design and analysis of simulated consumer choice or allocation experiments an approach based on aggregate data the authors integrate concepts in conjoint analysis and discrete choice theory in econometrics to develop a new approach to the design and analysis of controlled consumer choice or resource allocat

do labor market policies have displacement effects evidence from a clustered randomized experiment this article reports the results from a randomized experiment designed to evaluate the direct and indirect displacement impacts of job placement assistance on the labor market outcomes of young educated job seekers in france we use a two step design in the first step the proportions of job seekers to be assigned to treatment 0 25 50 75 or 100 were randomly drawn for each of the 235 labor markets e g cities participating in the experiment then in each labor market eligible job seekers were randomly assigned to the treatment following this proportion after eight months eligible unemployed youths who were assigned to the program were significantly more likely to have found a stable job than those who were not but these gains are transitory and they appear to have come partly at the expense of eligible workers who did not benefit from the program particularly in labor markets where they compete mainly with other educated workers and in weak labor markets overall the program seems to have had very little net benefits

indirect effects of an aid program how do cash transfers affect ineligibles consumption cash transfers to eligible households indirectly increase the consumption of ineligible households living in the same villages this effect operates through insurance and credit markets ineligible households benefit from the transfers by receiving more gifts and loans and by reducing their savings thus the transfers benefit the local economy at large looking only at the effect on the treated underestimates the impact one should analyze the effects of this class of programs on the entire local economy rather than on the treated only and use a village level randomization rather than selecting treatment and control subjects from the same community

frontiers of climate change economics the economics of climate change is an active field of research the contributions to a special issue are put in context of the literature and it is suggested that second best issues such as carbon leakage and the green paradox need to be complemented with a political economy analysis of why certain instruments are politically infeasible and with intra and intergenerational analyses of the impact of climate policy a case is also made for more empirical work on the gradual and catastrophic damages of global warming

protest responses and willingness to pay attitude toward paying for stormwater pollution abatement abstract in contingent valuation cv surveys there is often a proportion of individuals who are not willing to pay to obtain avoid an increase decrease in some attribute of a particular environmental public good some of these respondents might protest an aspect of the cv survey e g payment vehicle or the behavioral intention i e willingness to pay wtp constituting the measure of economic value respondents attitudes toward the behavior of paying for a particular public good may contribute to the decision to pay independent of other explanatory variables such as the price of the intervention household income and methodological characteristics of the cv survey moreover attitude toward paying for the good may manifest in protest responses as a reaction to higher prices and methodological factors e g the payment vehicle to the extent that protest beliefs are dependent on such matters of survey design they may be alleviated through changes in cv methodology however to the extent that protest beliefs are a reaction to the act of paying methodological remedies may not be effective cv surveys of stormwater pollution abatement were conducted in four australian state capital cities the surveys differed with respect to the type of pollution abatement intervention the payment regime the vector of prices used in the dichotomous choice question and the institution responsible for implementing the stormwater pollution intervention protest beliefs were measured for all respondents irrespective of their responses to the wtp question results indicated that attitude toward paying underpinned protest beliefs regarding the role of government in stormwater management and individual rights to unpolluted waterways this attitude was present in each city sample despite methodological differences between the cv surveys attitude toward paying explained variability in wtp and was a larger predictor than was price household income was significantly associated with attitude toward paying and this relationship was also invariant over city samples protest beliefs were not independent of either the wtp question or demographic factors such as household income rather these beliefs were related to wtp through attitudes toward the act of paying for stormwater pollution abatement censoring protest responses in the present study would bias cv samples toward those individuals who are favorably disposed toward paying for environmental public goods and those from higher income households

why do low income households not use food stamps evidence from an experiment this paper explores why many low income households do not participate in the food stamp program by analyzing detailed income and asset data from a sample of low income households we find that many households that appear to be eligible for food stamps in fact are not eligible by conducting an experiment designed to investigate the role of information on participation in the food stamp program we observe that ignorance about the program contributes to nonparticipation however there is evidence that knowledge about the program is endogenous households generally avail themselves of information about the program when the anticipated benefits of doing so are large

assessing the validity and reliability of contingent values a comparison of on site users off site users and non users abstract imperfect information in contingent markets can affect the validity and reliability of contingent values willingness to pay wtp for changes in natural resource allocations survey respondents can acquire information about the natural resource to be valued from behavior such as on site use of the resource off site use of the resource and or from the survey itself in this paper we compare the validity and reliability of wtp from respondents who obtained information in these different ways using theoretical validity tests based on relative prices as well as income we find that wtp is valid for respondents with information from on site and or off site use willingness to pay is less valid for respondents who had no information about the natural resource before they participated in the survey using an alternative form reliability test we find that wtp is in the technical sense reliable for all respondents and somewhat more reliable for on site users

social and political responses to ecological tax reform in europe an introduction to the special issue this paper introduces the special issue on the policies for ecological tax reform assessment of social responses petras project about responses to ecological tax reform etr in europe although etr is widely accepted to be a policy with desirable effects its implementation has been limited by problems of political acceptability the project aimed to address the question of how to make such a policy more acceptable it is the first study to examine in depth the thinking of members of the general public about the etr policies and is also the first international comparative study of the thinking of ordinary business people about etr policies the petras project methodology was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them a number of issues emerged relating to awareness trust understanding of the purpose visibility incentives regressivity levels of taxation terminology communication about etr and the use of alternative instruments together with these similarities a pattern of differences between the countries can also be seen the final section of this paper introduces the national studies described in the following papers

the relationship of wages to the value of labour power in marx s labour market having explicitly rejected malthus law of population marx asserted in his early writings that it was competition that would keep wages fluctuating the value of labor power even though he did not consider the production of labor power to be a capitalist process this paper notes the inconsistency in this approach and then proposes that implicit in marx s mature works there is a consistent mechanism through which wages gravitate toward the value of labor power this uses both the flexible historical and moral element of the value of labor power and the reserve army hypothesis this combination explains why wages follow a relatively even path over time a model of the labor market is developed which appears to be consistent with marx s mature writing copyright 1991 by oxford university press

public acceptance for environmental taxes self interest environmental and distributional concerns abstract while strongly recommended by economists it has often been politically difficult to impose taxes on externalities there is a substantial literature on public attitudes towards environmental taxes there has however been few comprehensive attempts to understand attitudes towards environmental taxes the main research question in this paper is which factors influence support for fuel taxation we propose a model of attitudes towards fuel taxation and test this model as well as more specific hypotheses using data from a representative survey of the adult norwegian population our results suggest that support for fuel taxation is best predicted by beliefs about environmental consequences followed by beliefs about consequences to others beliefs about consequences to self self interest is the factor that explains the least variation in support for fuel taxation the academically interesting result that support cannot be well explained without capturing a broad range of motivational factors is also highly policy relevant it implies that there is no magic formula for increasing public support for environmental taxes there are however some issues which can be addressed trust in how well the government spends the revenue and the perception that taxation does very little to change behaviour and thus to reduce environmental problems

