an empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures abstract models of government formation processes in multi party democracies are usually highly sensitive to the rules that govern the selection of formateurs i e the parties selected to propose a potential government the theoretical literature has focused on two selection rules selection proportional to seat share and selection in order of seat share in this paper we use a new data set on government formations in 11 parliamentary democracies to empirically assess which selection rule most closely approximates the data we find that while there is little empirical support for selection in order of seat share proportional selection fits the data well however we also find that a simple alternative that combines the insights of the two selection rules outperforms both of them in their ability to explain the data

assessing income population and technology impacts on co2 emissions in canada where s the ekc abstract this study investigates the macroeconomic forces underlying carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada in keeping with the relevant literature on environmental degradation three forces are expected to influence co2 emissions gross domestic product per capita gdp capita population and technological change while previous work has employed reduced form models that allow for non linear relationships between co2 and gdp capita it has been common practice to assume linear relationships between co2 and the latter two variables this study tests a more flexible model using a five region panel data set in canada over the period 1970 2000 findings indicate that gdp capita is unrelated to co2 that an inverted u shaped relationship exists with population and that a u shaped relationship exists with technology thus technological and population changes are supported over the commonly hypothesized environmental kuznets curve an inverted u shaped relationship between gdp capita and environmental degradation for affecting co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada

energy efficiency in the transport sector in the eu 27 a dynamic dematerialization analysis abstract energy use in the european union s eu transport sector amounted to 340 mtoe 1 in 1999 with the following increasing trend up to 379 mtoe in 2007 and a decrease from 2008 on down to 365 mtoe in 2010 this changing pattern posed several fundamental questions and uncertainties regarding the broader picture of energy efficiency and environmental protection one of them refers to absolute changes in energy use efficiency in the transport sector over time and the ways of measuring efficiency traditional scientific approaches conceptualized to measure efficiency of energy use do not address annual dynamics of changes in the energy use in a given sector per capita thus they are not precise enough for political and methodological purposes as they do not reflect the exact amount of energy consumed in the respective countries and societies this paper shows a possible solution to this problem and a new perspective on measuring energy efficiency by using the product generational dematerialization pgd indicator the pgd indicator allows for measuring energy efficiency as a dynamic change of consumption and population occurring simultaneously thus it provides an extension to the traditional methodology commonly used for measuring efficiency to visualize a practical application of this approach the paper provides an example of evaluating energy efficiency in the transport sector in the eu 27 in 2000 2010 the results of the analysis show a clear materialization tendency in the transport sector the energy consumption change exceeded the population growth until 2007 and a reverse tendency dematerialization between 2008 and 2010 as energy consumption has a direct impact on environmental quality and exhaustion of natural resources the paper points out the necessity of extending sustainable resource management policies by new methodologies and providing more efficient solutions for energy consumption in the transport sector

the econometrics of the environmental kuznets curve an illustration using australian co2 emissions four econometric issues associated with the estimation and testing of the environmental kuznets curve ekc are considered i model specification with respect to the order of the polynomial ii

political and institutional checks on corruption explaining the performance of brazilian audit institutions this article investigates the performance determinants of accountability institutions in new democracies current scholarship on accountability has identified a distinct mechanism through which the introduction of political competition may affect such institutions the electoral connection or vertical accountability mechanism this connection is not expected to be effective in new democracies because political competition is found to be volatile and nonprogrammatic another strand of the literature focuses on the effect of power alternation government turnover is expected to generate incentives for the creation and strengthening of autonomous institutions by exploring a unique data set on 33 state audit institutions the authors bring together these distinct claims and provide systematic empirical tests for them they find a negative effect of volatility on their institutional activism and a positive direct and indirect influence of power alternation on their levels of autonomy and sanctioning patterns

governing offshoring in a stringent environmental policy setting evidence from italian manufacturing firms this paper provides evidence of how environmental regulatory stringency relates to firms offshoring decisions while controlling for firms characteristics and environmental strategies relying on an original dataset of italian manufacturing firms a distinction is drawn between international outsourcing and foreign direct investments and between offshoring destinations in northern versus southern regions our estimates show that a stricter environmental regulation is related to a higher probability of production being outsourced to foreign suppliers in the south but not to foreign direct investments the magnitude of this effect is very low however offshoring decisions are mainly affected by firms ict endowment marketing and internationalization strategies and adoption of environmental product innovations and standards in particular eco innovative firms are found more likely to adopt governance decisions that enable a stricter control over the supply chain as in the case of foreign direct investments

centripetal and centrifugal incentives under different electoral systems inaseminalarticle cox 1990 suggestedthatelectoralsystemswithlargerdistrictmagnitudesprovideincentivesforparties to advocate more extreme policy positions in this article we put this proposition to the test informed by recent advances in spatial models of party competition we introduce a design that embeds the effect of electoral rules in the utility function of voters we then estimate the equilibrium location of parties as the weight voters attach to the expected distribution of seats and votes changes our model predicts that electoral rules affect large and small parties in different ways we find centripetal effects only for parties that are favorably biased by electoral rules by contrast smaller parties see their vote share decline and are pushed toward more extreme equilibrium positions evidence from 13 parliamentary democracies supports model predictions along with testing the incentives provided by electoral rules results carry implications for the strategies of vote maximizing parties and for the role of small parties in multiparty competition

separation of powers and political accountability political constitutions are incomplete contracts and therefore leave room for abuse of power in democracies elections are the primary mechanism for disciplining public officials but they are not sufficient separation of powers between executive and legislative bodies also helps to prevent the abuse of power but only with appropriate checks and balances checks and balances work by creating a conflict of interest between the executive and the legislature yet requiring both bodies to agree on public policy in this way the two bodies discipline each other to the voters advantage under appropriate checks and balances separation of powers also helps the voters elicit information

