total factor productivity and the environmental kuznets curve a comment and some intuition abstract chimeli and braden chimeli ariaster b braden john b 2005 total factor productivity and the environmental kuznets curve journal of environmental economics and management 49 366 380 derive a necessary and sufficient condition under which inter country differences in total factor productivity can yield an environmental kuznets curve they argue that their results emphasize the importance of differences in total factor productivity across countries as well as the need for decreasing returns to scale in pollution abating technologies for the existence of an environmental kuznets curve we show that their proposition 1 is equivalent to proposition 2 in lieb lieb christoph m 2002 the environmental kuznets curve and satiation a simple static model environment and development economics 7 429 448 this implies that even in chimeli and braden s model contemporaneous changes in the marginal rate of substitution between environmental quality and consumption on the demand side and the marginal rate of transformation between these goods on the supply side drive the pollution income relationship this is a very general condition that does not rely on either differences in total factor productivity or decreasing returns to scale in abatement and which is widely applicable

limit cycles in intertemporal adjustment models theory and applications this paper starts from well behaved i e concave one state variable optimal control models the crucial feature is that indigenous growth is present the replacement of the control by an adjustment process and presumably penalizing these adjustments may convert stable and only stable fixed point equilibria into limit cycles indeed given positive growth and proper externalities such that discounting exceeds growth one can generate stable limit cycles with ease e g for a separable framework examples from such diverse fields as renewable resources optimal saving and public choice highlight the economic applicability

the quantitative analytics of the basic neomonetarist model this paper constructs a dynamic macroeconomic model with less than perfect price flexibility which has a classical side consistent with real business cycle theory augmented by investment adjustment costs increasing returns to scale and a new flexible formalization of imperfect competition something akin to the classical dichotomy is justified by a mode of approximation appropriate for a model in which one state variable adjusts quickly while another state variable adjusts slowly even with investment adjustment costs monetary expansions are found to raise the real interest rate the determinants of real rigidity and the macroeconomic rate of price adjustment are investigated copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

demand for local public spending evidence from the british social attitudes survey the british social attitudes survey bsas is a uk wide survey that provides a rich source of information on individuals attitudes to a variety of topics including locally provided service in this paper we seek to model answers to questions on attitudes to local authority spending which invite the expression of a private demand for local public spending a convincing picture has emerged of locally provided public goods as imperfectly congested public goods with a price elastic and probably income inelastic demand the view that central government grants may induce voter confusion over tax prices of public services also finds support

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

the demand for environmental quality and the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract household demand for better environmental quality is the key factor in the long term global applicability of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis we argue that for given consumer preferences the threshold income level at which the ekc turns downwards or the equilibrium income elasticity changes sign from positive to negative depends on the ability to spatially separate production and consumption we test our hypothesis by estimating the equilibrium income elasticities of five pollutants using 1990 data for the united states we find that the change in sign occurs at lower income levels for pollutants for which spatial separation is relatively easy as compared to pollutants for which spatial separation is difficult our results suggest that even high income households in the united states have not yet reached the income level at which their demand for better environmental quality is high enough to cause the income pollution relationship to turn downwards for all the pollutants that we analyzed

staggered price setting translog preferences and endogenous persistence abstract this paper generates persistent real effects of a monetary disturbance in the context of staggered price setters the model combines two related and reinforcing features a translog demand structure and a particular input output production structure these features offer a rationale why a firm when computing its own optimal contract price is influenced by the prices set in other overlapping contracts practically the two features interact in a positive manner and provide a way to generate significant endogenous persistence

input output interactions and optimal monetary policy this paper deals with the implications of factor demand linkages for monetary policy design in a two sector dynamic general equilibrium model part of the output of each sector serves as a production input in both sectors in accordance with a realistic input output structure strategic complementarities induced by factor demand linkages significantly alter the transmission of shocks and amplify the loss of social welfare under optimal monetary policy compared to what is observed in standard two sector models the distinction between value added and gross output that naturally arises in this context is of key importance to explore the welfare properties of the model economy a flexible inflation targeting regime is close to optimal only if the central bank balances inflation and value added variability otherwise targeting gross output variability entails a substantial increase in the loss of welfare

