assessing income population and technology impacts on co2 emissions in canada where s the ekc abstract this study investigates the macroeconomic forces underlying carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada in keeping with the relevant literature on environmental degradation three forces are expected to influence co2 emissions gross domestic product per capita gdp capita population and technological change while previous work has employed reduced form models that allow for non linear relationships between co2 and gdp capita it has been common practice to assume linear relationships between co2 and the latter two variables this study tests a more flexible model using a five region panel data set in canada over the period 1970 2000 findings indicate that gdp capita is unrelated to co2 that an inverted u shaped relationship exists with population and that a u shaped relationship exists with technology thus technological and population changes are supported over the commonly hypothesized environmental kuznets curve an inverted u shaped relationship between gdp capita and environmental degradation for affecting co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

testing the validity of contingent behavior trip responses while a number of validity tests exist for contingent valuation data to date there are very few literature examples for contingent behavior cb data the objective of this study is to test the validity of cb trip data for different levels of rock climbing access using data from surveys implemented before and after a policy restricting recreational access was imposed results from generalized negative binomial and seemingly unrelated poisson regression models show significant sensitivity to scope and suggest that cb data may be a valuable supplement to revealed preference data when policy proposals are outside the range of historical conditions copyright 2002 oxford university press

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

investigation of stated and revealed preferences for an elk hunting raffle the charter forest experiment at the valles caldera national preserve vcnp in new mexico provides land managers policymakers and researchers a unique opportunity to examine an alternative public land management institution the vcnp mature bull elk permit lottery has been the largest revenue generating recreation program at the preserve since the program s inception in 2002 this paper uses stated and revealed preference ticket purchase data collected through an online survey to estimate a set of ticket demand equations for the purpose of assessing revenue generation access and the willingness to donate to this program

policy evaluation with combined actual and contingent response data the city of marietta georgia experimentally switched from flat fee financing to volume based pricing for its trash services in january 1994 both before and during the experiment detailed data on individuals observed responses to the actual introduction and contingent behavioral responses to a hypothetical introduction of volume based pricing were collected this study applies these data and investigates the methodology of collecting contingent behavior data and their use in policy analysis in particular this study empirically evaluates the effect of experience with the policy on responses to contingent behavior questions and tests for potential bias in the contingent behavior data

the environmental responsibility of business is to increase its profits by creating value within the bounds of private property rights proponents of corporate social responsibility csr typically consider business as usual unsustainable building on historical evidence that long predates the modern environmental movement the contrary case is made that the interplay of voluntary exchange private property rights and self interest has generally resulted in the so called triple bottom line economic social and environmental through more efficient use of materials and the continual creation of higher quality resources however because market processes continually eliminate less competitive firms and tend to concentrate business activities geographically political pressure brought to bear by adversely affected vested interests often results in the creation of policies that cause greater environmental harm than would otherwise be evident environmental csr proponents often misinterpret these government failures as market failures and characteristically advocate policies that further distract firms from their core objective and resulting triple bottom line the article concludes by arguing that the most promising path toward truly sustainable development lies in the unwavering pursuit of profitability within the bounds of well defined and enforced private property rights copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

combining contingent valuation and travel cost data for the valuation of non market goods the travel cost method tcm has long been used to infer the economic value of nonmarket resources and public goods more recently contingent valuation cvm survey methods have gained popularity for eliciting these values here cvm survey responses are combined with tcm data on actual market behavior to estimate jointly both the parameters of the underlying utility function and its corresponding ordinary demand function this is a prototypical empirical example of a new modeling strategy variants of which should prove useful in many applications especially where reliance on a single valuation method is undesirable

estimating the demand for a new technology bt cotton and insecticide policies this article examines the potential demand for bt cotton in the southeast from information gathered in the first year of commercialization we combine revealed preference rp data on adoption of bt cotton varieties with stated preference sp data on willingness to adopt to estimate demand using a double bounded maximum likelihood procedure using estimated demand equations we simulate the costs of reducing conventional insecticide applications through subsidization of bt cotton results indicate that reducing cotton insecticide applications by 40 in the southeast would require a 21 acre subsidy with total annual program costs between 53 million and 60 million