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the impacts of changes in output industry structure and energy intensity this paper examines trends in manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the changes that occured between 1973 and 1987 into the effects of changes in aggregate manufacturing activity industry structure and energy intensities measured at the industry group level while manufacturing production grew in every country except the uk the rate of growth was variable from nation to nation structural change led to modest reductions in energy use in most countries although in norway structural change led to substantial growth in energy use the reduction in energy intensities was strikingly uniform across all nations ranging from 20 norway to 36 japan over the period of the analysis while other studies have used divisia decomposition techniques we use an alternative method based on laspeyres indices a comparison of the two techniques shows that they yield closely similar empirical results although the laspeyres approach is more easily interpreted while the interactions between changes in structure and intensity are arbitrarily assigned to the two factors by the divisia approach the lapeyres method yields interaction terms that explicitly account for such effects

the effect of fdi on environmental emissions evidence from a meta analysis one important and frequently raised issue about foreign direct investment fdi is the potentially negative consequences for the environment the potential environmental cost due to increased emissions may undermine the economic gains associated with increases in fdi inflow although the literature is dominated with this adverse view of fdi on the environment there is also a possibility that fdi can contribute to a cleaner environment especially if fdi comes with green technologies and this creates spillovers for domestic industries theoretically the effect of fdi on the environment can be negative or positive to deal with the theoretical ambiguity about the fdi environment nexus many empirical studies have been conducted but their results only reinforce the controversy as they produce contrasting results we conduct a meta analysis of the effect of fdi on environmental emissions using 65 primary studies that produce 1006 elasticities our results show that the underlying effect of fdi on environmental emissions is close to zero however after accounting for heterogeneity in the studies we find that fdi significantly reduces environmental emissions results remain robust after disaggregating the effect for countries at different levels of development as well as for different pollutants

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

energy consumption financial development and economic growth in india new evidence from a nonlinear and asymmetric analysis this paper investigates the asymmetric relationship between energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating financial development capital and labour into a production function covering the indian economy from 1960q1 2015q4 the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach is applied to examine the asymmetric cointegration between the variables an asymmetric causality test is also employed to examine the causal association between the considered variables the results indicate cointegration between the variables in the presence of asymmetries the asymmetric causality results show that only negative shocks in energy consumption have impacts on economic growth in the same vein only negative shocks in financial development have impacts on economic growth by contrast symmetrically capital formation causes economic growth finally over the study period a neutral effect exists between the labour force and economic growth in india the implications of these results for growth policies in india are also discussed

bargaining in legislatures bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures in our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting the model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard institution free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium

getting into the energy efficiency scene does corporate social responsibility matter for energy efficiency in smes a growing body of literature argues that improving energy efficiency is an essential step that firms must take to mitigate climate change issues it is assumed that corporate social responsibility

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

a new look at the fdi income energy environment nexus dynamic panel data analysis of asean abstract the main focus of this paper is to estimate the effects of foreign direct investment fdi inflows income and energy consumption on co 2 emissions using panel data of five asean countries over 1981 2010 the results based on the pooled mean group pmg estimator of dynamic panels show that fdi tends to increase co 2 emissions supporting evidence of the pollution haven hypothesis we also find that income and energy consumption have a detrimental impact on reducing co 2 emissions

foreign investment and technology transfer a simple model abstract this paper develops a model in which international technology transfer through foreign direct investment emerges as an endogenized equilibrium phenomenon resulting from the strategic interaction between subsidiaries of multinational corporations and host country firms the model explicitly recognizes two types of costs the costs to the multinational of transferring technology to its subsidiaries and the learning costs of domestic firms the analysis points to the importance of the learning efforts of host country firms in increasing the rate at which mncs transfer technology the paper also explores some of the reasons why learning investment in host country firms may be suboptimal

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

environmental regulation and french firms location abroad an economic geography model in an international comparative study abstract in this study we re examine the pollution haven hypothesis by a fresh take on both its theoretical and empirical aspects the originality of our work is twofold first we apply an economic geography model with the aim of deriving a rigorous specification for the impact of environmental regulation on firms location choice second we test a conditional logit model using french firm level data in an international comparative study we confirm evidence of a strong pollution haven effect for our pooled sample of countries receiving french direct investments however through a sensitivity analysis we validate this finding for developed countries and most of emerging economies and central and eastern european countries but not for most countries of the commonwealth of independent states and developing countries where a more stringent environmental regulation seems to attract investments furthermore we highlight a forward looking behavior of firms in terms of their location decision making

when politics and models collide estimating models of multiparty elections theory the spatial model of elections can better be represented by using conditional logit models which consider the position of the parties in issue spaces than by multinomial logit models which only consider the position of voters in the issue space the spatial model and random utility models in general suffer from a failure to adequately consider the substitutability of parties sharing similar or identical issue positions hypotheses multinomial logit is not necessarily better than successive applications of binomial logit conditional logit allows for considering more interesting political questions than does multinomial logit the spatial model may not correspond to voter decision making in multiple party settings multinomial probit allows for a relaxation of the iia condition and this should improve estimates of the effect of adding or removing parties methods comparisons of binomial logit multinomial logit conditional logit and multinomial probit on simulated data and survey data from multiparty elections results multinomial logit offers almost no benefits over binomial logit conditional logit is capable of examining movements by parties whereas multinomial logit is not multinomial probit performs better than conditional logit when considering the effects of altering the set of choices available to voters estimation of multinomial probit with more than three choices is feasible

