eco labeling in commercial office markets do leed and energy star offices obtain multiple premiums this paper investigates the effect of eco labeling on rental rates sale prices and occupancy rates the consensus emerging from previous studies appears to be that investors in and occupiers of eco labeled buildings obtain a bundle of benefits related to lower operating costs reputation benefits and productivity higher in this study a hedonic model is used to test whether the presence of an eco label has a significantly positive effect on rental rates sale prices and occupancy rates of commercial office buildings in the us the results suggest that office buildings with energy star or leed eco labels obtain rental premia of approximately 3 5 dual certification produces an additive effect with rental premia estimated at 9 respective sale price premia for energy star and leed labeled office buildings are 18 and 25 the sale price premium for dual certification is estimated at 28 29 an occupancy premium could not be confirmed for leed labeled office buildings and only a small positive occupancy premium was found for energy star

a simple model of voice we think of voice as a means of information aggregation within groups operating in a variety of settings we explore how the characteristics of groups and their leaders influence voice in relatively homogeneous groups members farthest away from the leader have the best incentives to provide information and their voice tends to moderate policy decisions in large heterogeneous groups where leaders cannot identify individual members the possibilities for informational exchange are severely limited and any communication that exists pushes policies farther to the extreme

the diffusion of energy efficiency in building awareness of global warming and the extent of greenhouse gas emissions has focused more attention upon energy efficiency in building moreover the inventory of green office space in the u s has increased dramatically since the introduction of rating schemes that attest to the energy efficiency or sustainability of commercial buildings in some metropolitan areas the supply of certified office buildings has more than doubled in the last decade and there are a few metropolitan areas where green office space now accounts for more than a quarter of the total office stock in this paper we analyze the diffusion of buildings certified for energy efficiency across us property markets using a panel of 48 metropolitan areas msas observed over the last 15 years we trace the diffusion of green building practices across the country we then model the geographic patterns and dynamics of building certification relating industry composition changes in economic conditions characteristics of the local commercial property market and the presence of human capital to the crosssectional variation in energy efficient building technologies and the diffusion of those technologies over time understanding the determinants and the rate at which energyefficient building practices diffuse over space and time is important for designing policies to affect resource consumption in the built environment

can ecolabeling schemes preserve the environment a three stage game of production technology signal and price competition is developed to study the impact of eco labeling in a duopoly model of vertical product differentiation the production technology and the subsequent pollution level are non observable by consumers the only way to inform consumers about the environmental quality of the product is to stick an ecolabel on it however a polluting firm may also usurp the ecolabel by incurring a certain cost by assuming that consumers are altruistic and willing to pay for environmental quality we show that ecolabels can reduce the pollution level finally and importantly under restrictive conditions on labeling cost ecolabeling can constitute to some extent an environmentally effective and economically efficient policy however ecolabeling cannot alone internalize the whole negative externality until the optimum point

increased ecoefficiency and gross rebound effect evidence from usa and six european countries 1960 2002 despite increased efficiency in the use of natural resources the use of these resources continues to increase in most societies this paper examines the discrepancy between the potential decrease of use of natural resources as an effect of increased efficiency and actual use during the period 1960 2002 this difference was found to grow faster in the usa than the mean for six west european countries possible reasons for this difference between the two regions are analysed to reduce the anthropogenic flows of energy and material and the consequent deleterious effects on the biosphere it will become necessary to adapt consumption to degree of efficiency in the use of natural resources based on the comparison between the two regions some economic aspects of this issue are discussed

doing well by doing good green office buildings this paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of green buildings in the commercial sector value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates we match publicly available information on the addresses of energy star and leed rated office buildings to a commercial data source detailing the characteristics of u s office buildings and their rental rates we analyze the micro data on 694 certified green buildings and on 7489 other office buildings located within a quarter mile of the certified buildings we find systematic evidence that rents for green offices are about two percent higher than rents for comparable buildings located nearby effective rents i e rents adjusted for the occupancy levels in office buildings are about six percent higher in green buildings than in comparable office buildings nearby at prevailing capitalization rates conversion of the average non green building to an equivalent green building would add more than 5 million in market value these results are robust to the statistical models employed