identifying fiscal policy in effectiveness from the differential counter cyclicality of government spending in the interwar period differences across decades in the counter cyclical stance of fiscal policy can identify whether the growth in government spending affects output growth and so speeds recovery from a recession we study government spending reaction functions from the 1920s and 1930s for twenty countries there are two main findings first surprisingly government spending was less counter cyclical in the 1930s than in the 1920s second the growth of government spending did not have a significant effect on output growth so that there is little evidence that this feature of fiscal policy played a stabilizing role in the interwar period resume identifier le caractere effectif ou non de la politique fiscale a partir de la contra cyclicite differentielle des depenses gouvernementales pendant l entre deux guerres des differences dans le degre de contra cyclicite de la politique budgetaire peuvent servir a identifier si la croissance des depenses publiques a un effet sur la croissance de l output et accelere ainsi la reprise de l activite suivant une recession nous etudions des fonctions de reaction des depenses publiques pour les annees 1920 et 1930 ce pour vingt pays il en ressort deux resultats principaux premierement et fait surprenant les depenses publiques etaient moins contra cycliques durant les annees 1930 que 1920 deuxiemement la croissance des depenses publiques n a pas eu d effet significatif sur la croissance de l output ce qui permet de douter que cet aspect de la politique budgetaire ait joue un role stabilisateur durant l entre guerre

does neoclassical theory account for the effects of big fiscal shocks evidence from world war ii much debate surrounds the usefulness of the neoclassical growth model for assessing the macroeconomic impact of fiscal shocks we test the theory using data from world war ii which is by far the largest fiscal shock in the history of the united states we take observed changes in fiscal policy during the war as inputs into a parameterized dynamic general equilibrium model and compare the values of all variables in the model to the actual values of these variables in the data our main finding is that the theory quantitatively accounts for macroeconomic activity during this big fiscal shock

the impact of economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the economic growth and co2 emissions in azerbaijan a cointegration analysis is conducted over the period 1992 2013 for getting more robust results johansen ardlbt dols fmols and ccr methods are employed to explore cointegration and estimate long run coefficients we use cubic quadratic and linear specifications and conclude that the last one is an adequate representation for the impact of the economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan the results from the different cointegration methods are consistent with each other and show that the economic growth has a positive and statistically significant impact on the emissions in the long run implying that the ekc hypothesis does not hold for azerbaijan the income elasticity of co2 emissions using different methods is found to be between 0 7 and 0 8 moreover we find that any short run imbalance can be adjusted towards the long run equilibrium path within less than one year the paper concludes that measures to increase energy efficiency carbon pricing instruments in production and international domestic trade activities and nationwide social awareness programs to instruct about the negative consequences of pollution can be considered as relevant environmental policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions

neoclassical growth the j curve for abatement and the inverted u curve for pollution abstract this paper reexamines the neoclassical environmental growth model of forster to gain insights into the dynamic relationships among pollution abatement effort and economic development whereas the model has heretofore been used to examine steady state levels of capital consumption and environmental quality it also provides a theoretical basis for recent empirical research on j curves for abatement effort and inverted u curves for pollution

a theoretical basis for the environmental kuznets curve abstract this paper attempts to explain the environmental kuznets curve ekc or inverted u shaped relationship between income and environmental degradation in the framework of endogenous growth model considering a closed economy one part of capital is used for commodity production which generates pollution that degrades existing environment and the remaining part is used for abating pollution i e upgrading environment sufficient abatement activity improves restores environmental quality a sufficient abatement activity associated with commodity production could only lead optimally towards steady state the ratio of allocation of capital between two sectors production and abatement is fixed along the optimal path but it varies along the non optimal path that exists in the off steady state in the economy allocation of capital for abatement activity varies over time thus a change from insufficient to sufficient allocation of capital i e investment for abatement activity is the basis for an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental quality and economic growth

multiple equilibria in a stochastic implementation of dice with abrupt climate change abstract integrated assessment modeling of global climate change has focused primarily on gradually occurring changes in the climate system however atmospheric and earth scientists have become increasingly concerned that the climate system may be subject to abrupt discontinuous changes on short time scales and that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions could trigger such shifts incorporating this type of climate dynamics into economic or integrated assessment models can result in model non convexity and multiple equilibria and thus complicate policy analysis relative to models with unique globally optimal policies using a version of the nordhaus dice model amended in previous research by keller et al 2004 keller klaus benjamin m bolker david f bradford 2004 uncertain climate thresholds and optimal economic growth journal of environmental economics and management 48 1 723 741 in conjunction with a stochastic global optimization algorithm we generate level sets of solutions which helps identify multiple equilibria resulting from the potential abrupt cessation of the north atlantic thermohaline circulation we discuss the implications of this model geometry for formulating greenhouse gas abatement policy under uncertainty and suggest that this general approach may be useful for addressing a wide range of model non convexities including those related to endogenous technological change

