policy implications of potential conflicts between short term and long term efficiency in co2 emissions abatement abstract this paper shows that under certain conditions including path dependence and lock in policies and measures leading to a cost effective ghg emissions mitigation in the short term may not allow reaching long term emissions targets at the lowest possible cost that is they might not be cost effective in the long term the reason is that in a situation where currently expensive technologies have a large potential for cost reductions through learning effects and r d investments the implementation of incentive based mitigation policies such as taxes or tradable permits will encourage the adoption and diffusion of currently low cost abatement technologies but might not be enough to make attractive the diffusion of expensive ones which is a necessary condition for these technologies to realise their cost reduction potential through the aforementioned effects a simple model and a numerical simulation are provided to show this possible conflict between static and dynamic efficiency which points out to the need to combine different instruments some aiming at short term cost efficiency such as incentive based environmental policy and others at encouraging dynamic cost reductions such as technology innovation policy

understanding heterogeneous preferences in random utility models a latent class approach a finite mixture approach toconditional logit models is developed in whichlatent classes are used to promoteunderstanding of systematic heterogeneity the model is applied to wilderness recreationin which a branded choice experiment involvingchoice of one park from a demand system wasadministered to a sample of recreationists the basis of membership in the classes orsegments in the sample involved attitudinalmeasures of motivations for taking a trip aswell as their stated preferences overwilderness park attributes the econometricanalysis suggested that four classes of peopleexist in the sample using the model toexamine welfare measures of some hypotheticalpolicy changes identified markedly differentwelfare effects than the standard singlesegment model and provided insight into thedifferential impact of alternative policies

identifying the warm glow effect in contingent valuation abstract this paper reports the results from a contingent valuation study designed to investigate the influence of warm glow in willingness to pay wtp responses interindividual differences in warm glow motivation are measured through a factor analysis performed on a list of attitudinal items the reported wtp measures fail to pass the scope test both socioeconomic variables and motivational factor scores are significant in the explanation of the individual wtp measures we compute cold wtp measures by taking out the effect of the warm glow motivation these cold measures satisfy both the scope test and hausman s adding up property

using contests to allocate pollution rights in this paper we advocate a new initial allocation mechanism for a tradable pollution permit market we outline a permit allocation contest pac that distributes permits to firms based on their rank relative to other firms this ranking is achieved by ordering firms based on an observable external action where the external action is an activity or characteristic of the firm that is independent of their choice of emissions in the tradable permit market we argue that this mechanism has a number of benefits over auctioning and grandfathering using this mechanism efficiently distributes permits allows for the attainment of a secondary policy objective and has the potential to be more politically appealing than existing alternatives

location and competition in retail banking abstract we investigate the impact of banking deregulation during the 1990s on consumer welfare we estimate a spatial model of consumer demand for retail bank deposits that explicitly accounts for consumer disutility from distance traveled this is important given the substantial changes in banks branch networks observed in the data our model indicates that cross price elasticities between banks whose branches are close to consumers close banks are larger than those between far banks and more than double the cross price elasticity of close banks with respect to far banks we distinguish between thrifts and other banks and find that within thrift competitive effects are stronger than within bank effects or those between thrifts and banks we use our estimates to predict the effect of changes in market structure on consumer welfare following the branching deregulation of the riegle neal act of 1994 our results indicate that the median household gained around 60 per year from the changes approximately two thirds of the gains come from within market changes in market structure the gains were greater in markets with high initial numbers of banks than elsewhere

output based allocations and revenue recycling implications for the new zealand emissions trading scheme abstract the new zealand emissions trading scheme nz ets is more comprehensive in its coverage of emissions than schemes introduced or proposed to date in any other country in that it includes agricultural greenhouse gases which account for half of new zealand s total emissions but motivated by concerns for the international competitiveness of emissions intensive trade exposed industrial and agricultural activities current legislation provides for substantial ongoing free allocations to such activities linked to their output here we use a computable general equilibrium model to analyse the impacts of output based allocation given the possibility of recycling net revenues to reduce prior distorting taxes unlike previous modelling studies of alternative nz ets designs we allow for a more realistic modelling both of capital and labour supply we find that as suggested by theoretical results interactions between the ets and existing taxes are important given any level of output based allocation the negative macroeconomic impacts can be reduced by recycling net revenues as efficiently as possible less obviously we find that there may be an optimal non zero level of output based allocation this optimal level increases as the carbon price and or factor supply elasticities increase but decreases if revenues are recycled with greater efficiency