relationships between water pollutant discharges per capita pdcs and indicators of economic level water supply and sanitation in developing countries abstract water pollutant discharges per capita pdcs as indicators to evaluate quantitatively domestic wastewater pollutant discharges to the ambient water were applied to eight international coastal zones and lakeside regions statistical analyses were conducted to find the relationships between pdcs and water sanitation and economic parameters including purchase power parity based gross national income ppp gni per capita proportions of access to safe drinking water and appropriate sanitation domestic water usage amount and integrated parameters of water sanitation and economic indicators wsei1 2 two of the important findings from the regression analyses results were pdc bod correlated with ppp gni per capita with 3rd order regression and pdc tp correlated with wsei1 positively with 10 significance besides smaller adjusted regression coefficients t values of partial regression coefficients between pdc tp and wsei2 increased in the most analyses cases compared to those between pdc tp and wsei1 which showed improvement of the indices empirical estimations were also conducted based on the regression analyses results and distributions of pdcs and ppp gni per capita on the graphs six components generated by the principle component analysis pca contributed 99 of the parameters the first component represented access to sanitation second one represented household connection of safe drinking water third one represented areal equipment of water supply in urban area fourth one represented domestic water usage amount fifth one represented areal equipment of water supply and sixth one represented income per capita and sanitation although some statistically significances of the multiple linear regression analysis were observed the relationships between pdcs and the water supply parameters were considered as complicated in regards to areal equipment and household connection and in whole country and in urban area possible chronological relationships between pdc bod and water supply equipment were considered based on the results of the multiple linear regression analyses and pca based on the considerations of the water pollutant discharges and the economic related parameters relationships domestic wastewater treatment facility deployments and improvements on pollutant discharges reduction for the water quality improvement in the receiving water bodies were recommended which would lead the relationship curves between the water sanitation and economic related indicators and pdcs to move downward

when discretion is better initial conditions and the timeless perspective abstract according to woodford 1999 and 2003 woodford michael 1999 commentary how should monetary policy be conducted in an era of price stability in new challenges for monetary policy federal reserve bank of kansas city pp 277 316 woodford michael 2003 interest and prices foundations of a theory of monetary policy princeton university press princeton nj optimal monetary policy in the new keynesian model follows the timeless perspective rule we show why an economy that is sufficiently far away from its steady state suffers from a short run cost associated with the timeless perspective in this case discretionary policy making can be better than the timeless perspective policy rule

when is discretion superior to timeless perspective policymaking the monetary policy literature assumes increasingly that policy is formulated according to the timeless perspective woodford 1999a however by treating appropriately the auxiliary state variables that characterize the timeless perspective equilibrium when evaluating policy performance this paper shows that discretionary policymaking can be superior to timeless perspective policymaking and identifies model features that make this outcome more likely using standard new keynesian dsge models discretion is found to dominate timeless perspective policymaking when the price wage phillips curves are relatively flat due perhaps to firm specific capital or labor and or kimball 1995 aggregation in combination with nominal rigidities these results suggest that studies applying the timeless perspective might also usefully compare its performance to discretion paying careful attention to how policy performance is evaluated

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

property taxes tax cost illusion and desired education expenditures the extensive tax cost illusion found in the marshall survey is interesting both in terms of its magnitude and the direction of its impact counter to the common view that tax illusion will result in higher expenditures there appears to be at least one case where the overestimation of tax cost has the potential of leading to lower expenditure levels