great expectations and the end of the depression what ended the great depression in the united states this paper suggests that the recovery was driven by a shift in expectations this shift was triggered by president franklin delano roosevelt s fdr policy actions on the monetary policy side roosevelt abolished the gold standard and announced an explicit policy objective of inflating the price level to pre depression levels on the fiscal policy side roosevelt expanded real and deficit spending which helped make his policy objective credible the key to the recovery was the successful management of expecta tions about future policy roosevelt s rise to power is modeled as a policy regime change as in thomas sargent 1983 and peter temin and barry wigmore 1990 this paper formalizes temin and wigmore s argu ment in a repeated game setting using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model and argues that the regime change can account for the recovery in the model a regime change means the elimination of certain policy dogmas that constrain the actions of the government the regime change generates an endogenous shift in expectations due to a coordination of mon etary and fiscal policy this coordination ended the great depression by engineering a shift in expectations from contractionary i e the private sector expected future economic contrac tion and deflation to expansionary i e the public expected future economic expansion and inflation the expectation of higher future inflation lowered real interest rates thus stimulating demand while the expectation of higher future income stimulated demand by raising permanent income

from great depression to great credit crisis similarities differences and lessons the great depression of the 1930s and the great credit crisis of the 2000s had similar causes but elicited strikingly different policy responses while it remains too early to assess the effectiveness of current policy it is possible to analyse monetary and fiscal responses in the 1930s as a natural experiment or counterfactual capable of shedding light on the impact of current policies we employ vector autoregressions instrumental variables and qualitative evidence for 27 countries in the period 1925 39 the results suggest that monetary and fiscal stimulus was effective that where it did not make a difference it was not tried they shed light on the debate over fiscal multipliers in episodes of financial crisis they are consistent with multipliers at the higher end of those estimated in the recent literature and with the argument that the impact of fiscal stimulus will be greater when banking systems are dysfunctional and monetary policy is constrained by the zero bound miguel almunia agustin benetrix barry eichengreen kevin h o rourke and gisela rua

on measuring the effects of fiscal policy in recessions we do not have a good measure of the effects of fiscal policy in a recession because the methods that we use to estimate the effects of fiscal policy both those using the observed outcomes following different policies in aggregate data and those studying counterfactuals in fitted model economies almost entirely ignore the state of the economy and estimate the government multiplier which is presumably a weighted average of the one we care about the multiplier in a recession and one we care less about the multiplier in an expansion notable exceptions to this general claim sug gest this difference is potentially large our lack of knowledge stems significantly from the focus on linear dynamics vector autoregressions and linearized or close to linear dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge models our lack of knowledge also reflects a lack of data deep recessions are few and nonlinearities hard to measure the lack of statistical power in the estimation of nonlinear models using aggregate data can be addressed by exploiting estimates of partial equilibrium responses in disaggregated data microeconomic estimates of the partial equilibrium causal effects of a policy can discipline the causal channels inherent in any dsge model of the general equilibrium effects of policy microeconomic studies can also provide measures of the dependence of the effects of a policy on the states of different agents which is a key component of the dependence of the general equilibrium effects of fiscal policy on the state of the

reliability and predictive validity of contingent values does the nature of the good matter abstract because the contingent valuation mechanism cvm elicits verbal reports of maximum willingness to pay and not actual willingness to pay analysts have expressed doubts about the reliability and validity of contingent values for commodities such as environmental amenities this skepticism is usually attributed to the amorphous nature of the commodity and to peoples lack of familiarity or experience however our comparison of two commodities which lie at polar extremes of the private good public good continuum suggests that the nature of the good may have little influence on the reliability and predictive validity of the cvm instead aspects of the cvm itself e g explicit payment obligation may be more important for high intention behavior consistency

the macroeconomics of the great depression a comparative approach recently research on the causes of the great depression has shifted from a heavy emphasis on events in the united states to a broader more comparative approach that examines the interwar experiences of many countries simultaneously in this lecture i survey the current state of our knowledge about the depression from a comparative perspective on the aggregate demand side of the economy comparative analysis has greatly strengthened the empirical case for monetary shocks as a major driving force of the depression an interesting possibility suggested by this analysis is that the worldwide monetary collapse that began in 1931 may be interpreted as a jump from one nash equilibrium to another on the aggregate supply side comparative empirical studies provide support for both induced financial crisis and sticky nominal wages as mechanisms by which nominal shocks had real effects still unresolved is why nominal wages did not adjust more quickly in the face of mass unemployment this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

lessons from the 1930s great depression this paper provides a survey of the great depression comprising both a narrative account and a detailed review of the empirical evidence focusing especially on the experience of the united states we examine the reasons for and flawed resolution of the american banking crisis as well as the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy we also consider the pivotal role of the gold standard in the international transmission of the slump and leaving gold as a route to recovery policy lessons for today from the great depression are discussed as are some implications for macroeconomics