a positive theory of fiscal deficits and government debt this paper considers an economy in which policymakers with different preferences alternate in office as a result of elections government debt is used strategically by each policymaker to influence the choices of his successors if different policymakers disagree about the desired composition of government spending between two public goods the economy exhibits a deficits bias that is debt accumulation is higher than it would be with a social planner the equilibrium level of debt is larger the larger is the degree of polarization between alternating governments and the less likely it is that the current government will be re elected

ecolabeling consumers preferences and taxation abstract ecolabeling is a means of reducing the information gap between consumers and producers we study the implication of ecolabeling a supposedly green good for a consumer s allocation of income between a dirty and the supposedly green good in the model the role of the ecolabel is to help product differentiation to give reliable information and to reduce informational asymmetries we show that a conscious consumer someone with a stronger green attitude or quality concerns demands more ecolabeled goods price oriented consumers demand fewer ecolabeled goods a subsidy resp tax on the price of the ecolabeled resp dirty good leads to a larger consumption of the ecolabeled resp dirty good whereas it may increase or decrease the demand for the dirty resp ecolabeled good depending on whether the consumer views both goods as gross substitutes or complements we then use a cross individual dataset of 22 568 consumers and show that the demand for ecolabeled goods increases strongly with the consciousness of the consumer but decreases for price oriented consumers ecolabel oriented consumers feel more informed more conscious consumers prefer a subsidy on green goods and a tax on dirty goods price oriented consumers do not care about the green subsidy but would vote against a tax on the dirty goods

development of a new energy efficiency rating system for existing residential buildings building energy efficiency rating systems have been established worldwide to systematically manage the energy consumption of existing buildings this study aimed to develop a new energy efficiency rating system for existing residential buildings from two perspectives i establishment of reasonable and fair criteria for the building energy efficiency rating system and ii establishment of comparative incentive and penalty programs to encourage the voluntary participation of all residents in the energy saving campaign based on the analysis of the conventional energy efficiency rating system for existing residential buildings this study was conducted in five steps i data collection and analysis ii correlation analysis between the household size and the co2 emission density i e co2 emission per unit area iii cluster formation based on results of the correlation analysis using a decision tree iv establishment of a new energy efficiency rating system for existing buildings and v establishment of incentive and penalty programs using advanced case based reasoning the proposed system can allow a policymaker to establish a reasonable and fair energy efficiency rating system for existing residential buildings and can encourage the voluntary participation of all residents in the energy saving campaign

are green products over priced this article investigates conditions under which high prices in conjunction with low levels of pollution signal environmentally clean products it is shown that when consumers cannot ascertain the environmental performance of products the price must be distorted upward to signal a clean product a clean producer saves less from emitting pollution and so raises price and restricts output with less reluctance than does a dirty producer the theoretical result of over pricing is consistent with the evidence that green products receive higher prices than conventional products however optimistic prior beliefs of high environmental performance may cause signaling to fail

joint dynamic pricing and lot sizing under competition abstract we study the joint dynamic pricing and lot sizing problem when firms operate in a competitive environment bearing in mind that a dynamic pricing strategy is successful when customers understand it we assume each firm selects prices from a discrete set the problem corresponds to a bertrand model so the pricing strategies of the firms should constitute a nash equilibrium given the combinatorial nature of the decisions computing the equilibrium in a tractable time may not be feasible for larger instances in order to compute the equilibrium efficiently we propose a framework consisting of solving iteratively mixed integer programming formulations the framework reduces the complexity of the problem by using the fact that pricing and inventory planning remain stable to marginal variations in competitors prices