green taxes in a post paris world are millions of nays inevitable turning the paris agreement s greenhouse gas emissions pledges into domestic policies is the next challenge for governments we address the question of the acceptability of cost effective climate policy in a real voting setting first we analyze voting behavior in a large ballot on energy taxes rejected in switzerland in 2015 by more than 2 million people energy taxes were aimed at completely replacing the current value added tax we examine the determinants of voting and find that distributional and competitiveness concerns reduced the acceptability of energy taxes along with the perception of ineffectiveness most people would have preferred tax revenues to be allocated for environmental purposes second at the same time of the ballot we tested the acceptability of alternative designs of a carbon tax with a choice experiment survey on a representative sample of the swiss population survey respondents are informed about environmental distributional and competitiveness effects of each carbon tax design these impacts are estimated with a computable general equilibrium model this original setting generates a series of novel results providing information on the expected environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes reduces the demand for environmental earmarking making distributional effects salient generates an important demand for progressive designs e g social cushioning or recycling via lump sum transfers the case of lump sum recycling is particularly striking it is sufficient to show its desirable distributional properties to make it one of the most preferred designs which corresponds to a completely novel result in the literature we show that providing detailed information on the functioning of environmental taxes may contribute to close both the gap between acceptability ex ante and ex post and the gap between economists prescriptions and the preferences of the general public

what do we know about carbon taxes an inquiry into their impacts on competitiveness and distribution of income abstract the kyoto protocol to the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc has set legally binding emissions targets for a basket of six greenhouse gases and timetables for industrialised countries it has also incorporated three international flexibility mechanisms however the articles defining the flexibility mechanisms carry wording that their use must be supplemental to domestic actions this has led to the open debates on interpretations of these supplementarity provisions such debates ended at the resumed sixth conference of the parties cop to the unfccc held in bonn july 2001 and at the subsequent cop 7 in marrakesh november 2001 the final wording in the bonn agreement reaffirmed in the marrakesh accords at least indicates that domestic policies will have an important role to play in meeting annex b countries emissions commitments carbon taxes have long been advocated because of their cost effectiveness in achieving a given emissions reduction in this paper the main economic impacts of carbon taxes are assessed based on a review of empirical studies on existing carbon energy taxes it is concluded that competitive losses and distributive impacts are generally not significant and definitely less than often perceived however given the ultimate objective of the framework convention future carbon taxes could have higher rates than those already imposed and thus the resulting economic impacts could be more acute in this context it has been shown that how to use the generated fiscal revenues will be of fundamental importance in determining the final economic impacts of carbon taxes finally we briefly discuss carbon taxes in combination with other domestic and international instruments

a conjoint analysis of corporate preferences for the sectoral crediting mechanism a case study of shanxi province in china it is crucial to understand corporate preferences in designing and planning new market based instruments using the method of conjoint analysis this paper evaluates corporate preferences for policy alternatives of the sectoral crediting mechanism aiming at supporting its discussions and development data were collected from 94 companies in all 11 prefecture level cities of shanxi province china the results confirm that companies are most concerned about three policy attributes domestic policy instruments the relationship with the clean developing mechanism and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities from the viewpoint of the chinese businesses surveyed the ideal policy alternative has a domestic policy instrument in which installations with voluntary targets receive tradable units while co existing with the clean developing mechanism and providing opportunities to get financial and technical assistance from developed countries meanwhile the coverage of the sectoral crediting mechanism could be expanded to small companies that are the most inefficient and thus have the lowest abatement costs in some sectors the results of this study are important in light of ongoing discussions and developments of the sectoral crediting mechanism in china

the relevance of attitudinal factors for the acceptance of energy policy measures a micro econometric analysis abstract this paper empirically examines the individual support of the german energy transition in total and especially of six single energy policy measures which are components of the energy transition our micro econometric analysis with binary and ordered probit models on the basis of data from a broad survey of citizens reveals the important role of several attitudinal factors with respect to our indicators for perceived personal costs of the energy transition the estimation results point to a weak evidence for economic self interest due to some negative correlations between expected energy price increases due to the energy transition and the support of single energy policy measures interestingly however the concern that the energy transition alone causes strong energy price increases is not shared by the majority of the respondents the estimation results also suggest that the support of several energy policy measures is strongly correlated with environmental values however the most important attitudinal factor is obviously political identification the econometric analysis suggests that an overall left green policy identification is positively correlated with the support of the energy transition in total and an identification with ecological policy is positively correlated with the acceptance of several single energy policy measures the econometric analysis especially supports the more sophisticated categorization of political orientation since for example a liberal conservative policy orientation is not significantly correlated with the support of the energy transition in total

time delay complexity and support for taxation people often experience the benefits of taxation over time we design an intertemporal market experiment with negative externalities to examine how delaying the benefits of taxation affects support for taxes we find that when negative externalities occur immediately people learn to adopt pigouvian taxes which are aimed at reducing negative externalities and restoring market efficiency by contrast when negative externalities are delayed people are less receptive to taxation this effect persists over time our data reveal that the strong negative delay effect can be explained in large part by narrow bracketing and the increased perceived complexity of the environment rather than by time discounting per se we argue and demonstrate that increasing the transparency of intertemporal tradeoffs can effectively promote support for taxation

political economy aspects of climate change mitigation efforts regardless of the policies used to mitigate climate change a positive and relatively high price of carbon will have to be established with slow convergence across regions leading to huge rents up to capture way beyond those that have been fought over in the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt based international trading system the paper explores the political economy feasibility and desirability implications of the two main alternatives a carbon tax and a cap and trade cat system having the same concerns cat systems in the eu and the us have accounted for different outcomes in each case likely leakages under foreseeable carbon prices are estimated to be small and not of an order of magnitude justifying the special allowances sought across a wide spectrum of industries the experience of the eu and us reviewed here suggests that mitigation is likely to continue to be carried out under a cat provided permits are distributed for free to the lobbies whose support is necessary to get adoption of mitigation policies this quota mechanism long used to allocate scarcity in the international trading system both nationally and internationally would end up with the most powerful receiving the quotas rents giving them the leverage and resources to maintain allocation schemes favourable to them