environmental kuznets curve among brics countries spot lightening finance transport energy and growth factors abstract the environmental sustainability reforms considered the highly successful factor for the countries that devoted for green investment in transportation financial activities energy demand and growth factors this challenging task is monetized by fair environmental policies that integrated with the countries action plans brics countries is no exception that wider accepted this environmental task and provoked the need of healthy investment for sustainable growth this study reviewed finance transport energy and growth factors under environmental kuznets curve ekc framework in a panel of brics countries by utilizing a consistent time series data from 1990 to 2015 the study employed panel fixed effect regression to observe unmodeled heterogeneity among the cross section identifiers that vary over a period of time the results show that transport services and industry value added indvad both escalate fossil fuel ffuel energy consumption while financial factors environmental prices and renewable energy consumption rec decreases fossil energy in a region bank capital broad money supply domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad considerably increases nitrous oxide emissions n 2 o whereas rec significantly decreases n 2 o emissions in a panel of countries greenhouse gas ghg emissions affected by domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad there is a monotonic decreasing relationships between i per capita income and ffuel energy ii railways passenger carried and n 2 o emissions iii rec and ghg emissions and iv income and n 2 o emissions whereas there is an inverted u shaped relationship between broad money supply and n 2 o emissions and u shaped relationships between per capita income and ghg emissions the panel causality tests confirmed the bidirectional relationship between financial indicators and railways transportation while bank capital granger cause ffuel energy per capita income indvad and rec but not other way around in a panel of brics countries the inter temporal relationships show that bank capital indvad and price level will largely affect ffuel energy n 2 o emissions and ghg emissions respectively for the next 10 years period the results of the study emphasized the need of green policy instruments that should be connected with the country s policies and program for sustained growth

the economics of corporate social responsibility a firm level perspective survey this paper analyzes the economics of corporate social responsibility csr as a private response to market imperfections in order to satisfy social preferences depending on whether they affect regulation competition or contracts market imperfections driving csr decisions are classified in three categories public goods and bads and altruism imperfect competition and incomplete contracts we successively present these drivers of csr decisions and highlight the nature of incentives external or internal at work and the testable and tested hypotheses in the reviewed studies we finally review the link between csr and financial performance as well as between csr and social and environmental performance a twofold discrepancy appears in the literature opening future research paths a disconnection between our understanding of csr drivers and csr impacts and a knowledge gap between csr financial and social consequences the latter having received little attention

international comparison of resource use and its relation to economic growth the development of total material requirement direct material inputs and hidden flows and the structure of tmr abstract resource flows constitute the materials basis of the economy at the same time they carry and induce an environmental burden associated with resource extraction and the subsequent material flows and stocks which finally end up as waste and emissions a reduction of this material throughput and the related impacts would require a reduction of resource inputs and breaking the link between resource consumption and economic growth would require an increase in resource productivity material flow analysis mfa can be used to quantify resource flows and indicate resource productivity in this article we study the available empirical evidence on the actual de linkage of material resource use and economic growth we compare resource use with respect to total material requirement tmr and direct material input dmi for 11 and 26 countries respectively and the european union eu 15 the dynamics of tmr as well as of the main components are analysed in relation to economic growth in order to show whether there is a decoupling relative or absolute from gdp and a change of the metabolic structure in the course of economic development dmi cap so far only decoupled from gdp cap in relative terms that is in most countries it reached a rather constant level but with the exception of czech republic showed no absolute decline yet tmr cap was reduced in two high income countries and one low income country due to political influence changes in tmr were more influenced by hidden flows hf than by dmi we analyse the dynamics of the structure and composition of tmr in the course of economic development in general the economic development of industrial countries was accompanied by a shift from domestic to foreign resource extraction different relations can be discovered for the share of biomass fossil fuel resources construction resources and metals and industrial minerals

trade openness and the changing water polluting intensity patterns of dirty and clean industrial sectors abstract this study analyzes the economic activity bod biochemical oxygen demand relationships of the so called dirty and clean water polluting industries during the period of 1995 2005 the results indicate that the economic activity environment trade off of dirty and clean industrial sectors has been altered during the period of study on average pollution intensive dirty industries in the poorer nations were found to benefit in terms of bod emissions from extra exports and openness to trade the opposite was true for clean sectors where increased trade openness seems to have contributed to a wider gap between poorer and richer nations pollution intensities with openness to trade skewing innovations away from the clean industries industrial sectors in which the poorer countries specialize the classical model of opening the economy and lifting barriers to technology adoption will not be enough to improve the poorer nations water quality policies that induce innovation by reducing the cost and increasing the return on innovation particularly on r d activities in which the poorer countries have a comparative advantage will be necessary in order to improve their economic activity environment relationship

co2 emissions and financial development in an emerging economy an augmented var approach abstract this paper explores the influence of economic and financial development on carbon emissions in a small emerging economy the study employs ardl approach to investigate the long run relationship between carbon emissions and a set of economic and financial variables an error correction model ecm to capture the short run dynamics granger causality in an augmented var framework to check the causality direction and variance decomposition based on an estimated vector error correction model vecm to determine the relative contributions of economic and financial variables to the evolution of per capita carbon emissions the periods considered were the full sample 1971 2011 and a reduced sample sub period 1988 2011 that corresponded to greater liberalization and financial sector development the financial variables played a role in emission mitigation only in the latter period where greater degree of liberalization and financial sector development occurred even then the relative magnitude of emissions mitigation attributable to financial variables was much smaller compared to the emissions raising impact of rising per capita incomes this underscores the need for adopting other mitigation policies for reducing carbon footprints in those emerging economies where a sufficient degree of financial deepening and financial sector development has not yet taken place