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part a concept causes and the co2 emissions case abstract the main purpose of this study is to capture the main features of the environmental kuznets curve ekc concept according to the ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected eventually to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the ekc concept leads many researchers from the early 1990s to assume that each economy should focus on its growth and any environmental problems will be eventually eliminated by the process of economic growth several studies attempt to test empirically the ekc hypothesis using data on many countries and examining various types of environmental degradation while other studies examine the underlying factors that may drive such a relationship this article reviews the evolution of the ekc concept and the possible causes of an ekc pattern like the distribution of income the international trade pollution haven hypothesis structural changes technical progress and improvements in energy efficiency institutions and governance and consumer preferences as co2 emissions are a pollutant with global effects several studies deal with the possible ekc pattern for co2 emissions and these studies are discussed separately the various critiques on the ekc concept are reviewed in the second article of this work

the demand for solid waste disposal in this paper we estimate the elasticity of demand for landfill disposal of municipal solid waste using data from the portland oregon metropolitan area efficiency losses associated with deviations from marginal cost pricing of disposal services are then derived the efficiency losses of small deviations from long run marginal disposal costs are not large however many municipalities finance solid waste services from general tax revenues in which case waste generators effectively face zero marginal costs here the efficiency losses are much larger indicating that communities would benefit from introducing volume or weight based pricing

energy efficiency rebound effects and the environmental kuznets curve technological change is one factor used to justify the existence of an environmental kuznets curve and technological improvements have been argued to be a key factor in mitigating the impacts of economic growth on environmental quality in this paper we use a cge model of the scottish economy to consider the factors influencing the impacts of one form of technological change improvements in energy efficiency on absolute levels of co2 emissions on the carbon intensity of the economy co2 emissions relative to real gdp and the per capita ekc relationship these factors include the elasticity of substitution between energy and non energy inputs responses in the labour market and the structure of the economy our results demonstrate the key role played by the general equilibrium price elasticity of demand for energy and the relative influence of different factors on this parameter

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

activist fiscal policy during and after the great recession that began in december 2007 the u s federal government enacted several rounds of activist fiscal policy in this paper we review the recent evolution of thinking and evidence regarding the effectiveness of activist fiscal policy although fiscal interventions aimed at stimulating and stabilizing the economy have returned to common use their efficacy remains controversial we review the debate about the traditional types of fiscal policy interventions such as broad based tax cuts and spending increases as well as more targeted policies while there have been improvements in estimates of the effects of broad based policies much of what has been learned recently concerns how such multipliers might vary with respect to economic conditions such as the credit market disruptions and very low interest rates that were central features of the great recession the eclectic and innovative interventions by the federal reserve and other central banks during this period highlight the imprecise divisions between monetary and fiscal policy and the many channels through which fiscal policies can be implemented

macroeconomic effects from government purchases and taxes for u s annual data that include world war ii the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0 4 0 5 contemporaneously and 0 6 0 7 over 2 years if the change in defense spending is permanent gauged by ramey s defense news variable the multipliers are higher by 0 1 0 2 since all estimated multipliers are significantly less than 1 greater spending crowds out other components of gdp particularly investment the lack of good instruments prevents estimation of reliable multipliers for nondefense purchases multipliers in the literature of two or more likely reflect reverse causation from gdp to nondefense purchases increases in average marginal income tax rates measured by a newly constructed time series have significantly negative effects on gdp when interpreted as a tax multiplier the magnitude is around 1 1 the combination of the estimated spending and tax multipliers implies that the balanced budget multiplier for defense spending is negative we have some evidence that tax changes affect gdp mainly through substitution effects rather than wealth effects

viewpoint understanding the great depression bernanke 2000 and james 2001 it is now commonplace to view the depression from an international perspective and to test causal hypotheses by comparing the experiences of countries that endured more and less severe cyclical downturns this is in contrast with the earlier generation of scholarship notably the influential work of friedman and schwartz 1963 and temin 1976 which viewed the depression as centred in the united states and focused on shocks and policies in that country specific hypotheses associated with the global perspective continue to be disputed but there seems little question that the international view serves as a point of departure for a growing portion of recent scholarship whether this new research has produced a scholarly consensus is another matter in this paper i ask whether it is possible to arrive at such a consensus by synthesizing the old and new literatures i describe a perspective that views the great depression as a global phenomenon emphasizing linkages among countries and the destabilizing influence of the international monetary and financial system but that at the same time acknowledges the uniquely important character of events and policies in the united states i thereby suggest that the opposition between the old and new or u s centric and global views of the great depression may ultimately prove artificial the task for macroeconomic and historical scholarship

scarcity growth and r d abstract the limits to economic growth due to resource scarcity can be alleviated only by the development of backstop substitutes this paper combines resource based economic growth with r d to reduce the cost of backstop technologies characterizing the entire dynamics of optimal growth and r d processes we find that an economy s growth prospects depend on its type as determined by its production technology and learning ability and by its knowledge capital endowment a wide variety of growth patterns emerges ranging from cases in which an economy that without r d eventually stagnates converges to a steady state is diverted by r d onto a path of sustained growth to cases in which r d is not warranted resource scarcity is shown to encourage r d due to the increased reliance on the backstop technology