characterizing the effects of valuation methodology in function based benefits transfer abstract meta analyses have demonstrated that willingness to pay wtp estimates vary systematically according to methodological factors the benefits transfer literature provides little guidance with regard to the treatment of such effects transfers are typically conducted by ignoring such effects using ad hoc adjustments or otherwise suppressing information regarding the sensitivity of wtp to methodological attributes this paper illustrates a means to characterize methodological effects within benefits transfer based on an application of the common bootstrap drawing from meta analysis the approach characterizes the sampling distribution of wtp with respect to patterns of methodological variation present in underlying studies results provide a means to characterize the extent of variation associated with predefined groups of methodological attributes providing transparent information on the sensitivity of wtp not typically available in benefits transfer

neighborhood effects in integrated social policies when potential beneficiaries share their knowledge and attitudes about a policy intervention their decision to participate and the effectiveness of both the policy and its evaluation may be influenced this matters most notably in integrated social policies with several components in this article spillover effects on take up behaviors are investigated in the context of a conditional cash transfer program in rural mexico these effects are identified using exogenous variations in the local frequency of beneficiaries generated by the program s randomized evaluation a higher treatment density in the areas surrounding the evaluation villages is found to increase the take up of scholarships and enrollment at the lower secondary level these cross village spillovers operate exclusively within households receiving another component of the program and do not carry over larger distances while several tests reject heterogeneities in impact due to spatial variations in program implementation evidence is found suggesting that spillovers stem partly from the sharing of information about the program among eligible households

attitudes towards carbon taxes across europe the role of perceived uncertainty and self interest abstract while using carbon taxes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may well be effective this has recently proved too unpopular to put into practice in a number of countries yet at a time when governments across the world are preparing their nationally determined contributions to the paris agreement our knowledge of whether and why people oppose these taxes originates from a single or small number of cases drawing on the european social survey n 44 387 this article provides evidence on public attitudes towards increasing taxes on fossil fuels to reduce climate change from 23 countries most of which have never featured in the literature before the results point to a widespread aversion to carbon taxes on the one hand this worsens with the perceived costs of taxes such as the case among consumers who depend highly on energy on the other it improves with political trust and external political efficacy factors that help ease the uncertainty around policy proposals our estimations suggest that the effect of changes in these factors alone would be large enough to reverse the public resistance to carbon taxes in some countries these results are robust to a number of alternative specifications and various checks

demand for environmental goods evidence from voting patterns on california initiatives this article studies voting behavior on 16 environmental ballot propositions in california in order to characterize the demand for environmental goods the environment is found to be a normal good for people with mean incomes but some environmental goods are inferior for those with high incomes at least when supplied collectively an important price of environmental goods is reduced income in the construction farming forestry and manufacturing industries income and price can explain most of the variation in voting there is little need to introduce preference variables such as political ideology

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

willingness to pay for ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation assessing the willingness to pay wtp of the general public for climate change mitigation programmes enables governments to understand how much taxpayers are willing to support the implementation of such programs this paper contributes to the literature on the wtp for climate change mitigation programmes by investigating in addition to global benefits the ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation it does so by considering local and personal benefits arising from climate change policies the contingent valuation method is used to elicit the wtp for ancillary and global benefits of climate mitigation policies in the basque country spain results show that wtp estimates are 53 73 higher when ancillary benefits are considered

the effects of lottery prizes on winners and their neighbors evidence from the dutch postcode lottery each week the dutch postcode lottery pcl randomly selects a postal code and distributes cash and a new bmw to lottery participants in that code we study the effects of these shocks on lottery winners and their neighbors consistent with the life cycle hypothesis the effects on winners consumption are largely confined to cars and other durables consistent with the theory of in kind transfers the vast majority of bmw winners liquidate their bmws we do however detect substantial social effects of lottery winnings pcl nonparticipants who live next door to winners have significantly higher levels of car consumption than other nonparticipants

enhanced geospatial validity for meta analysis and environmental benefit transfer an application to water quality improvements meta regression models are commonly used within benefit transfer to estimate willingness to pay wtp for environmental quality improvements theory suggests that these estimates should be sensitive to geospatial factors including resource scale market extent and the availability of substitutes and complements valuation meta regression models addressing the quantity of non market commodities sometimes incorporate spatial variables that proxy for a subset of these effects however meta analyses of wtp for environmental quality generally omit geospatial factors such as these leading to benefit transfers that are invariant to these factors this paper reports on a meta regression model for water quality benefit transfer that incorporates spatially explicit factors predicted by theory to influence wtp the metadata are drawn from stated preference studies that estimate per household wtp for water quality changes in united states water bodies and combine primary study information with extensive geospatial data from external sources results find that geospatial variables are associated with significant wtp variations as predicted by theory and that inclusion of these variables reduces transfer errors

the median voter setters and non repeated construction bond issues the median voter model pervades the literature concerning the estimation of demands for collective expenditures but with some unanswered criticism the general issue addressed in this paper is whether observed collective expenditure levels and the characteristics of observed majorities are more adequately described by the median voter model or the romer and rosenthal setter model on a sample of non repeated hospital construction referenda bond issues the median voter model and the romer and rosenthal setter model are compared in both full information and uncertainty contexts little empirical support of the setter model is found indeed the evidence supports the absence of expenditure maximizing behavior the specific conclusions are 1 the standard median voter model explains quite well for this sample of non repeated bond issues 2 the explanatory power of the median voter model appears to vary across both voting arrangements and types of reversion threats 3 the explanation of hospital expenditures which have been judged too large may be due to how benefits and costs are distributed among voters and 4 the preponderance of large majorities for hospital construction in the face of evidence that such facilities typically become a burden on the general tax fund is consistent with setters offering the median ideal in the presence of a reversion below the ideal

paying for mitigation a multiple country study a contingent valuation study conducted in china sweden and the united states was used to investigate citizens willingness to pay wtp for reducing co2 emissions we find that a majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase the share of americans that believes these statements is smaller and a relatively larger share of americans also believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change sweden has the highest wtp while china has the lowest jel q51 q54

discrete choice with social interactions this paper provides an analysis of aggregate behavioural outcomes when individual utility exhibits social interaction effects we study generalized logistic models of individual choice which incorporate terms reflecting the desire of individuals to conform to the behaviour of others in an environment of noncooperative decisionmaking laws of large numbers are generated in such environments multiplicity of equilibria in these models which are equivalent to the existence of multiple self consistent means for average choice behaviour will exist when the social interactions exceed a particular threshold local stability of these multiple equilibria is also studied the properties of the noncooperative economy are contrasted with the properties of an economy in which a social planner determines the set of individual choices finally a likelihood function based on the theoretical model is given and conditions for the econometric identifiability of the model are established