looking backward to look forward water use and economic growth from a long term perspective recent research has examined the relationship between natural resources and economic growth considered vitally important not only for humanity s well being but also for the integrity of the ecosystem the relationship between water use and economic growth has nevertheless traditionally attracted little attention by analysts this article studies water use trends from 1900 to 2000 throughout the world and their relationship to the main determinants of economic growth to do this we first analyse water use trajectories second to proceed with the determinants of water use we reformulate the ehrlich and holdren s impact population affluence technology ipat equation 1971 decomposing water use trends into changes in economic demands and in water use intensity on the basis of a decomposition analysis finally a simple scenario analysis is conducted to project future water use trends under different economic demographic and technological assumptions the empirical evidence shows that economic and

the world trade network and the environment this papers analyses the role of the world trade network on the environment we rely on methods developed for social network analysis to identify the most important countries in connecting trade between all the other countries in the world trade network we then estimate how the network or indirect effects from trade affect the environmental quality of a country as the trade networks are endogenously determined by trade and environmental conditions we use as instrumental variables the growth in the population of trade partners and the growth in the population of trade partners partners to exploit exogenous variation in the world trade network once we simultaneously estimate the environmental trade income and network equations using a three stage least square procedure we find that network effects harm the environmental quality of developed countries but improve the environment of developing countries

equilibrium strategies for final offer arbitration there is no median convergence final offer arbitration is a procedure for settling disputes between two parties in which an arbitrator chooses the final offer of the party closest to what he considers a fair settlement this procedure is modeled as a two person zero sum game of imperfect information in which the parties are assumed to know the probability distribution of the arbitrator s fair settlements and to make bids in an infinite strategy space that maximize their expected payoffs necessary and sufficient conditions for there to be local and global equilibria in pure strategies are derived and necessary conditions for mixed strategies in a particular case are found such equilibria when they exist in pure strategies represent bids which are symmetric about the median and for most common distributions are separated from one another by two or more standard deviations this finding suggests that final offer arbitration may not accomplish its avowed purpose of inducing the two parties to converge on what they perceive to be t

the impact of growth energy and financial development on the environment in china a cointegration analysis this article aims to investigate the impact of financial development economic growth and energy consumption on environmental pollution in china from 1953 to 2006 using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing procedure the main objective is to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between financial development and environmental pollution the results of the analysis reveal a negative sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development in china has not taken place at the expense of environmental pollution on the contrary it is found that financial development has led to a decrease in environmental pollution it is concluded that carbon emissions are mainly determined by income energy consumption and trade openness in the long run moreover the findings confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in the case of china

transboundary effects of environmental policy markets and emission leakages abstract one of many explanations for environmental kuznets curves for rich countries can be that dirty production is relocated to economies with laxer abatement regimes if this is caused by national abatement policies environmental stresses are transferred to other countries further the economic costs of national abatement policies can be shared with foreigners to some extent both through a lower demand for imports and losses of market shares for foreign competitors that produce cleaner products we quantify effects internally and abroad of a growth induced unilateral carbon tax policy in a rich open economy we find that the environmental benefits fall and the economic costs rise when a global rather than a national perspective is employed

what is the role of openness for china s aggregate industrial so2 emission a structural analysis based on the divisia decomposition method abstract having observed the weaknesses in previous structural analyses on the role of environmental kuznets curve ekc the author proposes a detailed analysis using a rich data set of provincial level production and so2 emission intensity of 13 industrial sectors the latter represent more than 98 of the total industrial production in each chinese province for the period 1991 2001 through the use of the log mean divisia index decomposition method the variations in province level industrial so2 emissions with regard to the 1990 baseline level are decomposed into the contribution from three components scale composition and technical effects the following analysis seeks to explain how trade openness affects aggregate industrial so2 emission through its impact on the structural determinants for these three components of region specific environmental variations

environment and development theory and international evidence the environmental effects of economic development have significant implications for a wide array of policy questions facing both low and high income countries today internationally agricultural research centers are considering how to incorporate sustainability issues into their research agendas while international lending institutions are taking a close look at the environmental consequences of industrial projects domestically the north american free trade agreement has brought the relationship between economic development and environmental quality to the forefront of u s public policy debate it is surprising that despite the postwar growth of development economics the genesis of environmental economics and the fusion of ideas from both fields into the theme of sustainable development economists have not made much progress in describing the impacts of long term economic growth on environmental quality yet a vigorous public debate has arisen between individuals who maintain that environmental degradation is a necessary outcome of economic growth and those who believe that economic growth and environmental quality go hand in hand this debate was highlighted at the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development in rio de janeiro in part this debate hinges on the properties of the aggregate demand for and supply of environmental quality if the income elasticity of demand for environmental quality or amenities is high then the increased prosperity engendered by economic growth could lead to significantly higher demand for environmental quality proponents of economic growth believe this demand will translate into a higher realized level of quality as both public and private institutions and organi

financial and legal constraints to growth does firm size matter using a unique firm level survey database covering 54 countries we investigate the effect of financial legal and corruption problems on firms growth rates whether these factors constrain growth depends on firm size it is consistently the smallest firms that are most constrained financial and institutional development weakens the constraining effects of financial legal and corruption obstacles and it is again the small firms that benefit the most there is only a weak relation between firms perception of the quality of the courts in their country and firm growth we also provide evidence that the corruption of bank officials constrains firm growth

effect of corporate economic performance on firm level environmental performance in a transition economy this paper analyzes the effect of corporate economic performance as measured by value added on firm level environmental performance in a transition economy in particular it analyzes this economic performance effect using an unbalanced panel of czech firms for the years 1995 1998 it assesses whether successful economic performance begets or undermines good environmental performance this connection seems especially important in transition economies since firms are dramatically restructuring their economic management approaches during transitional periods a majority of the analytical results indicate that successful economic performance undermines good environmental performance possibly indicating that more focused managerial efforts to improve economic outcomes may distract efforts to manage environmental matters better