economic development and the energy intensity of human well being evidence from the gcc countries abstract this paper empirically investigates the effect of economic development on the energy intensity of human well being eiwb in the gulf cooperation council gcc during the period 1995 2012 we employ a time series cross sectional prais winsten regression model with panel corrected standard errors pcse we conclude that economic development has had a significant positive impact on eiwb during the period 1995 2012 the results indicate that the stress on the environment had increased in a noticeable manner from 1995 until 2006 however over the period 2007 2012 the stress went back to the level observed in 1995 this observation is unfortunate from the perspective sustainable economics

augmenting travel cost models with contingent behavior data this paper proposes contingent behavior survey questions as a valuable supplement to observed data in travel cost models of non market demand for recreational resources a set of observed and contingent behavior results for each survey respondent allows the researcher to control for individual heterogeneity by taking advantage of panel data methods when exploring the nature of respondent demands the contingent scenarios also provide opportunities to a test for differences between observed and contingent preferences and or b assess likely demands under conditionsbeyond the domain of observed variation in costs or resource attributes most importantly contingent scenarios allow the researcher to imposeexogenously varying travel costs exogenous imposition of travel costs together with panel methods reduces the omitted variables bias that plagues observed data travel cost models of recreational demand using a convenience sample of data for illustrative purposes we show how to estimate the demand for recreational angling by combining observed and contingent behavior data we begin with simple naive pooled poisson models and progress to more theoretically appropriate fixed effects panel poisson specifications

combining revealed and stated preference data to estimate the nonmarket value of ecological services an assessment of the state of the science this paper reviews the marketing transportation and environmental economics literature on the joint estimation of revealed preference rp and stated preference sp data the rp and sp approaches are first described with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each recognizing these strengths and weaknesses the potential gains from combining data are described a classification system for combined data that emphasizes the type of data combination and the econometric models used is proposed a methodological review of the literature is pursued based on this classification system examples from the environmental economics literature are highlighted a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of jointly estimated model is then presented suggestions for future research in particular opportunities for application of these models to environmental quality valuation are presented

output emissions and technology some thoughts abstract the principal goal of this article is to identify the implications of a binding emission constraint on a firm s optimal capital labor ratio and to determine whether it is appropriate to write a firm s production function as an increasing function of its emissions alone i find that even though a firm s supply curve may be written as a positive function of its emissions it is not appropriate to write the production technology as an increasing function of only its emissions except under special circumstances

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

are there increasing returns to pollution abatement empirical analytics of the environmental kuznets curve in pesticides abstract according to the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis economic growth and the reduction of environmental degradation are compatible goals an inverted u shaped relationship between economic performance and environmental pollution suggests that empirically an economy is associated with smaller levels of pollution after some threshold income point one potential explanation for the empirical evidence of an ekc is increasing returns to pollution abatement where the abatement efficiency rises with an increase in the scale of abatement doubling the clean up efforts more than doubles the abatement of pollution as this efficiency gain makes abatement less expensive pollution might fall as more abatement is undertaken this study tests the hypothesis that there are increasing returns to abating pollution empirical evidence on environmental risks in the us agricultural sector since 1970 support the existence of increasing returns in addition i estimate the productivity of pollution abatement using refined empirical productivity measurement methods and explicitly control the level of technology the results show the importance of including an environmental productivity variable in the ekc framework

an economic analysis of household recycling of solid wastes the case of portland oregon abstract solid waste is one of the residuals generated by economic activities faced with rising disposal costs communities are implementing programs to encourage recycling activities this paper investigates the role of price incentives and other socio economic factors in household recycling participation in recycling is modeled as an ordered probit choice using a large sample of households from the portland oregon metropolitan area demand for solid waste collection is estimated using two stage least squares results indicate that increases in disposal fees encourage recycling although demand for solid waste collection services is not reduced substantially