one time only incentives and inventory policies abstract this paper presents a review of the literature available on inventory policies under incentives on a one time only basis it is quite a common industrial practice to offer special incentives to motivate the buyer to order in larger than regular order quantities such special deals are available for a limited time only the literature on inventory policies under conditions of incentives has been classified by the nature of incentives such as price discount and credit period a situation of announced price increase which is very similar to price discount is also reviewed the policy implications of various scenarios are highlighted and areas of future research are identified

dynamic lot sizing with price changes and price dependent holding costs abstract this paper proposes a new formulation of the dynamic lot sizing problem with price changes which considers the unit inventory holding costs in a period as a function of the procurement decisions made in previous periods in section 1 the problem is defined and some of its fundamental properties are identified a dynamic programming approach is developed to solve it when solutions are restricted to sequential extreme flows and results from location theory are used to derive an o t 2 algorithm which provides a provably optimal solution of an integer linear programming formulation of the general problem in section 2 a heuristic is developed for the case where the inventory carrying rates and the order costs are constant and where the item price can change once during the planning horizon permanent price increases permanent price decreases and temporary price reductions are considered in section 3 extensive testing of the various optimal and heuristic algorithms is reported our results show that in this context the two following intuitive actions usually lead to near optimal solutions accumulate stock at the lower price just prior to price increase and cut short on orders when a price decrease is imminent

too much of a good thing why altruism can harm the environment success of eco labeling schemes broadly defined varies among products and across countries based on a simple theoretical framework we show that the nature of environmental attributes among products i e private versus public and the consumer type i e egoist versus altruist shape the overall performance of such schemes in addition we demonstrate that altruistic consumers exhibiting a too high willingness to pay for the eco labeled product can inadvertently prevent egoistic consumers from purchasing it leading to a sub optimal outcome in terms of environmental performance several policy and managerial implications are drawn

conflicts and common interests in committees committees improve decisions by pooling members independent information but promote manipulation obfuscation and exaggeration of private information when members have conflicting preferences committee decision procedures transform continuous data into ordered ranks through voting this coarsens the transmission of information but controls strategic manipulations and allows some degree of information sharing each member becomes more cautious in casting the crucial vote than when he alone makes the decision based on own information increased quality of one member s information results in his casting the crucial vote more often committees make better decisions for members than does delegation

large electorates and decisive minorities there are many instances in which even in a democracy the political preferences held by a minority of the electorate are reflected in political outcomes it is shown that for a simple two alternative election environment characterized by costly voting and private information when the expected population is very large the alternative preferred by more expected zealous voters who have either large stakes in the outcome of the election or small costs of participating wins with high probability in any equilibrium even if the expected proportion of the entire electorate that shares that preference is arbitrarily small this is an undersirable outcome under either of two natural but very different normative criteria

is there a price premium for energy efficiency labels evidence from the introduction of a label in korea abstract this study examines the price premium from korea s energy efficiency grade label the korean government recently began energy certification of televisions providing a setting to analyze a possible price effect of the new label hedonic regression results seem to show that a price premium exists for products with the energy efficiency grade label however potential unobserved heterogeneity is a concern difference in difference and fixed effects models are used to capture the net effect of the label by controlling for time and product differences the results suggest that any price premium does not result from the energy efficiency label itself instead energy efficient products already had higher prices before the introduction of the energy efficiency label the finding turns our attention to the importance of careful design of labeling programs

social benefit certification as a game tourism ecocertification programs persist and proliferate despite low market penetration and apparent consumer indifference this has been viewed simply as an early adoption phase a two decade historical analysis of development patterns for 17 programs however suggests that they can be analysed as a multi move political game between corporate and civic advocates where neither can quit without losing the political game framework yields predictions which are testably different from a pure market early adopter framework it also draws a key distinction between consumer benefit and social benefit measures applicable to corporate social responsibility initiatives in many industry sectors