a repeated nested logit model of atlantic salmon fishing participation and site choice for atlantic salmon fishing are modeled in the context of a repeated three level nested logit model consumer s surplus measures are derived for different levels of species availability in the penobscot river the most important salmon river in new england for comparison six other travel cost models are estimated these include restrictive cases of the nested logit model a partial demand model and two single site demand models comparisons across these models indicate the importance of modeling the participation decision including income effects and of adopting a nested logit structure rather than a single level logit structure

understanding the mechanisms through which an influential early childhood program boosted adult outcomes a growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts this paper uses longitudinal data on cognitive and personality traits from an experimental evaluation of the influential perry preschool program to analyze the channels through which the program boosted both male and female participant outcomes experimentally induced changes in personality traits explain a sizable portion of adult treatment effects

firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control reply abstract the process of technological change in pollution control is broken into three basic steps innovation diffusion and optimal agency response firm incentives to promote these steps are then examined under five regulatory regimes direct controls emission subsidies emission taxes free marketable permits and auctioned marketable permits on a relative basis emission taxes and auctioned permits provide the highest firm incentives to promote technological change at times free permits generate lower incentives direct controls which are common regulatory tools usually provide the lowest relative firm incentives to promote technological change

using factor analysis to identify consumer preferences for the protection of a natural area in portugal abstract this paper focuses on the application of factor analysis so as to identify consumer preferences for the protection of a natural area we combine the use of factor analysis with the valuation data obtained by contingent valuation survey the survey conducted via in person questionnaires in 1997 is targeted at the economic valuation of the protection benefits of the parque natural alentejano e costa vicentina a natural protected area along the southwest coastline of portugal factor analysis results show that the consumer is characterized by a three factor motivational structure use warm glow and non use motivation factor respectively we introduce these motivation factors together with the respondent s socio economic characteristics in the economic valuation function of such natural protected area estimation results show that consumer motivation factors have an econometrically robust role therefore consumer motivations are interpreted as crucial information for accurate social cost benefit analysis of alternative protection scenarios and thus serve as an important cornerstone in designing an effective and broadly accepted management policy for the parque natural alentejano e costa vicentina

emissions trading and transaction costs analyzing the flaws in the discussion abstract although emissions trading lowers the costs of climate change mitigation transaction costs e g to find a trading partner may reduce its cost effectiveness some economists claim that transaction costs for joint implementation ji and clean development mechanism cdm projects will be higher than for international emissions trading iet transfers arguing that projects require advance approval whereas permit transfers can be automatically registered and checked annually however this article demonstrates the incompleteness of their views by both analyzing empirical data and discussing the theoretical conditions under which transaction costs decrease for ji and cdm and increase for iet

marine trade offs comparing the benefits of off shore wind farms and marine protected areas the drive to increase renewable electricity production in many parts of europe has led to an increasing concentration of new wind energy sites at sea this results in a range of environmental impacts which should be taken into account in a benefit cost analysis of such proposals in this paper we use choice modeling to investigate the relative gains and losses from siting new windfarms off the coast of estonia relative to the option of creating a new marine protected area we find that while respondents are generally opposed to converting marine shoals to conventional wind farms and prefer the establishment of marine protected areas instead benefits from constructing environmentally friendly wind farms an alternative program which is also considered by the government are not statistically different with respect to consumers welfare to those associated with creating a new marine protected area methodologically the paper makes a contribution by showing the ability of the latent class mixed logit model to represent both within and between class preference heterogeneity and thus its power to provide a more sophisticated representation of preference heterogeneity than stand alone latent class or mixed logit approaches the paper also presents the first use of the latent class mixed logit model in willingness to pay space for environmental goods