school subsidies for the poor evaluating the mexican progresa poverty program abstract this paper evaluates how the progresa program which provides poor mothers in rural mexico with education grants has affected enrollment poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the progresa are compared to those who reside in other control communities pre program comparisons check the randomized design and double difference estimators of the program s effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex probit models are also estimated for the probability that a child is enrolled controlling for additional characteristics of the child their parents local schools and community and for sample attrition to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates these estimates of program short run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages

public acceptability of personal carbon trading and carbon tax abstract climate change is one of the greatest challenges confronting the international community requiring action to achieve deep cuts in carbon emissions the implementation of potentially uncomfortable but necessary policy measures is though critically dependent upon public acceptability this paper reports a novel application of stated preference techniques to explore the influence of key design attributes on the acceptability of a personal carbon trading scheme in isolation and when compared to a carbon tax illustrative forecasts from the models developed indicate the importance of design attributes especially the basis of the initial permit allocation for personal carbon trading and the use to which revenues are put for carbon tax results indicate that the best scheme designs could be acceptable to a majority of respondents

the reform of the european energy tax directive exploring potential economic impacts in the eu27 abstract the aim of this study is to analyze the effect that the energy tax directive reform proposed in 2011 would have if implemented on the level of prices in the different sectors of the 27 countries of the european union we apply a multiregional and multisectoral model of trade flows that takes into account all the intersectoral and intercountry interdependences in the production processes using the world input output database we perform two different simulations the first one considers the tax changes proposed by the reform the second one shows the impact the reform would have entailed if it were applied also to sectors belonging to the european trade system the main finding of the first simulation shows that the new energy tax regime would have had a low economic cost in terms of impact on prices less than 1 in all the countries so the concerns about competitiveness do not find empirical support in our results suggesting the need for further analyses to find out the reasons that caused the failure of a reform that was an important step to introduce a taxation explicitly linked to co 2 emissions the second simulation however leads to strongly different results pointing out the relevance of maintaining significant economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions for the european trade system sectors by improving the emission market performance or by applying carbon taxation also to these sectors

network effects and welfare cultures we empirically examine the role of social networks in welfare participation using data on language spoken at home to better infer networks within an area our empirical strategy asks whether being surrounded by others who speak the same language increases welfare use more for those from high welfare using language groups this methodology allows us to include local area and language group fixed effects and to control for the direct effect of being surrounded by one s language group these controls eliminate many of the problems in previous studies the results strongly confirm the importance of networks in welfare participation

what determines urban households willingness to pay for co2 emission reductions in turkey a contingent valuation survey abstract this paper explores turkish urban households willingness to pay wtp for co2 emission reductions expected to result from improvements in power production a face to face questionnaire with a contingent valuation cv module prepared using the double bounded dichotomous choice elicitation framework was administered to 2422 respondents representative of urban turkey a developing country with low but rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions the determinants of wtp were identified by considering not only the impact of standard socio economic factors but also the effects of environmental knowledge attitudes and behaviour the relevance of the identity of the collection agent national versus international institutions in terms of trust people have towards them and the degree of perceived participation of others in the realization of the project our study confirms the existing literature in demonstrating that wtp figures reported by young and educated people that are active on environmental issues and who also possess material security and environmental knowledge are more likely to be high however their willingness to make contributions is hampered significantly by their belief that their fellow citizens will not contribute and the general lack of trust in institutions overall this study may be taken as a call to eliminate governance related uncertainties in climate change deals

what factors drive inequalities in carbon tax incidence decomposing socioeconomic inequalities in carbon tax incidence in ireland abstract carbon taxes increase the cost of necessary household energy expenditures in many developed countries carbon taxes are regressive as they comprise a greater proportion of a poorer household s income certain socioeconomic groups are more negatively affected by these impacts than others while inequality of incidence by income group has received great attention in the literature a gap exists to quantify the inequality associated with socioeconomic characteristics this information is policy relevant as it may inform the most effective means to offset negative welfare impacts through changes to taxes and or social transfers this paper provides this contribution first the inequality of carbon tax incidence across the income spectrum is quantified using the concentration index methodology a subsequent multivariate decomposition quantifies the contribution each socioeconomic factor makes towards this inequality of incidence this is carried out for electricity motor fuel and all other home fuels to elicit variation of socioeconomic incidence by source while income contributes a great deal towards inequality of incidence for other home fuels other socioeconomic characteristics are the primary determinants of electricity and motor fuel related carbon tax incidence the relative importance of each characteristic in determining regressive impacts is quantified and this varies by carbon tax source

voting on the environment price or ideology evidence from swiss referendums studies on preferences for environmental quality usually posit that price and income explain most of the observed choices however we argue that conceptions of social norms and the common good are equally important when analyzing environmental voting outcomes and are a significant component of the environmental demand we study aggregate results of three ballot proposals in switzerland put to vote in the year 2000 which foresaw different tax schemes on fossil energy all three bills were rejected by the electorate we are able to show that regions with producer interests car commuting habits and elderly population are less supportive of ecological tax reforms unlike higher education and leftist political affinity that work in favor of the bills though more importantly our results underline the importance of including variables pertaining to the notion of ideology both in terms of statistical fit and obtaining unbiased estimates for price and income determinants

a choice experiment on fuel taxation and earmarking in norway abstract pigouvian taxes are efficient but unpopular among voters and hence often politically infeasible earmarking of revenues has been widely reported to increase public support for taxes but earmarking is generally not the most efficient use of the revenues this trade off between efficiency and political feasibility is the motivation for our primary research objective to quantify the effect of earmarking on support for fuel tax rises our secondary research objective is to investigate why earmarking increases support using data from a representative sample of the norwegian voter population n 1147 we estimate models of voter preferences for fuel taxes using logistic regression models our results show that in the absence of earmarking the majority of voters would like to reduce fuel taxes but earmarking the revenues for environmental measures has a substantial effect on voter support for fuel tax increases garnering a majority for increases of up to 15 above present levels further analysis indicates that a prime reason why earmarking for environmental measures is popular is that it increases the perceived environmental effectiveness of the tax and hence its legitimacy as an environmental rather than a fiscal policy instrument

the role of information and social interactions in retirement plan decisions evidence from a randomized experiment this paper analyzes a randomized experiment to shed light on the role of information and social interactions in employees decisions to enroll in a tax deferred account tda retirement plan within a large university the experiment encouraged a random sample of employees in a subset of departments to attend a benee ts information fair organized by the university by promising a monetary reward for attendance the experiment multiplied by more than e ve the attendance rate of these treated individuals relative to controls and tripled that of untreated individuals within departments where some individuals were treated tda enrollment e ve and eleven months after the fair was signie cantly higher in departments where some individuals were treated than in departments where nobody was treated however the effect on tda enrollment is almost as large for individuals in treated departments who did not receive the encouragement as for those who did we provide three interpretations differential treatment effects social network effects and motivational reward effects to account for these results