trade the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve examining the linkages abstract this paper examines the extent to which the ekc inverted u relationship can be explained by trade and specifically the migration or displacement of dirty industries from the developed regions to the developing regions the pollution haven hypothesis phh using detailed data on north south trade flows for pollution intensive products the evidence for the phh is assessed emissions of 10 air and water pollutants are then estimated controlling for trade openness structural change and dirty north south trade flows evidence of pollution haven effects is found although such effects do not appear to be widespread and appear to be relatively small compared to the roles played other explanatory variables

carbon intensity and economic development 1962 1991 a brief exploration of the environmental kuznets curve the relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity co2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991 the inverted u curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982 this is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle income countries the curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy

economic growth energy consumption financial development international trade and co2 emissions in indonesia this study examines the linkages among economic growth energy consumption financial development trade openness and co2 emissions over the period of 1975q1 2011q4 in the case of indonesia the stationary analysis is performed by using zivot andrews structural break unit root test and the ardl bounds testing approach for a long run relationship between the series in the presence of structural breaks the causal relation between the concerned variable is examined by the vecm granger causality technique and robustness of causal analysis is tested by innovative accounting approach iaa our results confirm that the variables are cointegrated it means that the long run relationship exists in the presence of structural break stemming in the series the empirical findings indicate that economic growth and energy consumption increases co2 emissions while financial development and trade openness compact it the vecm causality analysis has shown the feedback hypothesis between energy consumption and co2 emissions economic growth and co2 emissions are also interrelated i e bidirectional causality financial development granger causes co2 emissions the study opens up a new policy insights to control the environment from degradation by using energy efficient technologies financial development and trade openness can also play their role in improving the environmental quality

trade and the environment with pre existing subsidies a dynamic general equilibrium analysis abstract countries that wish to erect trade barriers have a variety of instruments at their disposal in addition to tariffs and quotas countries can offer tax relief low interest financing reduced regulation and other subsidies to domestic industries facing foreign competition in a trade agreement countries typically agree to reduce not only tariffs but also subsidies we consider the effect of a free trade agreement on pollution emissions we show that while reducing tariffs may indeed increase output and pollution reductions in some subsides required by the trade agreement reduce pollution in general equilibrium for reasonable parameter values reducing subsidies has three effects on pollution 1 reducing subsidies to firms reduces pollution causing capital accumulation 2 if subsidized firms are more pollution intensive then reducing subsides moves capital and labor from more to less pollution intensive firms and 3 reducing subsidies concentrates production in more productive firms increasing output and thus pollution we derive straightforward conditions for which 1 and 2 outweigh 3 we then calibrate the model to china in 1997 and find that pollution has a more elastic response to reducing subsidies than to reducing tariffs while a 5 reduction in tariffs increases all pollutants by approximately 1 a 5 reduction in subsidies reduces pollution by 1 8 11 6 depending on the pollutant the reductions in pollution occur without any environmental side agreements or abatement policy changes

ecological modernisation new perspectives abstract ecological modernisation understood as systematic eco innovation and its diffusion has by far the largest potential to achieve environmental improvements in general the market logic of modernisation and competition for innovation combined with the market potential of global environmental needs serve as important driving forces behind ecological modernisation in recent times however additional factors like rising energy prices or fears from climate change have favoured the rise of this innovation based approach to environmental policy the article deals with two special driving forces first there is growing evidence for the importance of smart environmental regulation secondly the increasingly complex actor constellation of global environmental governance leads to mounting business risks for polluters and thereby exerts pressure for eco innovation despite these favourable framework conditions the strategy of ecological modernisation nonetheless faces a number of inherent limitations these include the unavailability of marketable technological solutions for relevant environmental problems like the loss of species the rebound effect neutralising the incremental environmental improvements through economic growth the dilemma of the n curve as well as resistance by modernisation losers against this background structural solutions seem indispensable here eco innovations should be supported by transition management or ecological structural policy

does the private sector help or hurt the environment evidence from carbon dioxide pollution in developing countries abstract how does the nature of enterprise ownership affect the environment in an economy conventional wisdom and theoretical conjectures are split on this important question in this paper we estimate a reduced form random effects model using data from 44 developing countries over nine years 1987 95 to study for any systematic empirical relationship between the relative level of private sector involvement in an economy and the environmental performance of the economy in terms of its emission of industrial carbon dioxide we control for both observed and unobserved crosscountry heterogeneity along various institutional and structural dimensions such as the scope of financial market industrial sector composition and level of foreign direct investment the regression results indicate that the higher the degree of private sector involvement in a developing economy the lower is its environmental degradation in addition its environmental degradation is likely to be further reduced in presence of a well functioning domestic capital market and through increased participation by developed economies in its private sector development

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

electoral rules strategic entry and polarization abstract how does electoral rule disproportionality affect the structure of the party system i e the number and the policy platforms of the competing parties by studying a model where both party entry and platform choice are endogenous we are able to provide a unified theory an increasing electoral rule disproportionality exhibits a a first order negative effect on platform polarization b a second order negative effect on the number of parties as polarization decreases centrist parties are squeezed between other contenders and prefer not to enter and c an additional third order negative effect on polarization via the reduction of the number of parties we then conduct a laboratory experiment and strongly confirm the theoretical predictions of the model

when do governments improve fiscal institutions lessons from financial crisis and fiscal reform in latin america do crises really lead to more institutional reforms this paper explores the connection between financial crises and one type of reform frequently advocated during the recent global financial crisis namely fiscal institutional reforms some authors expect that crises lead to reforms but we demonstrate that the relationship is not so straightforward using a data set of latin american countries that experienced several crises and also several periods of reform in the period from 1990 to 2005 we find that the type of crisis and its duration matter we argue that reforms are less likely during a banking crisis whereas fiscal crises are most likely to lead to fiscal reforms this means that the type of economic crisis is important for explaining the likelihood of reforms we explore other possible explanations for reform such as the partisanship of the president and whether a country is under an imf program and do not find confirming evidence for alternative explanations