social network formation and labor market inequality abstract we study how differences in interpersonal skills lead to inequality among workers when social connections are endogenously formed and workers find jobs through their contacts we show that the equilibrium network structure is very unequal in terms of links and access to jobs the equilibrium network is not socially optimal because workers impose negative externality on each other by forming more links the degree of inequality is larger in the equilibrium than what would be socially optimal in the equilibrium high skilled individuals overinvest in networking while low skilled individuals underinvest which enlarges the impact of differences in interpersonal skills the degree of inequality is largest when job availability is moderate

the determinants of earnings a behavioral approach we survey the determinants of earnings and propose a framework for understanding labor market success we suggest that the advantages of the children of successful parents go considerably beyond the benefits of superior education the inheritance of wealth or the genetic inheritance of cognitive ability we suggest that noncognitive personality variables such as attitudes towards risk ability to adapt to new economic conditions hard work and the rate of time preference affect both earning and the transmission of economic status across generations

the choice theory approach to market research this paper surveys economic choice theory stressing developments that permit use of data from psychometric and conjoint experiments to produce market demand forecasts alternatives to the widely used multinomial logit model are summarized and a new method for estimating multinomial probits is described an integration of choice models with attitudinal scaling and perceptual mapping within a latent variable system is described estimation of such systems under either random effects or fixed effects descriptions of heterogeneity across individuals is discussed issues in the use of choice models to describe responses from conjoint experiments are presented new regression diagnostic tests for the consistency of multinomial logit representations are discussed

auctions or grandfathering the political economy of tradable emission permits despite the prevalence of grandfathered permits we still observe that a hybrid policy in which a fraction of initial emission permits is distributed through auctions is adopted in some cases we also observe that some polluting industries support auctioned permits and that most environmental groups support grandfathered permits this paper attempts to explain these phenomena from the perspective of political economy and investigates the conditions under which grandfathering auctions or a hybrid instrument will be the equilibrium policy by constructing a two stage lobbying game in which the type of policy instrument auction grandfathering or a hybrid instrument is determined in the first stage and then the number of permits is decided in the second stage we highlight the strategic interaction of the lobbying activities between the two stages in explaining the behavior of the lobbying groups

is the income elasticity of the willingness to pay for pollution control constant how willingness to pay for environmental quality changes as incomes rise is a central question in several areas of environmental economics this paper explores both theoretically and empirically whether or not the willingness to pay wtp for pollution control varies with income our model indicates that the income elasticity of the marginal wtp for pollution reduction is only constant under very restrictive conditions our empirical analysis tests the null hypothesis that the elasticity of the wtp for pollution control with respect to income is constant employing a multi country contingent valuation study of eutrophication reduction in the baltic sea our findings reject this hypothesis and estimate an income elasticity of the wtp for eutrophication control of 0 1 0 2 for low income respondents and 0 6 0 7 for high income respondents thus our empirical results suggest that the elasticity is not constant but is always less than one this has implications for how benefits transfer exercises and for theoretical explanations of the environmental kuznets curve

the effects of personality traits on adult labor market outcomes evidence from siblings abstract while large literatures have shown that cognitive ability and schooling increases employment and wages an emerging literature examines the importance of so called non cognitive skills in producing labor market outcomes however this smaller literature has not typically used causal methods in estimating the results one source of heterogeneity that may play an important role in producing both personality and other non cognitive skills and labor market outcomes is family background including genetic endowments this paper is the first to use sibling differences to estimate the associations between personality on employment and wages and is also able to control for many other sources of heterogeneity including attractiveness cognitive ability schooling occupation and other factors overall the findings suggest that personality measures have important associations with labor market outcomes in adulthood and that the results vary considerably by demographic group the findings also highlight the potential role of extraversion in being associated with favorable labor market outcomes which has not been documented in many other studies

the impact of psychological and human capital on wages historically economists have taken the position that psychological capital is either unobservable or immeasurable thus heretofore little evidence has been available on the contribution of psychological capital to wages using data drawn from two different waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth we offer evidence that psychological capital has both a direct effect via self esteem and an indirect effect through locus of control on an individual s real wage we find a person s wage is more sensitive to changes in self esteem than to comparable alterations in human capital both relative wages and human capital contribute to self esteem