a future for carbon taxes abstract carbon taxes have been frequently advocated as a cost effective instrument for reducing emissions however in the practice of environmental policies only six countries have implemented taxes based on the carbon content of the energy products in this paper we evaluate carbon taxes with regard to their competitiveness distributional and environmental impacts the evidence shows that carbon taxes may be an interesting policy option and that their main negative impacts may be compensated through the design of the tax and the use of the generated fiscal revenues

prices versus quantities with incomplete enforcement abstract i study whether incomplete enforcement of a regulation has any impact on the choice between price e g taxes and quantity e g tradeable quotas instruments results indicate that a second best design accounting for incomplete enforcement can be implemented equally well with either instrument as long as the benefit and cost curves are known with certainty if these curves are uncertain to the regulator however the quantity instrument performs relatively better than the price instrument the reason is that the effective amount of control under the quantity instrument is no longer fixed which makes this instrument come closer to a non linear instrument

on self interested preferences for burden sharing rules an econometric analysis for the costs of energy policy measures abstract this paper examines the acceptance of burden sharing rules that refer to the costs of the german energy transition which is one of the most challenging and disputed national climate and energy policy measures based on data from a comprehensive survey of more than 2200 citizens the empirical analysis reveals that the polluter pays rule has by far the highest support compared with the ability to pay rule and especially compared with the equal pay rule which is widely refused in the sample since the distribution of the costs of the german energy transition is largely in line with a polluter pays rule its strong support seems to contribute to the high acceptance of the energy transition at all the main result of our econometric analysis with multivariate binary and ordered probit models is that not only some attitudinal factors like environmental values and political identification but especially economic self interest is relevant since equivalent energy expenditures have a significantly negative effect on the support of the polluter pays rule and especially equivalent income has a significantly negative effect on the preference for the ability to pay rule these results suggest that the use of distributional arguments for the criticism of energy policy measures is not necessarily value driven on the basis of real perceptions of distributive justice but can also be strategically motivated to prevent and combat economically unfavorable measures together with the strong general support of the polluter pays rule these results suggest that a sharp reorientation of the german energy transition due to distributional arguments is not very useful

poverty and distributional effects of carbon pricing in low and middle income countries a global comparative analysis abstract even though concerns about adverse distributional implications for the poor are one of the most important political challenges for carbon pricing the existing literature reveals ambiguous results for this reason we assess the expected incidence of moderate carbon price increases for different income groups in 87 mostly low and middle income countries building on a consistent dataset and method we find that for countries with per capita incomes of below usd 15 000 per year at ppp adjusted 2011 usd carbon pricing has on average progressive distributional effects we also develop a novel decomposition technique to show that distributional outcomes are primarily determined by differences among income groups in consumption patterns of energy rather than of food goods or services we argue that an inverse u shape relationship between energy expenditure shares and income explains why carbon pricing tends to be regressive in countries with relatively higher income since these countries are likely to have more financial resources and institutional capacities to deal with distributional issues our findings suggest that mitigating climate change raising domestic revenue and reducing economic inequality are not mutually exclusive even in low and middle income countries

public preferences for carbon tax attributes the impacts of climate change are already visible throughout the world recognizing the threats posed by climate change the durban platform the 17th session of the conference of parties cop 17 underscores that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation and ambitious action by all countries a crucial starting point for the design of effective and publicly acceptable policies is to explore public preferences for climate policy instruments using a choice experiment this study investigates public preferences for carbon tax attributes in a developing country context the results account for heterogeneity in preferences and show that turkish people prefer a carbon tax with a progressive cost distribution rather than one with a regressive cost distribution the private cost has a negative effect on the probability of choosing the tax earmarking carbon tax revenues increases the public acceptability of the tax moreover there is a preference for a carbon tax that promotes public awareness of climate change

the effects of experience on preferences theory and empirics for environmental public goods this article develops a choice model for environmental public goods which allows for consumers to learn about their preferences through consumption experiences we develop a theoretical model of bayesian updating perform comparative statics over the model and show how the theoretical model can be consistently incorporated into a reduced form econometric model our main findings are that in a random utility model rum discrete choice model a subject s scale should increase and the variability of scale should decrease with experience if subjects are bayesians we then estimate the model using field data regarding preferences for one particular public good water quality we find strong evidence that additional experience increases scale thereby making consumer preferences more predictable from the econometrician s perspective we find supportive but less convincing evidence that experience decreases the variability of scale across subjects

analysis of carbon tax efficiency in energy industries of selected eu countries abstract a carbon tax is one of economic policy instruments of environmental protection supposed to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas ghg emissions a functional carbon tax aims at incorporating costs for elimination of environmental harm into the pricing decisions in terms of global climate change the carbon tax is usually imposed on the production distribution or consumption of carbon content fossil fuels the main aim of the study is to evaluate the carbon tax environmental effectiveness in the energy industries of selected eu countries namely sweden finland denmark ireland and slovenia to achieve the principal research objective the multiple panel regression method for the selected variables was used the synergy of other environmental policy tools being taken into account control variables employed were emission allowance price household final consumption expenditure corporate investments solid fuel consumption and renewable energy consumption the analysis results suggest that the carbon tax in the energy industry is environmentally efficient an increased tax rate allowing to reduce ghg production which is statistically significantly affected by the consumption of fossil fuels based on the estimated partial regression coefficient 0 01158 raising the carbon tax by one euro per tonne can cut annual per capita emissions by 11 58 kg

the impact of a carbon tax on inequality abstract climate change and economic inequality are inextricably linked despite widespread agreement among researchers and policymakers that a carbon tax is the most efficient mechanism to curb greenhouse gas emissions such a tax exacerbates inequality since low income households spend a greater share of their income on carbon intensive goods using input output tables and detailed expenditure data for the united states we estimate households carbon footprints and examine the impact of a revenue neutral tax of 50 per ton of co2 on multiple forms of inequality devoting carbon tax revenue to fund a carbon dividend makes the policy progressive minimizes redistribution among households of similar means mitigates group based inequalities and benefits 56 of people including 84 in the bottom half of the distribution while some researchers have dismissed dividends on efficiency grounds we show that the double dividend typically associated with labor tax cuts is insufficient to protect the purchasing power of a majority of americans