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

technical progress structural change and the environmental kuznets curve abstract the paper shows that under reasonable assumptions about technical progress a positive sustainable growth rate fails to exist the argument is that a growing part of income has to be spent for continuing technical progress in order to compensate the pollution effects of growth hence in the long run either the sustainability condition will be violated or the growth rate must decline to zero furthermore in finite time the level of wealth will decrease despite growing income and a constant pollution level thus further growth is no longer reasonable similar arguments also hold for the environmental effects of structural change favoring less pollution intensive economic activities an evolutionary change of goods and production technology may shift the limits of growth and is hence a prerequisite for a long run ekc

sustainable growth and the environmental kuznets curve abstract this paper develops an endogenous growth model with pollution and both human and physical capital human capital is produced cleanly and physical capital can be used for pollution control economic growth is sustainable in the long run it is optimal for human capital to grow more rapidly than physical capital output and consumption while pollution declines for realistic parameter values our results differ sharply from stokey s result for an ak technology that sustained economic growth is not optimal the model can generate an environmental kuznets curve a pollution tax or a voucher system can implement the pareto efficiency solution

us monetary and fiscal policy in the 1930s the paper provides a survey of fiscal and monetary policies during the 1930s under the hoover and roosevelt administrations and how they influenced the policies during the recent great recession the discussion of the causal impacts of monetary policy focuses on papers written in the last decade and the findings of scholars using dynamic structural general equilibrium modelling the discussion of fiscal policy shows why economists do not see the new deal as a keynesian stimulus describes the significant shift toward excise taxation during the 1930s and surveys estimates of the impact of federal spending on local economies the paper concludes with discussion of the lessons for the present from 1930s monetary and fiscal policy

can government purchases stimulate the economy this essay briefly reviews the state of knowledge about the government spending multiplier drawing on theoretical work aggregate empirical estimates from the united states as well as cross locality estimates i assess the likely range of multiplier values for the experiment most relevant to the stimulus package debate a temporary deficit financed increase in government purchases i conclude that the multiplier for this type of spending is probably between 0 8 and 1 5 jel e23 e62 h50

towards an integrated framework for development and environment policy the dynamics of environmental kuznets curves abstract environmental kuznets curves ekcs have recently received considerable attention in development and environment policy but little is known on how the interaction between ecological and economic factors may result in an ekc or other qualitatively different outcomes we introduce a restricted class of vector valued differential equations for representing the evolution of socioeconomic and environmental variables which influence or are influenced by the process of economic development our model includes not only the complete path of each variable over time but also the highly critical interactions among multiple variables we demonstrate analytically and numerically that among a multiplicity of possible outcomes an inverted u pattern can only be obtained under specific circumstances and requires attention to the multiple factors which form the economic environmental system rather than a single dominant one

british monetary and fiscal policy in the 1930s current economic turbulence has revived interest in interwar macroeconomic instability and policy this paper provides a guide to the current state of knowledge on british macroeconomic policy between 1929 and the eve of the second world war for today s economists and policy makers mindful that some will seek lessons from this earlier age it makes clear the very particular economic and policy context of the time including the marked difference between british and american economic performance and policies and the challenge posed by the massive rise in debt brought about by the first world war knowledge transfer is possible here for policy learning but what transpires is that lessons are typically stronger as negatives than as positives namely what should not be done in general as against what might be done this largely situation specific the focus is the role and effectiveness of the monetary and fiscal policies pursued together with an assessment of the principal policy not adopted namely the keynesian solution of significant loan financed public works to remedy mass unemployment the analysis is comparative with respect to us macroeconomic economic performance and policy it explores the different macroeconomic shocks of the contraction phase the term great depression is not really appropriate to the british experience in the two countries comparative policy regimes and then in turn analyses the policy mix and policy effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy including for britain the counterfactual keynesian solution a business cycle periodization is adopted with the key role for the abandonment of the gold standard in terms of regaining freedom of choice in macroeconomic policy itself experiencing significant developments after 1931 the traditional role of the cheap money induced housing boom in britain s post 1932 economic recovery is reaffirmed the impact of the fiscal policies actually pursued are then discussed as are assessments of the likely effectiveness of the keynesian solution had the 1929 liberal party s we can conquer unemployment spending package been implemented

the economics of household solid waste generation and disposal abstract we develop a household production model of waste management that explicitly incorporates many of the technical and behavioral elements germane to current regulatory and non regulatory solid waste policy initiatives examination of first order conditions shows the interaction among household preferences these production options and external prices and fees a simplified simulation of our model illustrates these relationships showing that household response elasticities can vary widely over common price ranges and that relatively large household welfare gains may be obtained by adopting curbside recycling and unit pricing programs

environmental externalities and immiserizing structural changes in an economy with heterogeneous agents the way in which natural and physical capital are accumulated distributed and harnessed underpins the functioning and sustainability of the productive system of each society as well as its social stratification significant changes in the interactions between natural and physical capital accumulation give rise to processes of structural change sc which affect not only sectoral composition of the productive system but also social equity and environmental quality we propose a taxonomy of different scs on the basis of distributive environmental and economic outcomes and we study a two sector model with environmental externalities to identify under which conditions each sc can occur our model shows how the type of sc is shaped by the link between agents heterogeneity in terms of productive asset endowment and their vulnerability to environmental degradation in particular we find that a sc associated with reduction in poverty and in environmental pressures can occur only if productivity of the physical capital intensive sector increases but its rate of environmental impact remains relatively lower than that of the natural capital intensive sector