industrial ownership and environmental performance evidence from china the authors explore the differences in pollution control performance of industries with different types of ownership in china state owned soe collectively or community owned coe privately owned poe companies with foreign direct investment fdi and joint ventures about 1 000 industrial firms in three provinces of china were surveyed and detailed 1999 firm level information was obtained the authors analyzed the differences between firms in receiving and reacting to environmental regulatory enforcement community pressure environmental services as well as in the firm s internal environmental management among the different types of ownership the authors also conducted econometric analyses on the determinants of pollution discharge performance the results show that foreign direct investment and collectively owned enterprises have better environmental performances in terms of water pollution discharge intensity while state owned enterprises and privately owned enterprises in china are the worst performers the results also suggest that collectively owned enterprises in china do internalize environmental externalities

dirty industries patterns of change in industrial countries this article concerns itself with the environmental role of heavily polluting industries since 1970 analysing its development in 11 basic industries as well as electricity production and road transport in 32 industrial countries it argues for a green industrial policy demonstrating that other mitigations of environmental pressure in industrial countries end of pipe treatment relocation to the third world structural change in the industrial sector and even environmentally oriented modernization have so far been unable to solve the problems of dirty industries although some approaches have shown some promise

a model of candidate location when one candidate has a valence advantage that under some fairly weak assumptions for all levels of the valence advantage the advantaged candidate chooses a more moderate position than the disadvantaged candidate empirical studies of congressional elections by fiorina 1973 and ansolabehere snyder and stewart 2001 support this result d owns 1957 seminal work presents a puzzle for scholars of u s elections why do candidates not converge to the median voter one of the best explanations is that the candidates themselves have ideological preferences as calvert 1985 and wittman 1977 1983 have shown when candidates have such preferences and they are sufficiently uncertain about the preferences of the median voter then they do not converge although they may moderate their positions from their ideal point the basic version of the calvert wittman model however does not account for another basic fact of u s elections often one of the candidates has an advantage due to a nonpolicy factor such as incumbency greater campaign funds better name recognition superior charisma superior intelligence and so on stokes has dubbed such factors valence factors and he has noted their importance in u s elections stokes 1963 1992 1 in this article i extend the basic calvert wittman model by giving one candidate a valence advantage over the other i show that if the valence characteristics of the candidates are approximately equal then when a candidate s valence advantage increases this causes her to move toward the

global warming agreements international trade and energy carbon embodiments an input output approach to the italian case abstract in the kyoto protocol the absence of green house gases ghgs commitments of developing countries non annex i and the more flexible terms of implementation which are allowed to countries shifting toward a market economy transition economies naturally lead to the absence or to less constraining national measures and policies of reduction of the ghgs emissions which in turn may determine a comparative advantage in the production of the highest energy carbon intensive commodities for these countries these arguments are valid also considering the future implementation of the european emission allowance trading scheme eats thus developing countries may become a haven for the production of not environmental friendly commodities in this case the so called pollution haven hypothesis stating that due to freer international trade the comparative advantage may change the economic structure and consequently the trade patterns of the countries linked by trade relationships could occur this would lead to the increase of the transfers of energy and carbon embodied in traded commodities from developing countries and transition economies toward kyoto or eats constrained countries the aim of this paper is to verify if for italy as a kyoto and eats complying country evidence of a change in the trade patterns occurred on the basis of the pollution haven hypothesis does exist and to estimate the magnitude of the under estimation of the carbon actually emitted the carbon leakage the input output model has been used to calculate the intensities of energy consumption and the related green house gases emission for each italian economic sector

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

budget institutions and political insulation why states adopt the item veto abstract forty three of the fifty states of the united states have granted item veto authority to their governors as part of state constitutions in this paper i test explanations of why and when a legislature would cede institutional power using data from 1865 to 1994 i show that these measures are most likely proposed by fiscal conservatives who fear the loss of power in the future in order to protect their interests for those periods when they will be in the minority they implement institutions such as the item veto which will limit future liberal legislatures the results therefore shed light on two important substantive areas first by showing how the choice of budgetary institutions is endogenous to the political process it clarifies that political factors must be considered in addition to social efficiency to understand the adoption of budget institutions second it provides evidence in support of theories that have posited that electorally weak groups will heavily insulate policies in periods in which they momentarily hold power e g moe 1989 de figueiredo 2002

pollution intensity of gdp and trade policy can the world bank be wrong abstract what are the environmental implications of open trade policies in developing countries economic theory and environmental critics suggest they worsen environmental quality this conventional wisdom has been challenged by several studies which suggest that outward oriented trade policies are likely to be win win enhance economic growth and environmental quality this paper challenges revised conventional wisdom rcw by demonstrating that developing countries with outward oriented trade policies have higher pollution intensities of gdp than those following inward oriented policies the paper examines why the evidence reported here differs so sharply from rcw studies considers the policy implications of these results and identifies reasons why despite them it may not make sense to totally discount future potential win win opportunities

electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization despite common perception existing theoretical literature lacks a complete for mal argument regarding the relationship between the electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization in this paper we build a model that incorporates the disproportionality of the electoral system in a standard downsian electoral competition setup with mainly but not necessarily purely policy motivated parties we first show that in equilibrium platform polarization is decreasing in the level of the electoral rule disproportionality we then argue that the number of parties has a positive effect on platform polarization when polarization is measured by the distance between the two most distant platforms this effect does not hold when polarization is measured by the widely used dalton index constructing a dataset covering more than 300 elections our main theoretical findings are empirically supported pointing towards the electoral rule disproportionality as a major determinant of polarization