personality and economic choices abstract there is substantial variation in individual preferences for public goods yet much of that variation remains poorly understood however simple measures of personality can help to explain economic values and choices in a systematic way in this paper we examine the effects of personality on individual economic choices over public environmental goods based on three datasets from three separate stated preference studies we use a hybrid choice econometric framework to examine the effects of personality on preferences for the status quo changes in environmental quality and costs of investing in environmental improvements we find effects that are consistent across all datasets personality a stable feature of an individual s character that is simple to measure enriches explanations of why the demand for environmental goods varies across people provides an indication of how different people are likely to react to the introduction of environmental policies and explains substantial differences in willingness to pay

beauty vs brains early labor market outcomes of high school graduates this paper examines the wage returns to attractiveness for young high school graduates findings show that wage returns to attractiveness are large relative to ability and beauty and ability are complements at high attractiveness ratings but substitutes at low ratings

measuring self control problems we develop a survey instrument to measure self control problems in a sample of highly educated adults this measure relates in the manner that theory predicts to liquid wealth accumulation and personality measures yet while self control problems are typically seen as resulting in overconsumption and low wealth we identify a significant group who underconsume and thereby accumulate high levels of wealth in addition self control problems are smaller in scale for older than for younger respondents those who put money aside in retirement accounts may be delaying access to a point at which self control problems are no longer important jel d12 d14

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

addressing empirical challenges related to the incentive compatibility of stated preferences methods abstract an emerging theoretical literature focused on the incentive compatibility of stated preference surveys offers a new lens through which to view extant evidence on external validity and provides guidance for practitioners however critical theoretical assumptions rest on latent respondent beliefs such as the belief that respondents view surveys as potentially influencing policy i e policy consequentiality which gives rise to pressing empirical challenges in this study we develop a hybrid mixed logit model capable of integrating multiple latent beliefs and subjective measures of these beliefs into a discrete choice model of stated preferences planned use of a resource which can also be considered a latent variable is frequently an important consideration when modelling stated preferences for a change in a good and we demonstrate how our framework can be used to incorporate this information simultaneously we further explore whether simple information treatments which vary the degree to which the potential role of surveys in informing policy is emphasized can influence respondent beliefs our results suggest that latent beliefs over consequentiality resource use and to a much lesser extent the information treatments significantly influence elicited willingness to pay

dynamics of retail bank branching in antwerp belgium 1991 2006 evidence from micro geographic data abstract we exploit a comprehensive new panel dataset on retailbank branch locations in 233 neighborhoods local markets in the metropolitan area of antwerp to describe i how between 1991 and 2006 the patterns of bank presence entry exit and choice deeply evolve and ii whether and how changes in these on the ground patterns systematically diverge across antwerp s different highly segregated neighborhoods we show that over the 15 year period under study entry and exit dynamics substantially intensify the level change in branch desert grows significantly and bank choice markedly declines and that between 1996 and 2001 these changes are robustly associated with the neighborhood average income in doing so we advance a new technique for generating spatial measures that both minimize the discretization bias and can be reliably linked to neighborhoods we demonstrate that the resulting measures are indeed more precise than traditional count measures

consignment auctions of free emissions allowances abstract while the initial distribution of emissions allowances is usually thought to be independent of the emissions outcome free allocation can affect the efficiency and fairness of allowance trading inefficiency may result from thin allowance markets poor price discovery and regulatory or organizational complexities that hinder the recognition of opportunity costs concerns about fairness may result from intransparency in the process of transferring substantial allowance value we explore the role of consignment auctions in mitigating these concerns these revenue neutral auctions return the financial value of allowances to their original holders while revealing prices and directing allowances to their highest valued use they also can be used to support a minimum price when allowances are freely distributed which may facilitate program linkage consignment auctions have minimal administrative costs and do not necessarily involve government experience indicates that they can play an important role especially in new markets

the new york times and the market for local newspapers recent technological advances have dramatically lowered the cost of transmitting information over large distances in the late 1990s the new york times implemented a national distribution strategy expanding delivery in over 100 cities using cross sectional and longitudinal data on local newspaper circulation times penetration and local newspapers characteristics we find that as times circulation grows in a market local newspaper circulation declines among college educated readers local newspapers reposition toward local and away from national coverage raising circulation among individuals without a degree availability of national newspapers in local markets changes the relationship between local preferences and local products