fiscal incidence at the local level this paper represents an attempt to make aaron and mcguire s 1 approach to incidence operational 2 the tax paid by any individual is interpreted by aaron and mcguire as the sum of two components the first is a lindahl tax equal to the individual s marginal rate of substitution between the public good and income times the amount of the public good provided the second component is a negative or positive transfer equal to the lindahl tax minus the tax the individual has actually paid this second component is used to measure the incidence or redistributional impact of a particular budget program empirically aaron and mcguire found that the computation of lindahl taxes is highly sensitive to the choice of individual utility functions under certain assumptions that sensitivity is reflected in the value of a coefficient related to the marginal rate of substitution between the public good and income maital 16 later on used three separate identical estimates of this coefficient to reduce the ambiguity in the computation of lindahl taxes this paper offers an alternative computational approach to aaron and mcguire s the key information on lindahl tax prices or marginal rates of substitution is obtained from individual demand curves for public goods which are estimated using the median voter model see 5 an advantage of this approach over aaron and mcguire s is that it does not assume separability of the public good and income in taxpayers preferences the present approach also permits the study of the incidence of a budget policy on groups defined by socio demographic characteristics other than income on the other hand and because of empirical reasons which will become apparent below the present approach is useful for the study of incidence at the local level only section 1 of the paper restates the measure for the simultaneous incidence of taxes and one public good henceforth called fiscal incidence in the context of a formalized political process this section also discusses some of the theoretical difficulties involved in extending the case with one public good to the multi

discretion vs timeless perspective under model consistent stabilization objectives recent literature has reported situations in which discretion dominates timeless perspective in the presence of elements that reduce the slope of the new keynesian phillips curve considering a model consistent welfare metric inhibits this mechanism in the standard new keynesian framework

measuring the effect of economic growth on countries environmental efficiency a conditional directional distance function approach using a recently developed probabilistic approach of a conditional directional distance function we measure the effect of economic growth on countries environmental efficiency in carbon dioxide emissions for a sample of 99 countries over the period of 1980 2010 our approach directly accounts for the exogenous factors influencing countries environmental production therefore we do not impose the separability condition on the estimated environmental efficiencies when examining the entire sample as well as the sample of developed countries our results reveal an inverted u shaped relationship between countries gdp per capita and environmental efficiency however when examining the relationship for the sample of developing countries the results reveal an n shaped form moreover our results show that countries ratifying the kyoto protocol tend to have higher efficiency scores implying that their mitigation activity is less costly

intermediate goods and business cycles implications for productivity and welfare this paper presents an aggregate demand driven model of business cycles that provides a new explanation for the procyclicality of productivity and simultaneously predicts large welfare losses from monetary nonneutrality the key features of the model are an input output production structure imperfect competition countercyclical markups and for some results state dependent price rigidity true technical efficiency is procyclical even though production takes place with constant returns without technology shocks or technological externalities the paper has observable implications that distinguish it empirically from related work these implications are generally supported by data from u s manufacturing industries copyright 1995 by american economic association

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

total factor productivity and the environmental kuznets curve abstract empirical studies support the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis ekc for some pollutants as income increases pollution increases reaches a peak and eventually decreases while relying mostly on cross sectional data the interpretations assert that the ekc is a by product of economic growth over time in doing so and in neglecting the role of important country specific characteristics these studies overlook potential econometric problems and introduce policy misconceptions differences in total factor productivity tfps account for much of the variation in income across countries with important implications for environmental quality we develop a theoretical model where different tfps produce a cross sectional ekc even if the dynamic path of environmental quality to its steady state in individual countries suggest otherwise the cross sectional ekc depends on diminishing returns to scale in environmental protection on the curvatures of the utility function with respect to consumption and of the environmental protection function and the elasticities of steady state consumption and environmental expenditures with respect to variation in tfps

trade and environment an empirical analysis of the technology effect in the steel industry abstract the objective of this paper is to study the impact of free trade on global environmental quality by focusing on the technology effect that is the relationship between trade openness and the adoption diffusion of clean technologies the paper attempts to empirically verify the existence of the technology effect by looking at the relationship between trade policy regime or openness and the speed of clean technology diffusion in the steel industry focusing on a cleaner steel technology the electric arc furnace eaf in 30 steel producing countries over 25 years the results show that eaf technology is diffused faster in countries that have more open trade policy regimes thereby supporting the existence of the technology effect for the industry considered