the effect of cultural distance on entry mode choice international diversification and mne performance a meta analysis although a growing literature indicates that cultural distance that is differences between national cultures is an important determinant of organizational actions and performance both empirical and theoretical concerns abound in this study the relationships of cultural distance with entry mode choice international diversification and mne performance are examined by meta analyzing data from 66 independent samples with cumulative sample sizes ranging from 2 255 to 24 152 regression results failed to provide statistical evidence of significant relationships between cultural distance and entry mode choice international diversification and mne performance the examination of moderator effects however yielded important results we found a strong negative association between cultural distance and entry mode choice for us based mnes the cultural distance international diversification relationship was negative for high technology industries while it was positive for other industries cultural distance also had a strong positive effect on mne performance for developed country investments a similar strong positive relationship was found between cultural distance and international diversification in studies with more recent samples results of this study indicate that substantial additional research is needed before the role of cultural distance is fully understood

is india specialising in polluting industries evidence from us india bilateral trade recently the apex environmental agency of india observed that domestic industrial pollution has been increasing at an alarming rate over the last two decades and the need to rein in traditional polluting industries this raises the pertinent question of whether the poor domestic pollution regime has affected the pattern of india s trade in dirty manufactured products in the post liberalisation era since 1991 we find that on the whole india has remained a net importer of pollution intensive manufactured goods however there is a distinct trend of increasing specialisation in specific dirty industries especially in the bilateral trade with high income countries and to a lesser degree with low income countries the usa being india s single largest country trading partner in the post liberalisation era we test for pollution offshoring at the finer industry level in us india bilateral trade while we find that the pollution haven effect is not significant india s specialisation in certain dirty manufacturing industries through the last decade remains a disturbing trend india needs to integrate environmental sustainability within industrial growth urgently and it is pertinent to implement policies which would reflect the true pollution costs in an industry that is increasingly competing in the international market

does higher economic and financial development lead to environmental degradation evidence from bric countries abstract a vast number of studies addressed the environmental degradation and economic development but not financial development moreover as argued by stern 2004 the rise and fall of the environmental kuznets curve world development 32 1419 1439 they present important econometric weaknesses using standard reduced form modeling approach and controlling for country specific unobserved heterogeneity we investigate the linkage between not only economic development and environmental quality but also the financial development panel data over period 1992 2004 is used we find that both economic and financial development are determinants of the environmental quality in bric economies we show that higher degree of economic and financial development decreases the environmental degradation our analysis suggests that financial liberalization and openness are essential factors for the co 2 reduction the adoption of policies directed to financial openness and liberalization to attract higher levels of r d related foreign direct investment might reduce the environmental degradation in countries under consideration in addition the robustness check trough the inclusion of us and japan does not alter our main findings

environmental regulation and mnes location does csr matter abstract we investigate whether firms with relatively low environmental standards are more often located in countries that are poor corrupt or have weak environmental regulations we find new empirical evidence in favor of the pollution haven hypothesis which states that mnes are transferring their dirty operations to countries with weak environmental regulation our findings suggest that these are not necessarily the poorest or most corrupt countries we establish that mnes with strong social responsibility avoid locating their operations in countries with weak environmental regulation

richer and cleaner a study on carbon dioxide emissions in developing countries abstract the climate change debate has drawn attention to the problem of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere one of the most important issues in the policy debate is the role that should be played by developing countries in joining the commitment of developed countries to reduce ghg emissions and particularly co2 emissions this debate calls into play the relationship between energy consumption co2 emissions and economic development in this paper we use a panel data model for 110 world countries to estimate the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and to produce emission forecast the paper contains three major results i the empirical relationship between carbon dioxide and income is well described by non linear gamma and weibull specifications as opposed to more usual linear and log linear functional forms ii our single equation reduced form model is comparable in terms of forecasted emissions with other more complex less data driven models iii despite the decreasing marginal propensity to pollute our forecasts show that future global emissions will rise the average world growth of co2 emissions between 2000 and 2020 is about 2 2 yr while that of non annex 1 countries is posted at 3 3 yr

reconciling the conflict between the pollution haven hypothesis and an emerging trajectory of international technology transfer abstract many developing countries have relied on technology transfer through foreign direct investment fdi from developed countries as a primary means of technology acquisition however recent increased global eco consciousness and linking of trade and investment with environmental issues has the potential of disrupting these investment flows this paper investigates the validity of the pollution haven hypothesis which claims that an open market regime will encourage the flow of generally low technology polluting industries to developing countries from a neo technology trade perspective in the process an emerging trajectory of international technology transfer favoring high technology industries is established this paper concludes that positive measures enhancing fdi is not only crucial for technology upgrading but at the same time brings about enhanced environmental welfare through transfer of eco friendly products and production processes

a further inquiry into the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve abstract empirical research on the relationship between economic growth and its impact on the environment often tests the environmental kuznets curve ekc a hypothesis that rising national output leads to increases in pollution emissions until an economy reaches a certain size and decreases thereafter this paper addresses a branch of ekc literature focused on the role international trade plays in shaping this relationship in particular we test the pollution haven hypothesis which posits that emission reductions observed in developed nations are partly the result of shifting dirty production to developing nations with lax environmental standards we estimate ekcs for seven oft studied pollutants and find little evidence that pollution havens play a significant role in shaping the ekc we also find that confidence intervals around ekc turning points are very wide often including values well above the range of the data this leads us to be skeptical of the optimistic view that economic growth naturally leads to improvements in environmental quality