modeling preference heterogeneity in stated choice data an analysis for public goods generated by agriculture stated choice models based on the random utility framework are becoming increasingly popular in the applied economics literature the need to account for respondents preference heterogeneity in such models has motivated researchers in agricultural environmental health and transport economics to apply random parameter logit and latent class models in most of the published literature these models incorporate heterogeneity in preferences through the systematic component of utility an alternative approach is to investigate heterogeneity through the random component of utility and covariance heterogeneity models are one means of doing this in this article we compare these alternative ways of incorporating preference heterogeneity in stated choice models and evaluate the sensitivity of estimated welfare measures to which approach is selected we find that a latent class approach fits our data best but all the models perform well in terms of out of sample predictions finally we discuss what criteria a researcher can use to decide which approach is most appropriate for a given data set

does improved environmental quality prevent a growing economy abstract a major concern for sustainable development is how countries can lower pollution while avoiding adverse output and energy shocks since economic activities change with time we develop a dynamic applied equilibrium model to study the dynamics of co2 emissions and evaluate how the pursuit of environmental policy objectives can influence output and productivity in a surrogate country in transition under an optimal environmental policy which ensures mitigation between 38 and 50 we show that productivity projected towards the year 2075 increases slightly from between 3 8 and 6 2 to between 5 7 and 7 6 respectively the required carbon tax begins from 5 29 ton in 2020 and grows on average by 3 5 reaching up to 35 83 per ton carbon towards the year 2075 even though these tax rates ensure huge benefits for mitigation they represent marginal productivity growth and substantial output and consumption costs in other words improved environmental quality presents opportunities for multifactor productivity mfp but this productivity improvement is too marginal to offset the compliance costs of the carbon tax thereby causing output to decline hence to ensure maximum economic dividend from carbon pricing especially in transitional economies measures are required to improve the innovation benefits of carbon taxes towards levels that offset the compliance costs of environmental regulations otherwise caution should be taken by developing countries in their environmental policy designs especially when boosting consumption and economic growth is a major priority

on the external validity of laboratory tax compliance experiments i introduction laboratory methods are now widely accepted as a methodological approach in economics and increasingly they have been used to examine specific public policy issues there is much to be gained from careful laboratory experiments they offer a low cost means of testing and replicating policy innovations and they generate precise data on individual behavior thereby allowing estimation of behavioral responses importantly they allow many policy innovations to be introduced singly and exogenously in a controlled environment and as a result laboratory experiments are typically seen as having a high degree of internal validity brewer 2000 campbell and stanley 1966 shadish cook and campbell 2002 because the causal relation between variables can be properly demonstrated however as emphasized by plott 1987 using laboratory experiments can allow more general inferences regarding human behavior only when the setting implemented in the laboratory parallels what is observed in the naturally occurring world even beyond this requirement of parallelism is the need for generalizing behavioral observations from the laboratory to the field or external validity internal validity can be demonstrated through the evaluation of the design however external validity can only be verified empirically and only with respect to the specific setting being investigated this paper investigates the external validity of laboratory experiments and does so in the context of experiments on tax compliance behavior tax evasion is central to many important policy questions current estimates report the tax gap or difference between taxes owed and taxes paid in the united states to be 450 billion annually internal revenue service 2012 beyond these massive revenue losses evasion creates major misallocations in resource use when individuals alter their behavior to cheat on their taxes its presence requires that government expend resources to detect noncompliance to measure its magnitude and to penalize tax evasion evasion alters the distribution of income in arbitrary unpredictable and unfair ways and it may contribute to feelings of unjust treatment and disrespect for the law more broadly it is not possible to understand the true impact of taxation without recognizing the existence and the effects of tax evasion laboratory methods have been used to examine a wide range of policies that may affect the compliance decision policies that have not always proven amenable to either theoretical analyses or empirical analyses with field data however laboratory studies of compliance are sometimes viewed with skepticism the most common criticism is that the student subjects typically used in experiments may not be representative of taxpayers undergraduates may have little experience with filing tax returns and their economic and demographic backgrounds may differ from those of taxpayers another criticism is that the context of laboratory compliance experiments does not closely enough resemble the context in which actual compliance decisions are made as a result there is a concern that experimental results on policy innovations that rely upon student subjects in laboratory compliance experiments cannot be generalized to the population it is this issue that we examine here building on previous research we present several types of evidence on the external validity of experiments on individual compliance decisions a first question examines whether behavior of laboratory participants is replicated by behavior of individuals making a similar decision in the naturally occurring world that is do participants in laboratory experiments exhibit different patterns of behavior than individuals in a similar naturally occurring setting to answer this question we utilize a special data set from the u s internal revenue service irs assembled as part of its national research program nrp

the demand for earmarking results from a focus group study abstract environmental taxes might be efficient but plans to impose new taxes are often met with fierce public resistance in order to design environmental taxes that are both efficient and acceptable to the public so that they can be politically feasible it is important to understand public attitudes towards environmental taxes we conduct a focus group study in norway to extend the current knowledge on this issue we find less general resistance to taxation as a policy instrument and seemingly more trust in government than what has been reported in similar studies from other countries the participants are however very skeptical and do not see the point of using the revenues from an environmental tax to reduce other taxes such as the payroll tax instead they express a very strong preference for earmarking the revenues for environmental purposes they also call for more information about environmental taxes in particular on how the revenues are spent providing more information including what the revenues are spent on irrespective of whether they are earmarked or not would seem to provide a relatively cheap and possibly effective way to increase the public acceptability of new or increased environmental taxes

the rise and fall of french ecological tax reform social acceptability versus political feasibility in the energy tax implementation process the french government has a 10 year history of negotiations with industry resulting in voluntary agreements on energy consumption when implemented these voluntary agreements produced very few results in terms of global reduction of greenhouse emissions politiques et management public 11 4 1993 47 hence the idea of an energy tax became increasingly attractive for many french decision makers ecological environmental tax reform etr should have been one of the major political decisions and successes of the past leftwing coalition government instead it became one of its major failures as the constitutional court decided to terminate the energy tax project in december 2000 through insights gleaned from focus groups and interviews with business people and decision makers an attempt is made to understand the failure of the energy tax project firstly decision makers lacked crucial information about public and business opinions and secondly there were conflicts between the relevant administrations the fuel revolts of 2000 ended any hope of resolving the conflicts and implementing etr which was ultimately found unconstitutional this paper examines the political controversies raised by the etr project and the reasons for its eventual collapse in the hope of contributing new understanding to the body of knowledge on the political difficulties of introducing environmental policy instruments