retirement personality and well being this study investigates how two sources of individual heterogeneity personality and gender impact the well being effects of retirement using data on older men and women from the british household panel survey and its continuation understanding society we estimate the causal effect of retirement on satisfaction with overall life and domains of life in the presence of personality characteristics as retirement is often considered to be a choice and thus may be endogenous to individual level characteristics we use the eligibility ages for basic state pension in the united kingdom as instruments for retirement we find that retirement increases leisure satisfaction of both males and females but not necessarily life satisfaction and income satisfaction we further show that certain personality characteristics affect the well being of female retirees for males however personality does not seem to matter in how they cope with retirement jel i31 j26 a12 c23

transaction costs and tradeable permits abstract tradeable permit systems are at the center of current interest and activity in market based reforms of environmental policy because these systems can offer significant advantages over conventional approaches to pollution control unfortunately claims made for their relative cost effectiveness have often been exaggerated transaction costs which may be significant in these markets reduce trading levels and increase abatement costs in some cases equilibrium permit allocations and hence aggregate control costs are sensitive to initial permit distributions providing an efficiency justification for politicians typical focus on initial allocations

taxes versus tradable discharge permits a review in the light of the u s and european experience the u s and west european environmental protection programs have incorporated different economic instruments for controlling pollution the u s has made extensive use of tradable permits of several forms but has never used direct pollution taxes the countries of the european community have long used an array of pollution taxes but have never used tradable permits a review and critique of these experiences and an analysis of the attributes of taxes and tradable permits seeks identify the strengths and weaknesses of each instrument and to provide guidelines for the successful implementation of each system

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

friends or family revisiting the effects of high school popularity on adult earnings recent evidence has suggested links between high school popularity and wages during mid life using the wisconsin longitudinal study this article revisits this question by first replicating the results using an alternative dataset that is very similar in structure similar to previous results the add health baseline effects suggest that an additional high school friendship nomination is linked to a 2 increase in earnings around age 30 however leveraging the unique structure of the add health shows that sibling comparisons eliminate any associations between popularity and earnings the findings suggest that families rather than friends may be the cause of the association

personality traits intra household allocation and the gender wage gap abstract a model of how personality traits affect household time and resource allocation decisions and wages is developed and estimated in the model households choose between two behavioral modes cooperative or noncooperative spouses receive wage offers and allocate time to supplying labor market hours and to producing a public good personality traits measured by the so called big five traits can affect household bargaining weights and wage offers model parameters are estimated by simulated method of moments using the household income and labor dynamics in australia hilda data personality traits are found to be important determinants of household bargaining weights and of wage offers and to have substantial implications for understanding the sources of gender wage disparities

consolidation and bank branching patterns abstract this paper examines the association between consolidation and changes in levels of bank branching as measured by changes in the number of bank branches per capita using a specially constructed data set we address this issue as well as how this relationship varies with the type of consolidation and initial regulatory competitive and market conditions we find that merges where merging institutions have branch networks which overlap within a zip code within zip merger are strongly associated with a reduction in offices per capita in that zip code this result is robust across time and holds in both rural and urban areas the findings also suggest that contrary to popularly held views consolidation is not unambiguously negatively associated with changes in the number of banking offices per capita neither within market but not within zip mergers nor out of market mergers consistently show such a relationship we also find that the relationships between within zip and within market but not within zip mergers and changes in the number of bank offices per capita are more negative in low income neighborhoods than in other neighborhoods however because most states now have unrestricted branching and because savings associations are less prevalent and financially healthier than in the past these findings may not be indicative of future branching patterns

impacts of alternative allowance allocation methods under a cap and trade program in power sector emission trading is considered to be a cost effective environmental economic instrument for pollution control however the policy design of an emission trading program has a decisive impact on its performance allowance allocation is one of the most important policy design issues in emission trading not only for equity but also for policy performance in this research an artificial market for sulfur dioxide so2 emission trading was constructed by applying an agent based model the performance of the jiangsu so2 emission trading market was examined under different allowance allocation methods and transaction costs the results showed that the market efficiency of emission trading would be affected by the allocation methods when the transaction costs are positive the auction allowance allocation method was more efficient and had the lowest total emission control costs than the other three allocation methods examined however the use of this method will require that power plants pay for all of their allowance and doing so will increase the production costs of power plants on the other hand output based allowance allocation is the second best method