what is benefit taxation abstract benefit taxation is a system in which individuals are taxed according to the benefits they receive from public expenditures this paper describes an alternative to the standard lindahl method of determining the distribution of individual benefits from government provided public goods and uses this alternative to calculate benefit taxes this alternative avoids some of the paradoxial features of lindahl pricing and generates outcomes in which all consumers benefit from reduced costs of providing public goods an illustrative calculation shows that benefit taxes defined in this way may be quite regressive

voluntary income redistribution with migration abstract this paper examines theoretically the welfare magnet problem brought about by income redistribution in a small area where disparities across jurisdictions in transfer policies may induce both recipient and resource migration we show that the level of redistribution determined by majority rule may either rise or decline as household mobility increases and that this level will be either higher or lower than the efficient level to an extent that depends on local market conditions the social value of migrants and the mobility of both the rich and the poor in particular an economy may benefit from the immigration of transfer recipients we also derive the form of an efficient community specific subsidy to transfers which in some cases will be negative

the environment as a factor of production the authors develop a model of environmental resource use in production with an empirical analysis of how electric power companies consume and bank sulfur dioxide pollution permits the model considers emissions fuels and labor as variable inputs with quasi fixed inputs of permits and capital incorporating information from permit markets allows the authors to distinguish between user costs and asset shadow values their findings indicate that firms are holding stocks of pollution permits for reasons other than short term cost savings the results also reveal substantial substitution possibilities between emissions permits stocks and other factors of production the authors speculate that anticipated secondary markets for carbon offset inventories related to the flexibility mechanisms of the kyoto protocol will have similar effects for greenhouse gas emitting firms

monetary policy with sectoral trade offs we formulate a two sector new keynesian economy that features sectoral heterogeneity along three main dimensions price stickiness consumption goods durability and the inter sectoral trade of input materials the combination of these factors deeply affects inter sectoral and intra sectoral stabilization in this context we examine the welfare properties of simple rules that adjust the policy rate in response to the output gap and alternative measures of final goods price inflation aggregating durable and non durable goods prices depending on the relative frequency of sectoral price setting may induce a severe bias due to factor demand linkages the cost of production in one sector is influenced by price setting in the other sector of the economy as a result measures of aggregate inflation that weigh sectoral price dynamics based on the relative degree of price rigidity do not allow the central bank to keep track of the effective speeds of sectoral price adjustment

selfishness versus public regardingness in voting behavior abstract the selfishness hypothesis in voting behavior is formalized and tested for the first time individual net benefits from a bond proposal computed using the median voter model are used to explain voting behavior it was found that taxpayers in general voted according to their self interest as defined by net benefits however high income groups voted in favor of proposals that would have redistributed income to the poor their behavior is consistent with either the public regardingness hypothesis or with an extension of the selfishness hypothesis which includes real estate speculation

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

an overlapping generations model of growth and the environment this article analyzes the potential conflict between economic growth and the maintenance of environmental quality in an overlapping generations model short lived individuals make decisions which have long lasting effects on both factor productivity and the environment the model provides a theoretical explanation of observed correlations between environmental quality and income whereby economic growth is associated first with declines then improvements in environmental quality it suggests circumstances in which multiple pareto ranked steady state equilibria may arise and in which sustained growth of both capital and environmental quality may occur overmaintenance of the environment analogous to dynamically inefficient overaccumulation of capital may emerge copyright 1994 by royal economic society

is there a long term relationship between agricultural ghg emissions and productivity growth a dynamic panel data approach the paper adopts a single country regional panel dataset to analyse the long term relationship between agricultural greenhouse gases ghg emissions and productivity growth and consequently to assess emissions sustainability the hypothesis of emission sustainability is assessed by estimating alternative panel model specifications with conventional and gmm estimators applied to the highly heterogeneous italian regional agriculture whose methane and nitrous oxide emissions are properly reconstructed for the periods 1951 2008 and 1980 2008 the modelling approach and the empirical specification include the environmental kuznets curve ekc as one of the possible outcomes results suggest that when a significant relationship between agricultural ghg emissions and productivity growth occurs it is often monotonic and though sustainability is accepted for some ghg no univocal robust evidence of the ekc emerges across the different specifications estimators and periods policy implications of this empirical evidence are finally drawn