family networks and school enrolment evidence from a randomized social experiment we present evidence on whether and how a household s behavior is influenced by the presence and characteristics of its extended family using data from the progresa program in mexico we exploit information on the paternal and maternal surnames of heads and spouses in conjunction with the spanish naming convention to identify the inter and intra generational family links of each household to others in the same village we then exploit the randomized research design of the progresa evaluation data to identify whether the treatment effects of progresa transfers on secondary school enrolment vary according to the characteristics of extended family we find progresa only raises secondary enrolment among households that are embedded in a family network eligible but isolated households do not respond the mechanism through which the extended family influences household schooling choices is the redistribution of resources within the family network from eligibles that receive de facto unconditional cash transfers from progresa towards eligibles on the margin of enrolling children into secondary school

what does it take to sell environmental policy an empirical analysis of referendum data we analyze the factors that influence the support for environmental policy proposals swiss referendum data show that proposals obtain more yes votes if they do not restrict consumption possibilities directly if they are endorsed by the largest business association if environmental preferences are strong and economic conditions are favorable at the time of the referendum also there are more pro environmental votes in cantons with higher population density on the other hand yes votes do not seem to depend on whether a proposal involves a tax or not

networks or neighborhoods correlations in the use of publicly funded maternity care in california abstract this study focuses on network effects in the utilization of publicly funded prenatal care using vital statistics data from california for 1989 2000 networks are defined using 5 digit zip codes and a woman s racial or ethnic group like others we find evidence that the use of public programs is highly correlated within groups defined using race ethnicity and neighborhoods these correlations persist even when we control for many unobserved characteristics by including zip code year fixed effects and when we focus on the interaction between own group behavior and measures of the potential for contacts with other members of the group contact availability however the richness of our data allows us to go further and to conduct several tests of one important hypothesis about networks that the estimated effects represent information sharing within groups the results cast doubt on the idea that the observed correlations can be interpreted as evidence of information sharing in particular we find estimated effects to be as large or larger among women who have previously used the program as among first time users

whether one votes and how one votes the aim of this paper is to determine if whether one votes effects the vote that is cast using an economic model of voting and observed voting results on nuclear power referenda the answer is a resounding yes overcoming registration turnout and roll off hurdles dramatically increases the odds of voting against nuclear power indeed participation swamps both economic and preference variables in the explanation of nuclear power voting outcomes the lesson is that there is a structure to participation at the polls that should not be ignored by those interested in analyzing voting outcomes

marx and malthusianism comment in a recent article in this review 1984 samuel hollander suggests that the secular path of real wages in the marxian model tends toward a subsistence wage at which population growth ceases he attributes this decline to a higher growth rate in population relative to a positive but decreasing rate of growth in the demand for labor power from this he contends that in contrast to the malthusian prescription marx is open to the objection that with no check at all to the population growth rate the deterioration would have been sharper still p 148 the implication of hollander s argument is clear enough for if accepted it would necessarily lead one to dismiss marx s claim that every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population historically valid within its limits alone an abstract law of population exists for plants and animals only and only in so far as man has not interfered with them capital i 1967 p 632 this comment takes issue with the thesis advanced by hollander on two major points first the secular decline in the value of labor power is a result of the increasing productivity of labor rather than the divergence between the respective growth rates in population and the demand for labor power second this is perfectly consistent with constant or even rising absolute real wages price of labor power for the active part of the working class 1 thus population control is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition in assuring against falling real wages for a changing social productivity of labor put differently the supply of labor power to the advanced capitalist sector is the crucial supply variable not the rate of population growth i begin by reviewing hollander s useful distinction between marx s value of labor power and the classical school s minimum subsistence wage next it is shown that the value of labor power is determined by the social productivity of labor rather than factors exogenous to the system population the discussion is brought to a close by focusing on the prime mover of the path of relative real wages in the marxian model the endogenously determined supply of labor power surplus population to the advanced capital sector

when votes are words not deeds some evidence from the nuclear freeze referendum according to our empirical results voting patterns in the nfr were consistent with the central thesis of an expressive model that moral expression dominates consequentialist behavior when choice is costless while consequentialist theory would predict that owners of capital would favor nuclear weapons capital owners could afford to vote contrary to their interests and in line with common morality because the costs of moral expression in the nfr were so low just as the capital ownership variables do not work in the direction predicted by our consequentialist model neither does income does this mean that wealthy voters cast votes diametrically opposed to their self interest not at all the expressive model contends that when voting is costless people do not have interests but rather moral judgments which now cost very little to express indeed when votes involve words not even individuals interests in government expenditure can be detected

can carbon taxes be progressive abstract most studies have assessed the distributional impact of carbon taxes through their effects on commodity prices alone while ignoring their impact on individual welfare brought about by changes in factor prices yet the remunerations of capital and labor are not affected by these taxes similarly and their shares in earned incomes are not uniform across households this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the incidence of carbon taxes on inequality by considering simultaneously the commodity and the income channels we propose a decomposition of the change in individual welfare metrics then we develop a general equilibrium model to assess the impact of carbon taxes on factor and commodity prices and subsequently their distributional impact on households using the lorenz and concentration curves and the gini index our results suggest that changes in factor prices and changes in commodity prices especially those of energy commodities have opposing effects on inequality carbon taxes tend to reduce inequality through the changes in factor prices and tend to increase inequality through the changes in commodity prices hence we find a non monotonic u shaped relationship between carbon taxes and inequality our results suggest that the traditional approach of assessing the impact of carbon taxes on inequality through changes in commodity prices alone may be misleading the findings cast light on the desirability of using both channels in the assessment of carbon taxes on inequality

how wrong can you be implications of incorrect utility function specification for welfare measurement in choice experiments despite the vital role of the utility function in welfare measurement the implications of working with incorrect utility specifications have been largely neglected in the choice experiments literature this paper addresses the importance of specification with a special emphasis on the effects of mistaken assumptions about the marginal utility of income monte carlo experiments were conducted using different functional forms of utility to generate simulated choices multi nomial logit and mixed logit models were then estimated on these choices under correct and incorrect assumptions about the true underlying utility function estimated willingness to pay measures from these choice modeling results are then compared with the equivalent measures directly calculated from the true utility specifications results show that for the parameter values and functional forms considered a continuous quadratic or a discrete linear attribute specification is a good option regardless of the true effects the attribute has on utility we also find that mistaken assumptions about preferences over costs magnify attribute mis specification effects

using discrete choice models with experimental design data to forecast consumer demand for a unique cultural event an approach is developed to forecast participation in unique events with long gestation periods experimental observations of choice are derived for conjoint measurement type multiattribute alternatives that describe possible event configurations the choice data are analyzed by means of discrete choice econometric models a multinomial logit choice model is applied to forecast the choice of attendance at various types of international expositions the empirical work was part of the planning efforts undertaken to investigate the potential demand for an international exposition to be held in eastern australia in conjunction with the australian 1988 bicentennial celebrations