media and human capital development can video game playing make you smarter according to the literature video game playing can improve such cognitive skills as problem solving abstract reasoning and spatial logic i test this hypothesis using the child development supplement to the panel study of income dynamics the endogeneity of video game playing is addressed by using panel data methods and controlling for an extensive list of child and family characteristics to address the measurement error in video game playing i instrument children s weekday time use with their weekend time use after taking into account the endogeneity and measurement error video game playing is found to positively affect children s problem solving ability the effect of video game playing on problem solving ability is comparable to the effect of educational activities

an agent based analysis of the german electricity market with transmission capacity constraints while some agent based models have been developed for analyzing the german electricity market there has been little research done on the emerging issue of intra german congestion and its effects on the bidding behavior of generator agents yet studies of other markets have shown that transmission grid constraints considerably affect strategic behavior in electricity markets in this paper the implications of transmission constraints on power markets are analyzed for the case of germany market splitting is applied in the case of congestion in the grid for this purpose the agent based modeling of electricity systems ames market package developed by sun and tesfatsion is modified to fit the german context including a detailed representation of the german high voltage grid and its interconnections implications of transmission constraints on prices and social welfare are analyzed for scenarios that include strategic behavior of market participants and high wind power generation it can be shown that strategic behavior and transmission constraints are inter related and may pose severe problems in the future german electricity market

wealth accumulation and the propensity to plan why do similar households end up with very different levels of wealth we show that differences in the attitudes and skills with which they approach e nancial planning are a signie cant factor we use new and unique survey data to assess these differences and to measure each household s propensity to plan we show that those with a higher such propensity spend more time developing e nancial plans and that this shift in planning is associated with increased wealth these e ndings are consistent with broad psychological evidence concerning the benee cial impacts of planning on goal pursuit those with a high propensity to plan may be better able to control their spending and thereby achieve their goal of wealth accumulation we e nd direct evidence supporting this effortful self control channel in the very strong relationship we uncover between the propensity to plan and budgeting behavior

financial exclusion and branch closures in spain after the great recession the paper analyzes the factors behind the changes in spatial accessibility to services due to the closure of bank branches during the great recession it uses data on the geolocations of spanish br

a ten year rule to guide the allocation of eu emission allowances abstract member states in the european union eu are responsible for national allocation plans governing the initial distribution of emission allowances in the co2 emission trading system including rules governing allocations to installations that close and to new entrants the european commission has provided guidelines to discourage the use of allocation methodologies that provide incentives affecting firms compliance behavior for example by rewarding one type of compliance investment over another we find that the treatment of closures and new entrants by member states is inconsistent with the general guidelines provided by the eu we propose stronger eu guidance regarding closures and new entrants a more precise compensation criterion on which to justify free allocations and a ten year rule as a component of future eu policy that can guide a transition from current practice to an approach that places greater weight on efficiency

market power in tradable emission markets a laboratory testbed for emission trading in port phillip bay victoria abstract in theory competitive emission permit markets minimize total abatement costs permit markets are often imperfectly competitive however and may be thin and dominated by large firms the dominant firm s could exercise market power and increase other firms costs of pollution control while reducing their own emission control costs this paper reports a testbed laboratory experiment to examine whether a dominant firm can exercise market power in a permit market organized using the double auction trading institution our parameters approximate the abatement costs of sources in a proposed tradable emissions market for the reduction of nitrogen in the port phillip watershed in victoria australia we vary across treatments the initial allocation of permits to sources so that in one treatment the seller of permits is a monopolist and in another treatment the market is duopolistic we also vary the information that subjects have about the number and abatement costs of their competitors we find that prices and seller profits are higher and efficiency is lower on average in the monopoly sessions compared with the duopoly sessions but the differences are not substantial and are not statistically significant due to pronounced variation across sessions moreover prices profits and transaction volumes are usually much closer to the competitive equilibrium ce than the monopoly equilibrium