air pollution and dirty industries how and why does the composition of manufacturing output change with economic development this paper examines the impact on air pollution ofchanges in the composition of manufacturing output indeveloped and developing countries pollutionemissions from manufacturing output are estimated ina manner which holds constant the effect of technologyand regulations allowing the impact of compositional changes alone on pollution to beestimated the paper has three main findings 1 theinverted u estimated between per capita income and thepollution intensity of gdp arises due to both thecomposition of manufacturing becoming cleaner and theshare of manufacturing output in gdp falling compositional changes alone are not responsible forthe inverted u between per capita income and percapita emissions 2 changes to the composition ofmanufacturing output are consistent with the pollutionhaven hypothesis however there is clear evidence thatrising per capita incomes are associated with afalling income elasticity of demand for dirty products this fact may explain the compositionalchanges that occur with development 3 in additionto the income elasticity effect the analysis suggeststhat land prices and to a lesser extent the prices oflabour and capital determine the proportion of dirtyindustry within a country s manufacturing sector

can politicians police themselves natural experimental evidence from brazil s audit courts to enhance government accountability reformers have advocated strengthening institutions of horizontal accountability particularly auditing institutions that can punish lawbreaking elected offi

impact of inter sectoral trade on national and global co2 emissions an empirical analysis of china and us abstract this paper attempts to discuss the co2 emissions embodied in sino us international trade using a sector approach based on an input output model established in this study we quantify the impact of sino us international trade on national and global co2 emissions our initial findings reveal that in 2005 the us reduced 190 13 mt co2 emissions through the consumption of imported goods from china while increasing global co2 emissions by about 515 25 mt similarly china reduced 178 62 mt co2 emissions through the consumption of us goods while reducing global co2 emissions by 129 93 mt sino us international trade increased global co2 emissions by 385 32 mt as a whole of which the chemical fabricated metal products non metallic mineral products and transportation equipment sectors contributed an 86 71 share therefore we suggest that accelerating the adjustment of china s trade structure and export of us advanced technologies and experience related to clean production and energy efficiency to china as the way to reduce the negative impact of sino us trade on national and global co2 emissions this behavior should take into account the processing and manufacturing industries as a priority especially the chemical fabricated metal products non metallic mineral products and transportation equipment sectors

are asean countries havens for japanese pollution intensive industry in an era of closer worldwide economic integration the role that environmental regulations play in shaping a country s comparative advantage is greater than ever this has led to fears that dirty firms will relocate from developed to developing countries where environmental regulations may be less stringent the so called pollution haven hypothesis to date however there is little support for the existence of pollution havens despite anecdotal evidence and the theoretical predictions in this paper we employ a unique industry level dataset for japan and examine whether japanese industries have relocated production to their asean neighbours in response to the relative stringency of japanese environmental regulations not only do we find no evidence for pollution haven consistent behaviour but also some indication that the complex relationship between the characteristics of japanese dirty industries and environmental regulations may actually have reduced japanese outward fdi to the philippines

the effects of alternative power sharing arrangements do moderating institutions moderate party strategies and government policy outputs advocates of consensual political institutions i e institutions that promote compromise and powersharing among political parties claim that these institutions promote moderation in government policy outputs to date however there exists little research either theoretical or empirical that evaluates whether consensual institutions promote moderation in parties policy declarations we develop a multiparty spatial model with policy seeking parties operating under proportional representation in which we vary the extent to which government policies reflect power sharing among all parties as opposed to being determined by a single party we determine parties optimal nash equilibrium policy positions and conclude that power sharing does not typically motivate parties to moderate their policy declarations in fact policy positioning under power sharing appears to be similar to or more extreme than under single party dominance consistent with previous research however we find that power sharing does promote moderation in government policy outputs our results have implications for parties election strategies for the design of political institutions and for representative government

vote trading in power sharing systems a laboratory investigation in theory decentralized vote trading in power sharing systems promotes a efficiency by assigning greater decision making power to individuals that care a lot about the election s outcome and b dispersion of benefits since even individuals that have little interest about the electoral result can profit by selling their votes we experimentally test these intuitions in the laboratory and find that indeed allowing real subjects to trade votes for money in such systems increases collective welfare and substantially redistributes it towards those that are less concerned about the election importantly these findings hold true under alternative trading institutions thus reinforcing their empirical relevance

us environmental load displacement examining consumption regulations and the role of nafta abstract in light of concerns that structural changes to us production may not be accompanied by similar changes to us consumption this paper provides a detailed examination of us environmental load displacement over the period 1974 2001 the forces that drive such displacement are also examined with particular attention paid to the scale and composition of us consumption the share of imports in consumption the role of environmental regulations and the potential impact of nafta it is found that the usa as a whole has experienced environmental load displacement over the period under consideration with the extent of this displacement seeming to increase over the last decade it would appear to be the increasing scale of us trade that is increasing environmental load displacement indeed the composition of us imports and exports have become significantly cleaner over the period considered however although imports from mexico have grown more rapidly than exports to mexico no evidence is found to suggest that nafta is increasing displacement to mexico with regard to us domestic consumption patterns although they have become cleaner a greater share than ever is now met via imports sectoral pollution abatement costs are found to be a determinant of this increasing share of imports in domestic consumption

economic growth and the diffusion of clean technologies explaining environmental kuznets curves the paper provides a theoretical explanation for the inverted u shaped relation between pollution and income often found in empirical research environmental kuznets curve we model the transition in the pollution pattern as a change in general purpose technologies and investigate how it interferes with economic growth driven by quality improvements we provide an analytical foundation for the claim that the rise and decline of pollution can be explained by endogenous innovations policy induced technology shifts and intrasectoral changes once environmental degradation becomes too severe regulation is introduced by which society forces the economy to make a transition to cleaner production