factors influencing commercial buildings to obtain green certificates abstractidentifying the key factors that influence commercial buildings decision to obtain voluntary green certificates is essential to building sustainability enhancement using commercial buildings in the state of new york multinomial logit and nested logit models demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between the characteristics of commercial buildings such as square footage lot size and years built and green certification more interestingly if a commercial building is occupied by its owner likelihood of green certification is actually smaller this finding not only confirms that ongoing energy savings are heavily discounted when deciding whether to incur the upfront cost of green certification but also suggests that the rental premium enjoyed by green buildings is likely greater in terms of present value than the expected operating cost savings another explanation could be that investor owners must operate in a competitive market for tenants while owner occupiers do not operate

the price premium for green labelled housing evidence from china the chinese central government introduced the chinese green building label in 2008 which makes china one of the few developing countries with an official rating system of buildings performance in sustainability this paper investigates the existence and magnitude of the price premium associated with this official green label in the residential sector based on a unique data set of green labelled newly built housing projects and their non labelled counterparts from around the country in 2013 an empirical analysis suggests that the labelled housing projects attract a price premium of 6 9 compared with their non labelled counterparts further analysis suggests that this official green label is more effective as a reliable signal of buildings energy efficiency in the chinese context compared with developers self advertised greenness these results provide preliminary evidence that with this official rating system the investment in buildings energy efficiency could be potentially profitable for ho

meetings with costly participation an empirical analysis we analyse a firm s decision to participate in public meetings which determine regulation using data from the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery we find that firms with a preference for extreme policies are much more likely to participate in public meetings than firms with a preference for moderate policies we also find that participation rates are higher for larger closer and more influential firms these results are of interest for several reasons voluntary meetings with costly participation are ubiquitous as an institution for resource allocation examples include faculty meetings parent teacher association meetings and condominium association meetings moreover the requirement that regulators allow and encourage public participation is an almost universal feature of the u s regulatory process 1 yet despite their importance meetings with costly participation are little studied and basic questions about them are unanswered who goes does participation vary with observable characteristics do meeting participants represent the interested population our analysis of the mid atlantic clam fishery answers these questions large nearby extremists participate in meetings with costly participation it is clear that these findings improve our understanding of voluntary participation in costly meetings and hence of most regulatory decisions taken in the u s however they also suggest 1 the administrative procedure act requires that all u s federal regulatory agencies shall give interested persons an opportunity to participate in the rule making through submission of written data views or arguments with or without the opportunity for oral presentation title 5 u s code section 553 c 1988 edition in corrosion proof fittings v environmental protection agency 1991 the supreme court showed its willingness to require that public opinion be adequately consulted in this case the court vacated proposed regulation because the environmental protection agency prematurely ended public hearings and deprived the public of sufficient opportunity to comment on analyse and influence the regulatory proceedings in this case public participation is mandated by the toxic substances control act rather than the administrative procedure act

does energy efficiency matter to home buyers an investigation of epc ratings and transaction prices in england abstract this paper investigates whether energy performance ratings as measured by mandatory energy performance certificates epcs are reflected in the sale prices of residential properties this is the first large scale empirical study of this topic in england involving 333 095 dwellings sold at least twice in the period from 1995 to 2012 applying hedonic regression and an augmented repeat sales regression we find a positive relationship between the energy efficiency rating of a dwelling and the transaction price per square metre the price effects of superior energy performance tend to be higher for terraced dwellings and flats compared to detached and semi detached dwellings the evidence is less clear cut for rates of house price growth but remains supportive of a positive association overall the results of this study suggest that energy efficiency labels have a measurable and significant impact on house prices in england