consistency in mixed demand systems contingent valuation and travel cost data in contrast to previous literature we propose a consistency test that does not impose any particular common functional form for the preference structure underlying the travel cost tc and contingent valuation cv models we derive testable consistency conditions between tc and cv data in the context of mixed demand systems when valuing changes in environmental quality these conditions are a subset of the rationality conditions the proposed consistency tests are implemented combining tc and cv data the empirical results show that it is possible to combine stated tc and cv but not revealed tc and cv data

models as usual for unusual risks on the value of catastrophic climate change we study the role of alternative intertemporal preference representations in a model of economic growth stock pollutant and endogenous risk of catastrophic collapse we contrast the traditional discounted utility model which assumes risk neutrality with respect to intertemporal utility with a multiplicative choice model that displays risk aversion in that dimension first we show that both representations of preferences can rationalize the same business as usual economy for a given interest rate and no pollution externality second once we introduce a collapse risk whose hazard rate is a function of the pollution stock multiplicative preferences recommend a much more stringent policy response an illustration in the context of climate change indicates that switching to the multiplicative preference representation has a similar effect in terms of policy recommendations as scaling up the schedule of the hazard rate by a factor of 100

the impact of information on environmental commodity valuation decisions a conceptual model is developed which provides insight into how information affects willingness to pay for environmental commodities a refutable hypothesis of the effects of a specific information type on the magnitude of willingness to pay for an environmental commodity is developed this hypothesis is tested using a contingent valuation method experiment results indicate that information affects willingness to pay in a theoretically plausible manner the results support the contention that information is important for accurate environmental commodity consumer valuations

exchange rate regimes in the modern era fixed floating and flaky this paper provides a selective survey of the incidence causes and consequences of a country s choice of its exchange rate regime i begin with a critical review of michael klein and jay c shambaugh s 2010 book exchange rate regimes in the modern era and then proceed to provide an alternative overview of what the economics profession knows and needs to know about exchange rate regimes while a fixed exchange rate with capital mobility is a well defined monetary regime floating is not thus it is unclear whether it is theoretically sensible to compare countries across exchange rate regimes this comparison is quite difficult to make empirically it is often hard to figure out what the exchange rate regime of a country is in practice since there are multiple conflicting regime classifications more importantly similar countries choose radically different exchange rate regimes without substantive consequences for macroeconomic outcomes like output growth and inflation that is the profession knows surprisingly little about either the causes or consequences of national choices of exchange rate regimes but since the consequences of these choices are small understanding their causes is of only academic interest jel e52 f33

willingness to pay for curbside recycling with detection and mitigation of hypothetical bias in this article we estimate willingness to pay for curbside recycling using a unique data set we also test for and detect significant hypothetical bias using stated and revealed preference data a short scripted cheap talk statement is used to mitigate the bias and provide more efficient estimates of the welfare impacts of curbside recycling programs copyright 2003 oxford university press

climate change and uneven development in this paper using a theoretical model with endogenous capital depreciation we study the effects of climate change and adaptation on long run development we show that climate change affects economic growth depending on climate exposure and adaptation efficiency which are asymmetric between different countries poor countries are likely to be hurt more because of the negative effects of climate change on the rate of depreciation of the assets that represent the engine of growth these asymmetries generally induce growth deficits and unsustainability traps in less developed economies

the environmental kuznets curve and the structural change hypothesis we provide a very simple macroeconomic investigation of the role that structural changes might play in generating inverted u shaped income pollution relationships differently from previous research which mainly focuses on empirical static or general equilibrium models we develop a standard balanced growth path bgp analysis we show that along the bgp equilibrium an inverted u shaped income pollution relationship may occur as a response to structural changes but whether this is the case or not it will crucially depend upon the magnitude of a production externality parameter moreover we show that the negative relationship between income and pollution can only be a transitory phenomenon and in the long run pollution will increase as income rises generating overall an n shaped pattern

government spending shocks in quarterly and annual time series government spending shocks are frequently identified in quarterly time series data by ruling out a contemporaneous response of government spending to other macroeconomic aggregates we provide evidence that this assumption may not be too restrictive for annual time series data

a small open economy in depression lessons from canada in the 1930s this paper tests the hypothesis that idiosyncratic u s disturbances and their inter national propagation can account for the global depression exploiting common stochastic trends in u s and canadian interwar data we estimate a small open economy model for canada that decomposes output fluctuations into sources identifiable with world and country specific disturbances we find that the onset depth and duration of output collapse in both canada and the united states are primarily attributable to a common permanent output shock leaving little significant role for idiosyncratic disturbances originating in either economy

