexico they would be concentrated in the middle of mexico s wage distribution these results are inconsistent with the negative selection hypothesis and instead suggest that there is intermediate selection of immigrants from mexico

voluntary environmental agreements good or bad news for environmental protection abstract there has been growing interest in the use of voluntary agreements vas as an environmental policy tool this article uses a simple model to determine whether vas are likely to lead to efficient environmental protection we consider cases where polluters are induced to participate either by a background threat of mandatory controls the stick approach or by cost sharing subsidies the carrot approach the results suggest that the overall impact on environmental quality could be positive or negative depending on a number of factors including the allocation of bargaining power the magnitude of the background threat and the social cost of funds

non mandatory approaches to environmental protection the approach to environmental protection has been evolving from a regulation driven adversarial government push approach to a more proactive approach involving voluntary and often business led initiatives to self regulate their environmental performance this has been accompanied by increasing provision of environmental information about firms and products to enlist market forces and communities in creating a demand for corporate environmental self regulation by signaling their preferences for environmentally friendly firms this paper provides an overview of the non mandatory approaches being used for environmental protection and surveys the existing theoretical literature analyzing the economic efficiency of such approaches relative to mandatory approaches it also discusses empirical findings on the factors motivating self regulation by firms and its implications for their economic and environmental performance it examines the existing evidence on the extent to which information disclosure is effective in generating pressures from investors and communities on firms to improve their environmental performance