do you not like pigou or do you not understand him tax aversion and revenue recycling in the lab tax aversion reduces the likelihood that price rationing can be a politically viable tool for environmental protection we examine the case of the classic pigouvian tax to control a negative externality and consider how recycling the revenues labeling of the tax and information about its purpose affects the support for taxation we test the support for taxation within a single price market experiment in which purchases by some buyers impose external costs on others observing behavior consistent with tax aversion we also find that recycling the revenues to more narrowly targeted groups seems to increase support for taxation in the absence of narrow revenue recycling labeling a pigouvian instrument as a tax may significantly lower the likelihood of voter support

recreation demand models with taste differences over people we estimate random parameter logit models of anglers choice of fishing site the models generalize logit by allowing coefficients to vary randomly over anglers rather than being fixed the models do not exhibit the restrictive independence from irrelevant alternatives property of logit and can represent any substitution pattern estimation explicitly accounts for the fact that the variation in coefficients over anglers induces correlation in unobserved utility over trips by the same angler willingness to pay for improved fish stock and the value to anglers of specific sites are calculated from the models and compared with the estimates obtained from a standard logit model

optimal environmental taxes under relative consumption effects abstract this paper explores the interactions between carbon dioxide emissions taxes and a pre existing income tax in a numerically calibrated model of climate change and the world economy based on evidence from the recent empirical literature the model allows for the presence of relative consumption effects in the specification of preferences in the absence of relative consumption effects optimal emissions taxes would rise from us 44 to us 229 per tonne of carbon in year 2000 dollars over the course of the next century these tax rates which arise when emissions tax revenues are used to reduce taxes on personal income are slightly above the present value marginal benefits of emissions control given realistic assumptions concerning the empirical magnitude of relative consumption effects the optimal emissions tax rises from us 63 per tonne in 2005 and us 384 per tonne in 2105 accounting for relative consumption effects reduces the perceived social benefits of consumption thus increasing social willingness to pay for environmental quality while reducing both the costs of tax interaction effects and the benefits of efficient revenue recycling taken together these factors support the implementation of comparatively high environmental taxes in the face of relative consumption effects

carbon control policies competitiveness and border tax adjustments abstract several propositions have recently been made to use border tax adjustments btas to address the loss of competitiveness induced by unilateral stringent domestic pollution control policies this paper explores in a general equilibrium framework the sectoral and welfare implications of a unilateral domestic ghg control policy combined with a bta scheme using the canadian economy as an illustration we assess the extent to which btas achieve their objectives and analyze the impacts of different methods of recycling the bta proceeds to support domestic industries our simulation results suggest that imposing btas on the imports of non fossil and energy intensive products reduces or removes completely the negative competitiveness impacts that domestic industries suffer from the use of the proceeds of the btas to support domestic energy intensive industries improves their competitiveness and more importantly in some cases overprotects them as it allows them to even increase their output in comparison to the benchmark without emissions control our results also shed light on the existence of heterogeneity in the composition of energy intensive industries as far as the recycling method of the bta proceeds is concerned energy intensive industries that are more oriented toward the domestic market are better off with the recycling of the bta proceeds towards gross output than towards exports alone finally abstracting from the environmental benefits of reduced emissions we find that a bta entails a higher welfare cost to households

non binding linked issues referenda analysis and an application non binding referenda petitions are an instrument of direct democracy that allows citizens to signal preferences to politicians outside the electoral cycle this paper provides a simple theoretical and empirical analysis of a particular form of non binding referenda so called linked issues petitions it analyzes the ability of issue linkage to increase participation levels above those of single issue petitions and applies the analytical insights to a controversial referendum held in austria in 2002 that linked issues of transboundary nuclear risk and eastern enlargement of the european union

motor fuel prices in turkey the world s most expensive motor fuel gasoline diesel and lpg is sold most likely in the republic of turkey this paper investigates the key issues related to the motor fuel prices in turkey first of all the paper analyses the main reason behind high prices namely motor fuel taxes in turkey then it estimates the elasticity of motor fuel demand in turkey using an econometric analysis the findings indicate that motor fuel demand in turkey is quite inelastic and therefore not responsive to price increases caused by an increase in either pre tax prices or taxes therefore fuel market in turkey is open to opportunistic behaviour by firms through excessive profits and the government through excessive taxes besides the paper focuses on the impact of high motor fuel prices on road transport associated activities including the pattern of passenger transportation motorization rate fuel use total kilometers travelled and co2 emissions from road transportation the impact of motor fuel prices on income distribution in turkey and turkish public opinion about high motor fuel prices are also among the subjects investigated in the course of the study

social interactions and schooling decisions abstract the aim of this paper is to study whether a child s schooling choices are affected by the schooling choices of other children identification is based on a randomized targeted intervention that grants a cash subsidy conditional on school attendance to a subgroup of eligible children within small rural villages in mexico progresa this policy change spills over to ineligible children if social interactions are relevant results indicate that the eligible children tend to attend school more frequently and the ineligible children acquire more schooling when the subsidy is introduced in their local village moreover the overall effect of progresa on eligible children is the sum of a direct effect due to cash transfers and an indirect effect due to changes in peer group schooling interestingly the social interactions effect is almost as important as the direct effect

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

respondent experience and contingent valuation of environmental goods abstract respondent experience i e a respondent s information set has long been suspected to influence contingent valuation estimates of environmental values we assess the influence of experience by explicitly modeling the relationship between respondent experience and both fitted individual resource values and the conditional variance of these estimated values using three different joint specifications for experience and wtp normal censored normal poisson censored normal and zero inflated poisson censored normal we find discrete jumps in resource values as experience increases from zero and that more experienced respondents have smaller conditional variances simulation of arbitrary levels of experience allows standardization of the amount of information when developing welfare estimates

citizens preferences on nuclear and renewable energy sources evidence from turkey abstract based on data from a face to face survey of 2422 residents from urban turkey this paper presents an analysis of citizens preferences in turkey on nuclear and renewable energy sources findings indicate that opposition to nuclear power was strong and only a small number of respondents endorsed it by listing it in their top two choices conversely almost two thirds of the sample endorsed investment in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar and only a small minority was opposed to it econometric analyses revealed that knowledge of the climate change problem was a common factor that explained endorsement of both nuclear and renewables yet high levels of concern for the environment and a negative perception regarding its future differentiated the endorsers of renewables from those of nuclear energy endorsers of nuclear energy were found to be males who were knowledgeable about climate change and engaged in environmental issues but less concerned about the environment and optimistic about its future nuclear opponents on the other hand were found to be concerned about the environment pessimistic about its future and not fully relying on technology