intra industry trade in intermediate products pollution and internationally increasing returns this paper examines the relationship between intra industry trade in intermediate products pollution and increasing returns we develop a two country model in which production occurs in two stages final and intermediate good production intermediate goods are produced under monopolistic competition and final good production exhibits increasing returns with respect to the number of varieties of intermediates pollution occurs in the production of the final good when polluting intermediates are used we analyze the effects of international trade in intermediate products on pollution output and welfare under an endogenous tax scenario and with two types of pollution functions the results show that because of increasing returns international trade either leads to lower total pollution in each country or lower pollution per unit of output in at least one country in addition intra industry trade causes countries to import the environmental quality of their trading partners

a tradable permit system in an intertemporal economy it is known that in an intertemporal competitive economy a tradable permit system may not achieve efficiency without setting appropriate permit interest rates i e rewards for holding permits to find the rates however we need to know in advance the path of efficient permit prices which is difficult to obtain this study intends to solve this problem in two ways first we analyze a special case in which the permit interest rates are given by a simple rule for example if the marginal abatement cost of pollution emission is constant then the appropriate rate is to equal the monetary interest rate as is the case for global warming if the damage is caused in the future far beyond the planning period of the environmental program the appropriate rate coincides with the marginal self recovery of environmental stock under certain conditions as a second approach we propose a tradable permit system with a permit bank as a mechanism by which the permit interest rates are generated endogenously without governmental intervention other than the issuance of permits however we also show that this approach raises the problem of indeterminacy of the equilibrium

a tale of two elasticities a general theoretical framework for the environmental kuznets curve analysis abstract we show that a variety of seemingly diverse concepts used to theoretically explaining the ekc have a common origin in two key preference and production elasticities we also prove that they jointly correspond to a unique underlying preference technology theoretical framework

household behavior under alternative pay as you throw systems for solid waste disposal in 1994 residents of marietta georgia participated in a pay as you throw solid waste demonstration project rather than pay a fixed monthly fee for collection half of the resi dents paid a fee per reusable trash can and half paid for each nonreusable trash bag collected data from both a sample of households and city wide totals indicate that the programs signifi cantly reduced waste set outs even after account ingfor increases in unpriced recycling the bag program caused larger reductions 36 than the subscription can program 14 rough esti mates of the program indicate both savings for residents and social welfare increases jel q20

voting for pollution policy the importance of income inequality and openness to trade abstract this paper analyzes how openness and the distribution of factor ownership interact to determine individual and aggregate demand for pollution policy analysis of voter preferences in autarky shows that an increased stake in either the dirty or the clean industry can induce an individual voter to prefer stricter environmental policy similarly the paper shows that poorer voters may be the greener voters within an electorate the model also reveals that the incidence of pollution policy depends upon a country s trade regime with consequences for the direction in which income inequality influences aggregate demand for pollution policy

application of the distance function to nonmarket valuation of environmental goods and services an illustrative example abstract this paper develops and implements a unique formulation of a household production model in that technology is characterized as a distance function the properties of the distance function allow for the derivation of shadow prices for the inputs and outputs associated with household production which can be applied to the problem of valuing nonmarket goods or activities the approach requires only one input to or output of household production to bear a price the derivation of shadow prices for all other household inputs outputs follows from the properties of the distance function i demonstrate the approach using data on the waste management activities of a sample of households from marietta georgia and by calculating shadow prices for the nonmarket activity of recycling

status concern and the exploitation of common pool renewable resources we examine the impact of social status concern in a common pool renewable resource oligopoly a small number of players share access to a common pool resource and sell their production in a common market where they are oligopolists we depart from the mainstream literature on common pool resource oligopolies by considering that each player cares about her social status we allow for two channels to impact a player s welfare harvest and profits under the first channel a player has a bump in her utility when her harvest is larger than the average harvest of the rest of the players in this case we show that the presence of this channel exacerbates the tragedy of the commons under the second channel a player enjoys a bump in her utility if she manages to earn more profits than the average profits of the other players in this case we show that social status concern may temporarily alleviate the tragedy of the commons it results in a decrease of extraction over an interval of stock sizes

the role of question order and respondent experience in contingent valuation studies abstract grand canyon white water boating was used to address issues in contingent valuation of question ordering and respondent experience question ordering effects were not identified for experienced boaters but did occur in some estimates for less experienced boaters an experience effect is further suggested if respondents value their actual white water trips differently than written scenarios of trips no effect was identified for experienced boaters but a significant difference did occur for less experienced boaters significant differences for less experienced boaters suggest that respondent experience may play a role in value formation resulting in survey instrument effects in valuation estimates