contracting problems and regulation the case of the fishery the inefficiencies of common property fisheries are of continuing concern to economists the early work by scott gordon 1954 and anthony scott 1955 outlined the problem and later studies by james crutchfield and giulio pontecorvo 1969 and frederick bell 1972 provided empirical estimates of the losses that result those studies were followed by the dynamic models of colin clark 1976 and james quirk and vernon smith 1970 of optimal harvest rates and the use of corrective taxes or quotas to achieve them but in spite of a large and growing literature and the persuasiveness of the outlined efficiency criteria most fisheries retain common property aspects with overcapitalization and excessive labor input why those conditions persist and the failure of the regulatory response to them are the issues addressed in this paper we examine a number of fisheries but focus on the texas shrimp industry which is one of the nation s most valuable fisheries for a single species and which shares the common property characteristics observed elsewhere it is considered overcapitalized and catch per unit of effort is falling 2 examination of the fishery reveals the many margins along which rent dissipation occurs and the nature of the regulations necessary for controlling fishing effort to avoid those losses the regulatory environment in texas is complicated by conflict within the fishery between inshore and offshore fishermen the latter assert that bay shrimping reduces the number of shrimp that successfully migrate to the gulf the inshore fishery is highlighted by another issue the recent resettlement of some 30 45 000 vietnamese refugees including many fishermen along the texas coast marine advisory service paul starr their entry has been met by hostility and violence from existing shrimpers who recognize that they are in an environment characterized by the absence of property rights bay shrimpers have lobbied the texas legislature for broad limits on new entrants yet ironically the sale of additional boats by individual shrimpers to the vietnamese has facilitated entry of the refugees into the fishery regulations in the texas shrimp and other fisheries are incomplete leaving many options for rent dissipation uncontrolled because of high contracting costs among fishermen and political factors that mold government actions contracting costs are high among heterogeneous fishermen who vary principally with regard to fishing skill 3 montana state university and texas a m university respectively we benefitted from comments by terry anderson raymond c battalio gardner brown oscar burt micha gisser wade griffin john r moroney anthony d scott peter temin and participants in workshops at texas a m university and the university of washington research assistance was provided by scott barnhart and phil mizzi funding was provided by sea grant texas a m university throughout this paper we use the terms common property and open access interchangeably here the terms describe a situation where no property rights group or individual exist s for the resource 2catch per unit of effort in the inshore texas gulf and federal gulf waters is presented for 1963 77 by w l griffin c g tydlacka and w e grant they show catch per unit of effort generally falling in inshore and offshore waters while catch per unit of effort fluctuates from year to year it falls from approximately 360 kg shrimp per unit of effort to 220 kg from 1963 to 1977 the common property nature of the fishery is reflected in the following statistics since 1975 the number of vessels has grown by 23 percent nelson swartz for fish houses the record of entry is similar between 1970 a d 1977 the number of firms grew from 259 to 287 though during that period many left the industry as others entered the number of fish houses was calculated from license data supplied by the texas parks and wildlife department the record of entry by fish houses suggests that monopsony as discussed by colin clark and gordon munro is absent in the fishery 3there may be minor differences in labor leisure choices and capital but our statistical evidence and discussions with fishermen indicate that catch variations are largely due to skill government regulations in the texas bays restrict capital and our empirical evidence shows boats to be relatively homogeneous

dynamic version of the economic lot size model this article originally appeared in management science october 1958 volume 5 number 1 pp 89 96 published by the institute of management sciences a forward algorithm for a solution to the following dynamic version of the economic lot size model is given allowing the possibility of demands for a single item inventory holding charges and setup costs to vary over n periods we desire a minimum total cost inventory management scheme which satisfies known demand in every period disjoint planning horizons are shown to be possible which eliminate the necessity of having data for the full n periods

the swing voter s curse the authors analyze two candidate elections in which some voters are uncertain about the realization of a state variable that affects the utility of all voters they demonstrate the existence of a swing voter s curse less informed indifferent voters strictly prefer to abstain rather than vote for either candidate even when voting is costless the swing voter s curse leads to the equilibrium result that a substantial fraction of the electorate will abstain even though all abstainers strictly prefer voting for one candidate over voting for another copyright 1996 by american economic association

meetings with costly participation we study a collective decision making process in which people interested in an issue may participate at a cost in a meeting and the resulting decision is a compromise among the participants preferences we show that the equilibrium number of participants is small and their positions are extreme and when the compromise is the median the outcome is likely to be random the model and its equilibria are consistent with evidence on the procedures and outcomes of us regulatory hearings jel d7 h0 l5

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables