convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions among g7 countries a tar panel unit root approach the subject of this paper is the examination the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions of the g7 countries during the 1960 2005 period in a nonlinear panel analysis framework in this approach first the linearity of the series was tested and when the linearity was rejected the threshold autoregressive tar panel unit root test which splits the data into two regimes was employed to examine the stationarity properties of the series because the null of linearity was rejected in the first step we tested the stationarity of the series using the tar panel unit root test in the tar panel unit root test we found that the united kingdom was the transition country whose per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions determined the switch from one regime to the other the results showed that convergence existed in the first regime and divergence in the second when we tested whether absolute or conditional convergence existed we found that the per capita co2 emissions were conditionally converging in the first regime

cyclical fluctuation patterns and decoupling towards common eu 28 environmental performance abstract the eu 28 is one of the largest emitters of co2 in the world and the most committed to reducing emissions however the national environmental strategies of the member states are still diverse this study is aimed at evaluating the environmental performance of european economies by analysing the fluctuations of co2 emissions and their links with economic activity over the period 1950 2012 the methodological framework is based on a dynamic factor analysis to determine an index of the eu fluctuation of co2 emissions in parametric form this index can be used to monitor the progress towards common behaviour across member states with a time varying recursive method following this approach we also track the efforts made to decouple co2 emissions from gdp based on these analyses we develop a co2 emissions gdp linkage matrix to attain useful information on the eu member state environmental performance

are shocks to ecological footprint in oecd countries permanent or temporary abstract the main goal of this study is to check the unit root properties of the ecological footprint and its six subcomponents cropland footprint grazing land footprint fishing grounds footprint forest land footprint built up land footprint and carbon footprint in 25 oecd the organisation for economic co operation and development countries during the period 1961 2013 this study uses a new stationarity test with sharp and smooth breaks in the panel setting developed by bahmani oskooee et al 2014 empirical findings demonstrate that the fishing grounds footprint does not have mean reverting behavior while the remaining ecological indicators display stationary properties under the assumption of both homogenous and heterogeneous long run variance therefore if policymakers decide to decrease the size of the fishing grounds footprint they will not face stiff resistance in addition to the panel results the univariate stationarity test results can also help policymakers in each country design effective emission reduction policies

stochastic divergence or convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions re examining the evidence this paper revisits the time series literature on the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions and examines the robustness of previous results using a sample of oecd countries for the period 1950 2002 we employ a battery of stationarity and unit root tests including those that allow for cross sectional dependencies within the panel we also correct for inaccuracies in previous studies that could result in a trend stationary series being labelled as converging even if it were actually diverging from the international average the body of evidence provided by our analysis suggests that per capita co2 emissions have not converged among oecd countries during the period under consideration this finding is of importance to both climate change policy makers and to those who construct climate change models

one and one half bound dichotomous choice contingent valuation to reduce the potential for response bias on the follow up bid in multiple bound discrete choice cvm questions while maintaining much of the efficiency gains of the multiple bound approach we introduce the one and one half bound oohb approach despite the fact that the oohb model uses less information than the double bound db approach efficiency gains in moving from single bound to oohb capture a large portion of the gain associated with moving from single bound to db in an analysis of survey data our oohb estimates demonstrated higher consistency with respect to the follow up data than the db estimates and were more efficient as well

public support for reducing us reliance on fossil fuels investigating household willingness to pay for energy research and development abstract in order to reduce future dependence on foreign oil and emissions of co2 how much would us households be willing to pay annually to support increased energy research and development r d activities designed to replace fossil fuels does it matter whether the r d includes nuclear energy options we explore these questions using data from a unique set of national telephone and internet surveys using a national advisory referendum format the contingent valuation method is applied to estimate annual household willingness to pay wtp for us household support of a national energy research and development fund erdf for investments in energy sources not reliant on fossil fuels while accounting for the level of un certainty in voting responses the wtp modeling includes a comparison of both classic maximum likelihood estimation mle and bayesian analysis evidence indicates that mle and bayesian analysis achieve similar statistical inference while the bayesian analysis provides a narrower confidence interval around estimated wtp

convergence of per capita co2 emissions across the globe insights via wavelet analysis abstract this paper examines the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions for 162 countries across the globe covering all income groups high income oecd high income non oecd middle income and low income countries as categorized by the world bank the incidence of stochastic convergence is analysed by making use of recently developed wavelet based unit root tests the existing studies on this subject make use of conventional unit root tests using time series and or panel data a serious drawback of these tests is that they analyse the stochastic behaviour of any series in time domain only whereas the stochastic process may behave differently across different frequencies as well thus wavelet methods are an obvious solution as they consider frequency dimension as well in addition to time dimension when analyzing the stochastic behaviour of any data series and hence these methods encompass the conventional unit root testing methodologies by providing a clear and complete picture of the stochastic process our empirical findings based on latest available time series annual data from 1960 to 2010 lend support in favor of convergence among 38 countries including 18 high income oecd countries 2 high income non oecd countries 13 middle income countries and 5 low income countries while for the rest of 124 countries the co2 emission series is found to be non stationary suggesting the divergence in these countries these findings are in contrast with the most of the existing studies which may be due to the use of wavelet based unit root tests that are of course better alternatives some policy implications evolve from the empirical findings

per capita carbon dioxide emissions convergence or divergence understanding and considering the distribution of per capita carbon dioxide co2 emissions is important in designing international climate change proposals and incentives for participation i evaluate historic international emissions distributions and forecast future distributions to assess whether per capita emissions have been converging or will converge i find evidence of convergence among 23 member countries of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd whereas emissions appear to be diverging for an 88 country global sample over 1960 2000 forecasts based on a markov chain transition matrix provide little evidence of future emissions convergence and indicate that emissions may diverge in the near term i also review the shortcomings of environmental kuznets curve regressions and structural models in characterizing future emissions distributions

convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the eu legend or reality abstract designing appropriate environmental and energy policies in order to meet the kyoto protocol s carbon dioxide co 2 reduction targets in the european union eu requires a detailed examination and thorough understanding of co 2 emission trends across the eu member states this paper investigates whether co 2 emissions have converged across 22 european countries over the 1971 to 2006 period the bayesian shrinkage estimation method is employed to do this work and the results reveal the following first the hypothesis of absolute convergence in per capita co 2 emissions is supported and a slight upward convergence is observed second the fact that countries differ considerably in both their speed of convergence and volatility in emissions makes it possible to identify different groups of countries third the results with respect to convergence do not vary much once the share of industry in gdp is accounted for in a conditional convergence analysis however a decreasing share of industry in gdp seems to contribute to a decline in per capita emissions these findings may carry important implications for both national and eu environmental policies

stochastic convergence in per capita co2 emissions evidence from emerging economies 1921 2014 abstract we employ the recently developed lm and rals lm unit root tests that allow for endogenously determined structural breaks to study stochastic convergence in relative per capita co2 emissions over the period 1921 to 2014 for a balanced panel of emerging market economies the results provide mixed evidence of the presence of stochastic convergence in particular stochastic convergence is achieved for eleven out of the seventeen countries under investigation this implies that the energy regulatory framework in these countries needs to be revaluated in order to reduce the carbon footprint to further comprehend the factors behind the observed disparities in emission stability we analyse the determinants of the identified groups an examination of the determinants of the observed behaviour in relative per capita co2 emissions reveal that income population financial development and trade are significant drivers with trade predominantly playing a larger role in emission growth also weak evidence is found in terms of a catching up effect in the growth of relative per capita co2 emissions

rank dynamics and club convergence of sustainable development for countries around the world abstract assessment of country level sustainable development is a critical research topic entrenched in the global battle against climate change this study employs the frontier approach combined with convergence analysis to assess the sustainable development for a set of 121 countries over 1990 2014 focusing on analyzing the countries rank dynamics and convergence behavior the levels of the countries sustainable development are captured by data envelopment analysis a nonparametric frontier approach that can jointly assess a country s economic and environmental performance reflecting the divergent views on the importance of economic and environmental objectives in the pursuit of sustainability the proposed approach generates the countries sustainability scores by prioritizing either economic or environmental criterion this study finds that developed countries have significantly outperformed developing countries if environmental criterion takes precedence over economic criterion in performance assessment moreover regardless of the model employed there is strong evidence of club convergence i e convergence in subgroups of countries to different steady states rather than convergence in full sample we analyze the pattern of convergence paths and discuss policy implications obtained from our empirical findings

ecotourism demand and differential pricing of national park access in costa rica ecotourism presents developing countries with growing opportunities for enhancing resource conservation and economic growth but also raises pressing management and policy challenges this paper presents a conceptual framework and empirical analysis of the impacts of introducing a differential entrance fee policy at three national parks in costa rica data are collected using a contingent behavior methodology designed to elicit information on foreign tourists hypothetical park visitation behaviors at alternative entrance fee levels park visitation demand functions and price and income elasticities are estimated revenue maximizing fees are calculated and applications of differential pricing principles to park management are discussed

flexible functional form estimation of willingness to pay using dichotomous choice data abstract this paper introduces fully flexible semi nonparametric methods for calculating willingness to pay wtp bounded between zero and the respondent s income for dichotomous choice contingent valuation a method to estimate median wtp using fully flexible functional forms is also presented finally the numerical illustration demonstrates the importance of considering jensen s inequality in calculating wtp with nonlinear models

difficulties in valuing street light improvement trust surprise and bound effects previous empirical research has demonstrated an internal inconsistency that may occur in response strategies between the first and second valuations made to closed ended contingent valuation questions one possible explanation for this bound effect is the surprise of being asked the second valuation question which may be enhanced where there is a lack of trust this paper considers the use of closed ended contingent valuation to estimate non market benefits for an improved street lighting scheme where there is a lack of trust in the agency responsible for provision the results provide confirmation that surprise is an important determinant of bound effects however efforts to reduce such bias using a prior statement of the bid range were found to be ineffective in increasing trust and reducing surprise given the importance of this area of research directions for future research are considered

welfare measurements using contingent valuation a comparison of techniques three commonly used techniques of asking contingent valuation questions are compared iterative bidding payment cards and dichotomous choice the results reveal that no single contingent valuation technique is neutral in the elicitation of hicksian surplus and each technique has its strengths and weaknesses the iterative bidding estimates contain a starting point bias while the payment card and dichotomous choice estimates were influenced by the interviewers soliciting the contingent values finally the analysis of dichotomous choice responses involves unresolved issues that warrant further investigation on the other hand dichotomous choice is the easiest technique to administer in a survey setting

estimating country specific environmental kuznets curves from panel data a bayesian shrinkage approach designing an efficient global climate policy turns out to be a difficult yet crucial task since there are noteworthy cross country differences in energy and carbon intensities in this article the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for carbon dioxide co2 emissions and as a modelling technique the iterative bayesian shrinkage procedure is employed to handle the cross country differences the results suggest that first the ekc hypothesis is rejected for 47 out of the 51 countries considered when the heterogeneity in countries energy efficiencies and cross country differences in the co2 emissions trajectories are accounted for second a classification of the results with respect to the development levels of the countries concerned reveals that the emergence of an overall inverted u shaped curve is due to the fact that in high income countries increase in gross domestic product gdp decreases emissions while in low income countries emissions and gdp are positively correlated

starting point bias in dichotomous choice valuation with follow up questioning abstract follow up questions are frequently used to improve the efficiency of dichotomous choice contingent valuation questionnaires however a number of authors e g 12 16 have noted a significant difference between the wtp distributions implied by initial and follow up question responses this paper investigates starting point bias as one explanation for the phenomenon we develop a model of starting point bias in the context of dichotomous choice questioning with follow up using a monte carlo simulation to illustrate the potential bias imparted to wtp estimates an application is provided based on data from a cv study in northcentral iowa

spike models in contingent valuation spike models allow for a nonzero probability of zero willingness to pay in referendum style contingent valuation experiments they include many of the often used models as special cases and allow various analyses that are not possible in standard applications in this paper the economic rationale for the spike models and their estimation techniques are discussed and empirical illustrations are provided one study suggests that mean willingness to pay is zero and both studies strongly suggest that median wtp is zero these results have some bearing on the continuing debate of the incentive properties of hypothetical surveys and the construction of scenarios in contingent valuation experiments

monetary policy in a channel system abstract channel systems for conducting monetary policy are becoming increasingly popular despite its popularity the consequences of implementing policy with a channel system are not well understood we develop a general equilibrium framework of a channel system and study the optimal policy a novel aspect of the channel system is that a central bank can tighten or loosen its policy without changing its policy rate this policy instrument has so far been overlooked by a large body of the literature on the optimal design of interest rate rules

is there convergence in per capita so2 emissions in china an empirical study using city level panel data abstract as china s economy has grown rapidly in recent years china s environmental pollution has become increasingly significant among all the traditional pollutants sulfur dioxide has been monitored by the chinese government since the 1990s in this study china s city level panel data between 2002 and 2012 are utilized to investigate the existence of convergence in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across chinese cities the conventional estimation methods for convergence suffer from an endogeneity problem and therefore produce biased results to address the endogeneity problem and allow for dynamics dynamic panel data estimators are utilized and the static estimation results are conducted as a robustness check in addition the influential factors for convergence are examined the empirical results indicate that in the chosen sample period there were absolute and conditional convergences in per capita sulfur dioxide emissions across cities within the whole nation as well as in the eastern western and central regions of china because per capita gross domestic product and the ratio of secondary industry to gross domestic product are both positively related with per capita sulfur dioxide emissions higher income per capita and greater importance of the secondary industry would cause the convergence speed to be lower therefore the most straightforward policy implication for the empirical results is that the policies for controlling sulfur dioxide emissions should be regionally differentiated for cities with high sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the regulation could be tight as the emissions would decrease faster because convergence exists however for cities with low sulfur dioxide emissions per capita the target for reducing emissions should not be excessively aggressive

explanatory factors of co2 per capita emission inequality in the european union the design of european mitigation policies requires a detailed examination of the factors explaining the unequal emissions in the different countries this research analyzes the evolution of inequality in co2 emissions per capita in the european union eu 27 in the period 1990 2009 and its explanatory factors for this purpose we decompose the theil index of inequality into the contributions of the different kaya factors the decomposition is also applied to the inequality between and within groups of countries north europe south europe and east europe the analysis shows an important reduction in inequality to a large extent due to the smaller differences between groups and because of the lower contribution of the energy intensity factor the importance of the gdp per capita factor increases and becomes the main explanatory factor however within the different groups of countries the carbonization index appears to be the most relevant factor in explaining inequalities the policy implications of the results are discussed

nonparticipation or misspecification the impacts of nonparticipation on dichotomous choice contingent valuation dichotomous choice or referendum contingent valuation surveys have become the predominate choice for valuing goods and services otherwise not valued in a standard market nonmarket goods and services a number of researchers have recently recommended that dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies include a follow up question to all no responses to determine whether the no response is a result of unwillingness to pay or nonparticipation if the goal of the study is to investigate the impact of covariates on either mean willingness to pay or the probability of nonparticipation simple identification of indifferent individuals will not suffice a simulation study shows that existing econometric models designed to account for nonparticipation are extremely sensitive to misspecification bias accurate identification of the probability of nonparticipation is hampered by potential misspecification of the distribution of willingness to pay

distribution dynamics of co2 emissions this paper uses nonparametric methods to examine the convergence in co2 emissions per capita on a sample of 100 countries for the period 1966 1996 industrial countries show a convergence pattern however there is little evidence of convergence for the whole sample

referendum models and economic values theoretical intuitive and practical bounds on willingness to pay innovations in the estimation of referendum type contingent valuation models have led to willingness to pay wtp measures inconsistent with consumer preferences and unbounded from above or below we propose a set of criteria which guarantee a bounded measure of wtp the criteria reject the traditional random utility model with unrestricted error terms in favor of the random wtp model with bounds on wtp once wtp is bounded by zero and income the form of the distribution is less consequential a new model for wtp is developed based on the beta distribution and is compared to previously estimated models

global convergence in per capita co2 emissions national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013 new huadu business school research fund

repeated dichotomous choice formats for elicitation of willingness to pay simultaneous estimation and anchoring effect repeated dichotomous choice contingent valuation data are generated from responses to a succession of binary questions regarding alternative prices for an environmental good in this paper we propose a simultaneous equation model that allows for endogeneity and error correlation across the responses at each stage of the bidding process the model allows us to study the evolution of anchoring effects after the second dichotomous choice question estimation involves the bayesian techniques of gibbs sampling and data augmentation and the application focuses on the preservation value of a natural area the results for a data set involving up to four successive dichotomous choice questions show that restricted multiple bounded models are rejected by the data with the general model in addition willingness to pay tends to stabilize after the second stage in the elicitation process for the general unrestricted model when taking anchoring effects into consideration it is revealed that individuals responses in the latter stages are influenced by the sequence of bid prices offered in earlier questions nevertheless they do not have a significant effect on welfare estimates

a contingent valuation estimate of the benefits of wolves in minnesota in this paper we estimate the willingness topay for a wolf management plan and a wolfdamage plan in minnesota using the contingentvaluation method the theoretical definition ofwillingness to pay for wolf protection iscomposed of use and non use values weincorporate a don t know response option in thedichotomous choice valuation questions a largenumber of respondents answered don t know themultinomial logit model is used todifferentiate between don t know and noresponses non use motives are importantfactors that explain willingness to pay we usethese benefit estimates in combination with twoalternative cost estimates to consider theefficiency of the wolf management and damageplans both plans have estimated benefitsgreater than costs

consumption based and territory based carbon emissions intensity determinants and forecasting using club convergence across countries abstract understanding the dynamics of carbon emissions across time and space is important when formulating energy policies to minimise climate changes in the future if per capita carbon emissions or carbon intensity converge over time then any negotiation of multilateral agreements will be easier than if convergence is absent it is also possible for club convergence to exist where countries within a club converge but countries between clubs do not converge we examine the convergence of consumption based and territory based carbon emissions intensity across 70 countries we find two convergent clubs for consumption based emissions and three convergent clubs for territory based emissions increases in each of total factor productivity renewable energy consumption and urbanisation increase the odds of belonging to a low carbon emissions intensity club an increase in industry value added reduces the odds of belonging to a low carbon intensity club increases in total factor productivity can be obtained through effective macroeconomic policy while increasing renewable energy consumption may require structural changes in economies focused on transitioning to a low carbon economy under a business as usual forecasting scenario the number of consumption based carbon emissions intensity clubs increases between 2014 and 2030 making it more difficult to negotiate multilateral agreements on climate change in the future

a test of the equality of closed ended and open ended contingent valuations a test is developed to find whether open ended and closed ended contingent valuation mechanisms lead to significantly different results the test is based on joint estimation of willingness to pay responses to open and closed ended questions asked of the same sample of individuals in a public good example individuals do respond differently depending on question format possible explanations include different incentives for strategic behavior and respondents lack of familiarity with the open ended question type no differences in willingness to pay were found in a private good example

club convergence in carbon dioxide emissions we examine convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among 128 countries for the period 1960 2003 by means of a new methodology introduced by phillips and sul econometrica 75 6 1771 1855 2007a contrary to previous studies our approach allows us to examine for evidence of club convergence i e identify groups of countries that converge to different equilibria our results suggest convergence in per capita co2 emissions among all the countries under scrutiny in the early years of our sample however there seem to be two separate convergence clubs in the recent era that converge to different steady states interestingly we also find evidence of transitioning between the two convergence clubs suggesting either a slow convergence between the two clubs or a tendency for some countries to move from one convergence club to the other

a bayesian approach to double bounded contingent valuation in this paper we propose a bayesian approach to model double bounded contingent valuation data the double bounded elicitation method is interpreted as a two tier iterated process in which the subject is allowed to have a second thought about his her valuation for the environmental good prior information is modelled from the answers to the first dichotomous choice question the model is quasi bayesian q b in that the prior distribution refers to mean willingness to pay while the likelihood function refers to the proportions of a multinomial distribution this model is applied to empirical data from a contingent valuation survey involving the valuation expressed by european tourists for access to natural areas in the canary islands results show that point estimate of consumer surplus computed with the q b model does not differ substantially from single bounded model estimation in addition double bounded seems to be quite robust to the choice of the prior model of willingness to pay responses comparison with open ended suggests that the q b model might be useful to control for strategic response and starting point biases

hypothetical versus real willingness to pay in the health care sector results from a field experiment abstract we conducted a field experiment comparing hypothetical and real purchase decisions for a pharmacist provided asthma management program among 172 subjects with asthma subjects received either a dichotomous choice contingent valuation question or were given the opportunity to actually enroll in the program three different prices were used us 15 40 and 80 in the hypothetical group 38 of subjects said that they would purchase the good at the stated price but only 12 of subjects in the real group purchased the good p 0 000 we cannot however reject the null hypothesis that definitely sure hypothetical yes responses as identified in a follow up question correspond to real yes responses we conclude that the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method overestimates willingness to pay but that it may be possible to correct for this overestimation by sorting out definitely sure yes responses

a new paradigm for valuing non market goods using referendum data maximum likelihood estimation by censored logistic regression abstract this paper challenges the w m hanemann amer j agr econom 66 332 341 1984 and c sellar j p chavas and j r stoll j environ econom management 13 382 390 1986 utilizations of logit models to estimate the value of non market resources from referendum survey data these data are more informative than conventional choice data the random utility interpretation of logit models is therefore too restrictive bypassing the utility function entirely it will be shown that parameters and standard errors for utility theoretic inverse hicksian demand functions can be extracted directly and much more simply estimated demand functions need not be limited to those corresponding to the linear in parameters utility difference specifications which can be handled by packaged logit programs

use of dichotomous choice nonmarket methods to value the whooping crane resource market prices for endangered wildlife species rarely exist when prices do exist they arc not likely to reflect accurately individual preferences both consumptive uses such as hunting fishing and trapping boyle and bishop 1985 stou and johnson brookshire eubanks and randall and more esoteric benefits such as viewing and existence values must be considered this article is addressed to the valuation of whooping cranes grus americana a prominent endangered species the purpose of this article is to present a methodology for estimating nonconsumptive benefits associated with the existence of an endangered species a dichotomous choice form of contingent valuation is applied to quantify individuals economic surplus associated with preservation of the whooping crane resource specific issues and limitations of the empirical approach are discussed some of which have been previously examined by bishop and heberlein 1979 and hanemann the present paper expands upon earlier work in several ways fit in addition to discussing the above issues a unique application of the approach to an endangered species is presented second three model specifications are examined two of which arc consistent with utility theory and one which is not hanemann ti again following hanemann economic surplus is estimated at the sample median as well as the mean the dii cussion of the last two issues sheds sit on their implications for estimation of economic surplus throughout the article the suitability of alternative estimation techniques for dichom mous choice or referendum style data is examined the methodological and empirical results are relevant to a number of cumnt issues regarding model specification choice of binary response model and choice of estimator for equivalent surplus hanemann boyle and bishop 1984 sellar chavas and stoll

towards a sustainable energy scenario a worldwide analysis abstract this paper studies the worldwide evolution of energy intensity for a large sample of countries during the period 1990 2015 differentiating between non renewable non clean and total energy intensity this division allows us to establish more precise policy recommendations which along with the use of the phillips and sul 2009 methodology provides the novelty of the analysis our results refute recent evidence favouring the hypothesis of global convergence for all types of energy intensity grouping countries either by regions or by income level the evidence against this hypothesis remains overwhelming with very few exceptions nonetheless we can observe the presence of several convergence clubs whose creation strongly depends on energy prices as well as on external energetic dependency in any event results relating to the different types of energy intensity are varied suggesting that previous policy recommendations aimed at tackling climate change based on total energy intensity analyses are questionable

interest rate corridors and reserves abstract this paper evaluates reserves regimes versus interest rate corridors which have become competing frameworks for monetary policy implementation rate corridors relying on lending and deposit facilities to create ceilings and floors for overnight interest rates evince mixed results on controlling volatility reserve requirements allow period average smoothing of interest rates but even if remunerated are subject to reserve avoidance activities a system of voluntary period average reserve commitments could offer equivalent rate smoothing advantages if central banks created symmetric opportunity costs of meeting or falling short of period average reserve requirements or commitments they could achieve flat reserve demand on settlement day

allowing for zeros in dichotomous choice contingent valuation models dichotomous choice contingent valuation data are modeled using a mixture distribution the standard parametric survival model is modified such that respondents in the lowest willingness to pay category may have either zero willingness to pay or a small positive willingness to pay in comparison to the standard model the mixture model leads to a dramatic reduction in estimates of mean willingness to pay covariates such as income are found to be more significant in determining the positive portion of the distribution of willingness to pay

sustainability of catch up growth in the extended european union abstract this paper analyses the compatibility of growth and sustainability in the european union eu including a new eu member states from the former soviet bloc eu 10 the extension of eu borders financial and technological support stimulated rapid convergence and decreased the socio economic differences between the old eu 15 and newly accepted eu member states the transition from a command to a market economy resulted in the remarkable increase in resource efficiency and other positive aspects of sustainability along with 1 5 times increased gdp final energy consumption decreased by 20 greenhouse gases emissions by 25 and the emissions of acidifying compounds were halved during the period from the collapse of former soviet bloc to the recent economic crisis however the per capita production and consumption in eu 10 is still approximately half that of eu 15 and further catch up growth should be expected ensuring that economic and social cohesion is not achieved at the expense of increased environmental impact decelerated economic growth is a feature characteristic of mature economies and the gdp growth rate in eu 15 states decreased almost 2 5 times during the last 50 year similar trends are characteristic of other developed countries and market economies have adapted to this trend even with a decelerated growth rate the ecological footprint in developed countries currently exceeds three and more times the allowable limits and almost two thirds of the ecological footprint relates to traditional energy de fossilisation by a greater increase in energy efficiency use of renewable energy and more intense material recovery is the most promising option for reducing the ecological footprint of these countries deceleration of the economic growth rate supplemented by the aforementioned options is a hard but realistic track leading to the reduction of ecological footprint in developed countries to allowable limits without radical de growth in consumption and production that can result in unpredictable and unacceptable consequences

procedural invariance testing of the one and one half bound dichotomous choice elicitation method the contingent valuation method for estimating willingness to pay for public goods typically adopts a single referendum question format which is relatively statistically inefficient as an alternative cooper hanemann and signorello 2002 propose the one and one half bound oohb format allowing researchers to question respondents about both a lower and higher limit on project costs thereby securing substantial gains in statistical efficiency using an experimental design we find that responses to oohb valuation questions fail crucial tests of procedural invariance we test various competing models of observed response patterns including strategic misrepresentation of standard preferences and nonstandard models of preference formation

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

willingness to pay estimates using the double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation format a test for validity and precision in a bayesian framework the double bounded dichotomous choice db dc contingent valuation format is thought to yield more precise welfare estimates questions remain about its validity the initial bid may represent information with which respondents update their willingness to pay a bayesian model of respondent decision making is estimated for two data sets the results indicate updating or shifts in respondent willingness to pay between iterated valuations nonparametric testing of the welfare estimates reveals that the model incorporating updating yields different values from the standard model the expected increases in the precision of the db dc welfare estimates are lost when updating occurs

convergence of greenhouse gas emissions among g7 countries the convergence of air pollutants is a major concern for policymakers since all the countries pursue the goal of allocating the emissions equally internationally in the future hence the examination of the existence of convergence is important for the climate change protection of the earth in this article greenhouse gas ghg emissions convergence among the g7 countries for the period between 1990 and 2011 is examined using the pairwise testing technique proposed by that aims to analyse probabilistic convergence across a large number of cross sectional units next we proceed with multivariate tests for stability and the existence of unit roots finally the analysis is complemented by the use of the panel stationarity test accounting for structural changes as proposed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 test overall the results do not confirm the hypothesis of convergence for the countries in question although more recently the countries have shown a small decline in their ghg emissions

valuing the recreational benefits from the creation of nature reserves in irish forests abstract data from a large scale contingent valuation study are used to investigate the effects of forest attributes on willingness to pay for forest recreation in ireland in particular the presence of a nature reserve in the forest is found to significantly increase the visitors willingness to pay a random utility model is used to estimate the welfare change associated with the creation of nature reserves in all the irish forests currently without one the yearly impact on visitors economic welfare of new nature reserves approaches half a million pounds per annum exclusive of non recreational values

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data this paper tests the convergence in per capita carbon dioxide emissions for a collection of developed and developing countries using data spanning the period 1870 2002 for this purpose three recently developed panel unit root tests that permit for dependence among the individual countries are employed the results lend strong support in favor of convergence for the panel as a whole estimates of the speed of this convergence is also provided

estimation using contingent valuation data from a dichotomous choice with follow up questionnaire reply abstract our original article proposed that the two yes no willingness to pay wtp responses produced by this survey format should be viewed as a pair of jointly distributed correlated discrete random variables the comparison model the conventional approach to estimation using these types of data contained a programming error correction alters the results from the comparison model but our original claim that estimation by conventional methods can produce misleading inferences if ours is the appropriate specification still stands this is especially true if negative wtp is precluded when e wtp is calculated

a search based model of the interbank money market and monetary policy implementation we present a search based model of the interbank money market and monetary policy implementation banks are subject to reserve requirements and the central bank tenders reserves interbank payments redistribute holdings and banks trade with each other in a decentralized over the counter market the central bank provides standing facilities where banks can either deposit surpluses or borrow to cover shortfalls of reserves overnight the model provides insights on liquidity trading volume and rate dispersion in the interbank market features largely absent from the canonical models in the tradition of poole 1968 and fits a number of stylized facts for the eurosystem observed during the recent period of unconventional monetary policies moreover it provides insights on the implications of different market structures

testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a bayesian robust structural model we address international convergence in carbon dioxide emissions per capita and per value added derived from emission inventories based on production and consumption patterns we propose a bayesian structural model that accounts for heteroscedasticity and endogeneity between emissions and economic growth and tests for the existence of group specific convergence via shrinkage priors we find evidence for country specific conditional convergence in all emission inventories implying a half life of 2 7 3 1 years for production based emissions and 3 6 4 7 years for consumption based emissions when testing for global convergence without allowing for individual specific convergence paths the half life of hbox co 2 per capita increases to 15 26 years whereas emission intensities show a half life of 44 45 years our results highlight the current incompatibility between emission targets and economic growth and the need for faster diffusion of green technologies moreover there is no evidence for specific convergence dynamics in the european union the oecd or the countries that are subject to binding emission constraints specified in the kyoto protocol the institutional frameworks implemented in industrialized countries did not induce faster convergence among developed economies

bayesian analysis of interval data contingent valuation models and pricing policies the general aim of a contingent valuation survey is to elicit the willingness to pay wtp of respondents for some public commodity without a clear market price this could be a program to protect some environmental resource or as in our application the access to a recreational area of particular interest in this context we want to accommodate the possibility of zero wtp and we need to deal with the fact that observations arise as intervals for wtp rather than point observations we propose a flexible bayesian statistical analysis of wtp as a function of characteristics of the respondents that formally incorporates this structure through a mixture model we consider model uncertainty and pay particular attention to the predictive distribution of revenue if a certain entry price were asked the latter is an important tool for deriving pricing policies

examining the link between carbon dioxide emissions and the share of industry in gdp modeling and testing for the g 7 countries abstract in this paper the relationship between per capita co 2 emissions and the share of industrial value added in gross domestic product gdp for the g 7 countries is discussed using a novel approach it is assumed that per capita co 2 emissions are correspondent to the share of industrial value added in gdp a model is developed using hidden markov process to search this initial assumption in the model the data for industrial share in gdp are assigned to be the observations while the data for per capita co 2 emissions represent the hidden process which may be then predicted using the ratio of industrial value added to gdp the data set covers the period from 1970 to 2008 and the model is tested for the g 7 countries the study findings show that except in the case of canada the hidden markov model performs reasonably well in tracking per capita co 2 emissions the study results provide also a basis for a number of policy implications

validation of empirical measures of welfare change a comparison of nonmarket techniques since the passing of the flood control act of 1936 the attention of many resource economists has been directed towards measuring the benefits and costs of alternative uses of natural resources increasingly it has been recognized that the value of some of these uses is not explicitly determined through market transactions this has led to the focus of much attention upon the development of nonmarket methods to estimate the value of these uses in the 1940s the groundwork for the travel cost method was established by hotelling prewitt 1949 following this in the 1960s davis initiated the basic foundation for bidding methods davis 1963 which were later to be subsumed under the heading of contingent valuation methods brookshire randall and stoll 1980 schulze d arge and brookshire 1981 thayer 1981 both of these methods will be further discussed below in addition to these two methods a third approach the unit day value method has been recognized as acceptable but not preferred for the valuation of recreational uses of water and related land resources dwyer kelley and bowes 1977 u s water resources council 1979 given the existence of alternative methods of estimating the value of resource uses several obvious questions arise one of the first of these is under what circumstances is each method most appropriate existing literature has focussed sufficiently on this question and pointed out limitations of each especially the travel cost method and unit day value methods brookshire ives and schulze 1976 dwyer kelly and bowes 1977 freeman 1979 mcconnell 1975 randall ives and eastman 1977 schulze d arge and brook

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

internal and international migration in mexico 1995 2000 using micro data from mexico and us 2000 population censuses and following a multi choice variant of roy s 1951 model this article pools into one model the determinants of internal and international migration in mexico while paying explicit attention to the potential problem of self selection the results reveal that ignoring multiple destinations in the migration decision might lead to erroneous inferences about the determinants of migration and the type of selection after controlling for wage differences the results suggest that single adult men with low schooling levels tend to migrate to the us while married women and men with higher levels of schooling tend to migrate within mexico we also found that there are strong differences between domestic and international social networks

china s energy intensity target allocation needs improvement lessons from the convergence analysis of energy intensity across chinese provinces abstract to explore the reasonability of the decomposition of china s national energy intensity target we tested the convergence of energy intensity across 30 chinese provinces including stochastic convergence convergence and o convergence based on panel data from 30 chinese provinces across three five year plan periods the results confirmed the existence of stochastic convergence and convergence but did not prove the existence of o convergence in china s energy intensity in addition by comparing the convergence speed over the three five year plan periods the results showed that china s energy intensity targets for the provinces slowed convergence in energy intensity during the 11th and 12th five year plan periods highlighting the need to optimize the decomposition of china s national energy intensity target finally issues related to the decomposition of china s national energy intensity target were discussed and policy suggestions were proposed to optimize it from the perspective of promoting the convergence of energy intensity across chinese provinces

drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in the baltic states decomposition analysis related to the implementation of europe 2020 strategy abstract the prevention of climate change by reducing and stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions is the most important concern for policymakers this study enriches the methodology of decomposition analysis by encompassing the eu 2020 strategy components thus the aim of study is to reveal how the implementation of europe 2020 strategy contributes to changes in ghg emissions in the baltic states the results showed that in all baltic states from 1990 to 2012 ghg emissions decreased by 55 the factor which contributed to the reduction of ghg emissions the most was the increase of the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption the reduction of energy consumption and decarbonisation index influenced the decrease of ghg as well as the increase of intensity of renewable resources and energy efficiency considering that during the period of economic growth the slight decrease of share of renewable resources and the growth of final energy consumption was observed all baltic states should achieve the increase of energy efficiency and that the energy consumption from renewable resources would increase seeking for the reduction of ghg emissions

voluntary reserve targets we study monetary policy implementation through an operating regime involving voluntary reserve targets vrts operating regimes based on reserve requirements may lead to a collapse in interbank trade as they have since the financial crisis we show that no matter the abundance of reserves vrts encourage market activity and support the central bank s control over interest rates we consider i the impact of anticipated and unanticipated liquidity injections by the central bank on market outcomes and ii a comparison with the implementation framework currently adopted by the federal reserve overall a vrt framework may provide several advantages over other frameworks

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

trade dynamics in the market for federal funds we develop a model of the market for federal funds that explicitly accounts for its two distinctive features banks have to search for a suitable counterparty and once they have met both parties negotiate the size of the loan and the repayment the theory is used to answer a number of positive and normative questions what are the determinants of the fed funds rate how does the market reallocate funds is the market able to achieve an efficient reallocation of funds we also use the model for theoretical and quantitative analyses of policy issues facing modern central banks

prospects for the use of choice modelling for benefit transfer abstract many of the earliest studies that sought to test the validity of benefit transfer which typically involved the use of contingent valuation or travel cost applications produced negative findings one of the recommendations from this early testing was to trial alternative methods to produce source studies for benefit transfer including multi attribute techniques subsequently there have been a number of studies conducted that have sought to test the validity of benefit transfer using choice modelling the purpose of this paper is to review these studies and to assess the current state of knowledge regarding the validity of using choice modelling for the purpose of benefit transfer we also describe and consider the merits of an alternative approach for extending the use of choice modelling in benefit transfer bayesian benefit transfer

greenhouse gases emissions growth and the energy mix in europe the importance of energy on greenhouse gases ghg emissions is reflected by the fact that 65 of said emissions in the world are currently due to the use and production of energy however most empirical emission models are found within the environmental kuznetz curve ekc framework which focuses on the relationship between emissions and economic development ang s 2007 2008 papers are some of the exceptions that simultaneously study the relationship between emissions growth and energy with respect to ang s research we contribute on two important aspects first while ang uses a particular country as the study and use time series techniques we take advantage of a panel data set of 24 european countries between 1990 and 2006 and use a dynamic panel data dpd framework second the impact of energy consumption on emissions would depend on the primary energy mix and on the final use of this energy and we consider both factors in the model

inference and optimal design for a welfare measure in dichotomous choice contingent valuation this paper considers the use of contingent valuation to estimate non market benefits from separately valued nested goods survey respondents were asked referendum wtp questions regarding either a scheme to protect the whole area of a wetland or a

statistical approaches to the fat tail problem for dichotomous choice contingent valuation if a cumulative density function esti mated from dichotomous choice data has an unre alistically fat right hand tail mean willingness to pay wtp will be overestimated truncating the range of integration results in a lower bound esti mate of the true mean wtp a normalization pro cedure proposed by boyle welsh and bishop 1988 unnecessarily depresses the estimate further a new statistical approach is presented that allows a best guess estimate of mean wtp because this estimate involves extrapolation beyond the range of the data it tends to be highly variable jel q21

statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

are the determinants of co2 emissions converging among oecd countries this paper studies convergence in co2emission intensity co2 emissions over gdp among oecd countries over the period 1960 2008 based on its determinants namely energy intensity energy consumption over gdp and the so called carbonisation index co2 emissions over energy consumption we apply the phillips and sul 2007 methodology which tests for the existence of convergence clubs our results highlight that differences in emission intensity convergence are more determined by differences in convergence of the carbonisation index rather than by differences in the dynamic convergence of energy intensity

energy consumption and co2 emissions convergence in european union member countries a tonneau des danaides abstract as the consumption of energy is responsible for approximately 80 of ghg in eu iea 2008 the impact of energy activity on the environment has received increasing attention over the last decades from scholars researchers politicians and society as a whole within eu member countries it is commonly accepted that the design of energy and mitigation policies either at national or at european level require a detailed and integrated investigation of convergence divergence pattern among the participating countries in this paper we examine the distribution dynamics of energy consumption and co2 emissions their intensities as well as the carbonization index in 23 european countries over a forty one year period in particular from 1970 to 2010 for this purpose we used quah s methodology which is based on the dynamics of cross section distributions the main conclusion is that for all the examined variables the hypothesis of convergence patterns for the eu sample is not valid moreover regarding each examined variable different groups of polarization established important differences occur across eu countries according to the climate type with respect to the examined variables our analysis provides strong evidence supporting the fact that national and european energy and mitigation policies should be implemented according to the non convergence paradigm the body of evidence provided by our analysis is of great importance to energy policy makers and for issues related to climate change

measuring the consumer benefits of improving farm animal welfare to inform welfare labelling abstract policy makers in the european union are envisioning the introduction of a community farm animal welfare label which would allow consumers to align their consumption habits with their farm animal welfare preferences for welfare labelling to be viable the market for livestock products produced to higher welfare standards has to be sufficiently segmented with consumers having sufficiently distinct and behaviourally consistent preferences the present study investigates consumers preferences for meat produced to different welfare standards using a hypothetical welfare score data is obtained from a contingent valuation study carried out in britain the ordered probit model was estimated using bayesian inference to obtain mean willingness to pay we find decreasing marginal wtp as animal welfare levels increase and that people s preferences for different levels of farm animal welfare are sufficiently differentiated making the introduction of a labelling scheme in the form of a certified rating system appear feasible

the effect of carbon tax on per capita co2 emissions new huadu business school 09zd050 national social science foundation of china 09zd050 08ajy022 research foundation of ministry of education of china 10jzd0018 fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221051

confidence intervals for evaluating benefits estimates from dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies i evaluate the potential usefulness of nonmarket valuation concepts and techniques from environmental economics for improving wildlife conservation the concepts include distinguishing between on site recreation use value and off site passive use or

estimation of short run and long run elasticities of energy demand from panel data using shrinkage estimators this article discusses the problem of obtaining short run and long run elasticities of energy demand for each of 49 states in the united states using data for 21 years estimation using the time series data by each state gave several wrong signs for the coefficients estimation using pooled data was not valid because the hypothesis of homogeneity of the coefficients was rejected shrinkage estimators gave more reasonable results the article presents in a unified framework the classical empirical bayes and bayes approaches for deriving these estimators

production and consumption based convergence analyses of global co2 emissions abstract the convergent trend of co2 emissions has received wide spread attention in an attempt to meet the global reduction target but almost all of the focus has been on the production side a systematic investigation on the convergence of global co2 emissions from the production side and the consumption side is of great importance to find the pathways for the worldwide low carbon development this study distinguished production and consumption based co2 emissions of 129 economies during the period 1995 2015 based on traditional sigma gamma beta stochastic and club convergence models we identified convergence progress of co2 emission on both the production and consumption sides taking convergence speed and influential factors into account we demonstrated different convergence pathways to a reasonable climate strategy this study obtained four key results first in all cases global per capita co2 emissions on the production and consumption sides were convergent second the speed of convergence on the production side was higher than on the consumption side third population density energy intensity and the share of trade and industrialization had significant effects on the production side while per capita gdp was more important on the consumption side low carbon development due to medium and high technology manufacturing had equal impacts on consumption and production forth different convergence processes among organization for economic co operation and development oecd european union eu asia pacific economic cooperation apec and rest80 i e the other 80 developing economies indicate that mitigation policies should differ according to the industrial structure and by economic development the results of this study will extend our empirical understanding of global co2 emissions and their policy implications

have air pollutant emissions converged among u s regions evidence from unit root tests previous studies of income distribution have found evidence indicating that incomes across u s regions have converged supporting the prediction of the neoclassical growth model a potential shortcoming in these studies is that only one measure of well being is considered a measure of wealth linked to incomes or production this paper examines whether income convergence was accompanied by air pollutant emission convergence results from unit root tests provide some evidence that indicators of environmental quality have converged across u s regions during the 1929 1994 period

eco efficiency and convergence in oecd countries this paper assesses the convergence in eco efficiency of a group of 22 oecd countries over the period 1980 2008 in doing so three air pollutants representing the impact on the environment of economic activities are considered namely carbon dioxide text co 2 nitrogen oxides text no mathrm x and sulphur oxides text so mathrm x furthermore eco efficiency scores at both country and air pollutant specific level are computed using data envelopment analysis techniques then convergence is evaluated using the recent approach by phillips and sul econometrica 75 1771 1855 2007 which tests for the existence of convergence groups first we find that eco efficiency has improved over the period with the exception of text no mathrm x emissions second switzerland is the most eco efficient country followed by some scandinavian economies such as sweden iceland norway and denmark in contrast southern european countries such as portugal spain and greece in addition to hungary turkey canada and the united states are among the worst performers finally we find that both the most eco efficient countries and the worst tend to form clubs of convergence

a computational model of banks optimal reserve management policy abstract this paper uses numerical methods to model the demand for excess reserves by a representative bank in a framework that includes many realistic features of the current reserve market structure in the united states in particular the model incorporates a 14 day maintenance period and an accurate representation of carryover provisions we use the model to evaluate the effect of various changes to the operating environment increased uncertainty modified penalties and changes to policy paying interest on reserves

towards a common renewable future the system gmm approach to assess the convergence in renewable energy consumption of eu countries abstract this paper investigates whether the contribution of renewable energy sources to primary energy consumption is characterized by a convergence process across core european union eu countries over the period from 1990 to 2014 the system generalized method of moments gmm methodology is employed for 5 year span panel data of 14 eu members the findings indicate strong evidence for both the absolute unconditional and conditional convergence of renewables share in primary energy consumption across eu 14 countries moreover the control variables namely co2 emissions per gdp fdi inward stock and electricity prices contribute to the speed of convergence hence the implicit rate of conditional convergence is higher than that of absolute convergence the empirical evidence suggests that the energy mixes of core eu members have a tendency to become similar in the long run as the shares of res in primary energy consumption converge to the average level nonetheless it does not necessarily imply that this average would be 20 target which is to be achieved by 2020 according to eu directive 2009 28 ec

carbon dioxide emissions intensity of portuguese industry and energy sectors a convergence analysis and econometric approach abstract given the relevance of energy and pollution issues for industrialised countries and the importance of industry and energy sectors to the achievement of their economic and environmental goals it is important to know if there is a common pattern of emissions intensity fuel intensity and energy intensity between industries to know if it justifies a more specific application of energy policies between sectors which sectors have the greatest potential for reducing energy use and which are the long term effects of those specific variables on the mitigation of emissions we found that although there is literature on decomposition of effects that affect emissions the study of the convergence and of the relationships between these variables does not include ratios or effects that result from the decomposition analysis thus the above questions are not answered much less for the portuguese reality the purpose of this paper is to study i the existence of convergence of some relevant ratios as carbon dioxide co 2 emissions intensity co 2 emissions by fossil fuel consumption fossil fuel intensity energy intensity and economic structure between industry and energy sectors in portugal and ii the influence that the consumption of fossil fuels the consumption of aggregate energy and gdp have on co 2 emissions and the influence that the ratios in which co 2 emissions intensity decomposes can affect that variable using an econometric approach namely panel corrected standard errors estimator we concluded that there is sigma convergence for all ratios with exception of fossil fuel intensity gamma convergence verifies for all ratios with exception of co 2 emissions by fossil fuel from the econometric approach we concluded that the considered variables have a significant importance in explaining co 2 emissions and co 2 emissions intensity

convergence in co2 emissions a spatial economic analysis with cross country interactions abstract this research analyzes the evolution of co2 emissions per capita in a sample of 141 countries during the period 1970 2014 the study develops a spatially augmented green solow model by taking into consideration technological externalities and interdependence in the process of production which ultimately implies that co2 emissions in an economy are affected by the economic characteristics in neighboring countries the empirical model predicts convergence in co2 emissions among countries which is examined by means of modern dynamic spatial panel econometric techniques the multimodal distribution of the co2 emissions is consistent with the existence of three spatial clubs the space time dynamics of the three clubs are analyzed by means of the local directional moran scatterplot and spatial panel model with heterogeneous parameters our analysis reveals the hypothesis of spatial convergence clubs is more consistent with the data than the hypothesis of conditional convergence

modelling willingness to pay responses from dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys with zero observations modelling household behaviour with the data from dichotomous choice contingent valuation dccv surveys is often complicated by zero willingness to pay wtp responses in the sample to deal with the zero responses a two equation model is considered which incorporates a two level decision structure a decision on whether to participate in having wtp and a decision on the wtp amount conditional on deciding to participate and two separate stochastic processes that determine the probability and conditional level of wtp are featured the model is empirically applied to household survey data in which the dccv questions concerned the benefits of air quality improvement in korea to put the issue of the two equation model in perspective this paper also experiments with economic and econometric specifications utility theoretic restriction and heteroscedasticity it is shown how failure to allow for the restriction distorts aggregate benefit estimates and the existence of heteroscedasticity in error term is

the causal factors of international inequality in hbox co _ 2 emissions per capita a regression based inequality decomposition analysis this paper uses the possibilities provided by the regression based inequality decomposition fields in res labor econ 22 1 38 2003 to explore the contribution of different explanatory factors to international inequality in hbox co 2 emissions per capita in contrast to previous emissions inequality decompositions which were based on identity relationships this methodology does not impose any a priori specific relationship thus it allows an assessment of the contribution to inequality of different relevant variables in short the paper appraises the relative contributions of affluence sectoral composition demographic factors and climate the analysis is applied to selected years of the period 1993 2007 the results show the important though decreasing share of the contribution of demographic factors as well as a significant contribution of affluence and sectoral composition

payment vehicles for public goods evidence from california s proposition 21 proposition 21 on california s 2010 ballot concerned an annual surcharge on vehicles to support state parks proposition 21 failed leaving 25 of california state parks at risk of closure we analyze voting patterns which we show depend on the average gross price of the proposition political ideology environmental preferences the availability of substitutes and park salience we simulate counterfactual scenarios under which proposition 21 might have passed and use holdout samples to illustrate the predictive ability of our model heterogeneity across california makes our model potentially useful for predicting public sentiment for similar propositions even for jurisdictions without direct democracy