next allocation phase of the eu emissions trading scheme how tough will the future be abstract the development of national allocation plans naps for the first phase 2005 2007 of the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets was accompanied by the stated concern of the industrial enterprises with installations that fall under the scope of the relevant directive 2003 87 since the impacts of the allocation in their financial and technical modes of operation were judged to be severe thus the intensity of the negotiations for the next allocation phase i e 2008 2012 is expected to be heated with a view to assisting enterprises especially in the energy sector or for which energy use and its management is a crucial part of their activity to incorporate in their business plans the impacts of the directive in an informed manner an attempt is made here to explore the constraints and the available options that will guide the coming eu ets potential allocations in the analysis the credits derived from the use of cdm are specifically taken into account the results show that the next allocations would tend to be significantly more stringent than the current ones because of the combined effect of no inter period transfer of allowances the amount of cdm credits expected to be available compared to the amount of effort that would be required and the yield of emission reductions from existing or planned policies and measures it becomes then crucial if not imperative for the enterprises involved as well as national governments to examine carefully means to address their obligations under the directive

allocation of co2 emission permits economic incentives for emission reductions in developing countries the economic impacts on developing regions following a global cap and trade system for carbon dioxide are assessed through the use of an energy economy systems model both an equal per capita allocation and a contraction and convergence allocation with convergence of the per capita emissions by 2050 are shown to offer economic incentive for africa india and probably also latin america to accept binding emissions commitments under a 450 ppm carbon dioxide stabilization scenario the gain for latin america is mainly a result of increased export revenues from sales of bio fuels as a result of the climate policy it is on the other hand unlikely that these allocation approaches would offer an economic incentive for china to join the regime because of its high economic growth present higher per capita emissions than india and africa and more costly mitigation options than latin america a more stringent allocation for developing countries such as contraction with convergence of the per capita emissions by the end of this century is estimated to generate reduced net gains or increased net losses for the developing regions though africa is still expected to gain

random coefficient models for stated preference surveys abstract this paper combines the use of random coefficient discrete choice models that allow for correlated errors in the form of unobserved preference heterogeneity with an investigation of the reliability and usefulness of rankings data for the data we examine we find significant unobserved preference heterogeneity in the rankings which violates the underlying assumptions of the rank ordered logit model further directly modeling unobserved preference heterogeneity results in significant improvement in the precision of the parameter estimates and in estimated willingness to pay wtp the reliability and usefulness of rankings data should be re examined with econometric models not subject to the independence of irrelevant alternatives iia

personality and the marginal utility of income personality interacts with increases in household income to determine life satisfaction abstract economics implicitly assumes that the marginal utility of income is independent of an individual s personality we show that this is wrong this is the first demonstration that there are strong personality income interactions in an analysis of 13 615 individuals over 4 years we show that individuals who have high levels of conscientiousness obtain more satisfaction to their lives from increases to their household income there are strong gender differences and women that are open to experiences introverted or neurotic get lower satisfaction from household income increases our findings have important implications for the use of financial incentives to influence behavior in the future public policy may benefit from being personality specific

social norms morals and self interest as determinants of pro environment behaviours the case of household recycling this paper considers the role which selfish moral and social incentives and pressures play in explaining the extent to which stated choices over pro environment behaviours vary across individuals the empirical context is choices over household waste contracts and recycling actions in poland a theoretical model is used to show how cost based motives and the desire for a positive self and social image combine to determine the utility from alternative choices of recycling behaviour we then describe a discrete choice experiment designed to empirically investigate the effects such drivers have on stated choices a hybrid logit model is used to link statements over attitudes to recycling to choices dealing with a potential endogeneity problem caused by the joint effects of un observables on attitudes and choices we find that a substantial share of our respondents prefer to sort their waste at home rather than in a central sorting facility this preference is associated with a moral intrinsic motivation involving a belief that sorting at home is more thorough than central sorting

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

does voluntary participation undermine the coase theorem abstract the coase theorem states that costless enforcement of voluntary agreements yields efficient outcomes we argue that previous treatments fail to recognize the full meaning of voluntary it requires a two stage game a non cooperative participation decision followed by coaseian bargaining only among those who choose to participate we illustrate this in a simple public goods model and find outcomes ranging from extremely inefficient to fully efficient however the efficient equilibrium is not robust to even very small transaction costs thus we cast doubt on coaseian claims of universal efficiency finally we outline a kind of coercion that restores efficiency