bankable permits for the control of environmental pollution abstract intertemporal trading of emission permits banking is often identified as one of three promising market mechanisms for controlling pollution along with averaging and trading surprisingly the efficiency properties of permit banking systems have not been investigated using a simple optimal control model this paper investigates firms incentives for banking or borrowing emission permits and compares the emission and output streams firms would choose with the socially optimal solution we find that in many cases firms will suboptimally choose excessive damage and output levels in early periods and correspondingly too few in later periods if given the opportunity to freely move emissions between time periods we propose a simple alternative trading scheme we term modified banking that counters this problem and should be no more difficult for an environmental authority to implement than a straigth banking system

optimal tax transfer systems and redistributive policy in this paper we develop optimal yardsticks to gauge the effectiveness of given tax and benefit policies in reducing inequality we show that the conjunction of the optimal tax and optimal benefits policies constitutes the optimal tax and benefit policy given the tax and benefit budget sizes a decomposition formula enables trends in the inequality impact of taxes and benefits to be explained in terms of changing policy effectivess targeting and budget size effects the analysis incorporates a distributional judgement parameter for sensitivity analysis and concludes with an examination of the finnish case for the period 1971 1990

ethical social index numbers and the measure ment of effective tax benefit progressivity in this paper we propose a general method for constructing measures both relative and absolute of effective tax benefit progressivity from social welfare functions relative measures compare the after tax or benefit distribution of income with the distribution that would result if the burden were imposed proportionally absolute measures use the equal taxation of individuals as a benchmark these indices are related to relative and absolute indices of inequality our relative indices are generalizations of the gini index based musgrave thin measure of effective progressivity we compare our general indices to the proposals of kakwani khetan and poddar and suits

sulfur dioxide control by electric utilities what are the gains from trade title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances among electric utilities this market offers firms facing high marginal abatement costs the opportunity to purchase the right to emit so2 from firms with lower costs and this is expected to yield cost savings compared to a command and control approach to environmental regulation this paper uses econometrically estimated marginal abatement cost functions for power plants affected by title iv of the caaa to evaluate the performance of the so2 allowance market specifically we investigate whether the much heralded fall in the cost of abating so2 compared to original estimates can be attributed to allowance trading we demonstrate that for plants that use low sulfur coal to reduce so2 emissions technical change and the fall in prices of low sulfur coal have lowered marginal abatement cost curves by over 50 percent since 1985 the flexibility to take advantage of these chan

globalisation transport and the environment new perspectives for ecological economics this article aims to offer an overview of key issues centred around the relationship between globalisation and transport related environmental decay in the ecological economics literature of the past decade followed by an exploration of new research endeavours the scientific contribution of 10 years of ecological economics to issues of environmental sustainability in relation to international trade and transport is certainly not impressive hence also contributions from other environmental economics journals are considered two themes which apparently have received less attention in the ecological economics literature are addressed namely 1 the influence of global trade on the environment and 2 the environmental effects of international transport induced by trade the total effect of globalisation and transportation on the environment originates from complex changes in the scale structural technological and product effects of our industrial system various conflicts between global trade transportation and the environment are pointed out on the basis of these four effects the paper argues that the net effects of these changes are still uncertain ecological economics however should contribute to the challenging task of analysing more thoroughly the effects of global trade and transport on the environment

investment decisions and transferable discharge permits an empirical study of water quality management under policy uncertainty the problem of investiment decisions for sources participating in transferable discharge permit tdp markets has not received much attention one way tdps offer potential savings is with their ability to influence development in a region static models have assessed the potential savings of tdps but do not explicitly consider investment decisions thus they do not capture this long run role nor that of policy uncertainty and tend to understate both the cost saving potential and the difficulty in achieving it this paper addresses both problems by emphasizing the temporal dimension of tdps a two period investment model investigates the magnitude of these potential savings and the effects of two types of policy uncertainty upon expected gains from permit trading

the future of the high skill equilibrium in germany is the celebrated german skills system in peril western german employers have cut apprenticeship places since the 1980s while the institutional supports of the high skill equilibrium hse analysed by finegold and soskice oxford review of economic policy 4 3 1988 are threatened the globalization of equity markets menaces the patient capital on which german companies depend lean production techniques have rendered strategies of incremental innovation vulnerable on international markets and german employers and labour face mounting organizational difficulties this article derives implications from the hse model to assess these challenges against existing evidence in fact only the declining capacity of employers associations and unions constitutes an empirically verifiable threat to the german apprenticeship system the magnitude of which depends on questionable assumptions of the hse model of potential future salience though is the growing importance of service sector jobs and the further training system in germany which may eventually undo the political compromise on which the hse has historically rested

international trade and environmental quality a survey abstract international trade has been incorporating various aspects of environmental issues since 1970 the extent to which environmental problems might affect many facets of trade or vice versa has been the subject of considerable debate over these years in this article we have attempted to establish some of the links between international trade and environmental quality by performing a comprehensive literature review we discuss issues such as establishing direct and indirect effects of international trade on environmental quality effects of trade on economic development environmental quality and energy and their relation with each other and finally the role of governments and international organizations in this context studies have so far revealed some linkages between trade and environment through conventional trade theory however interactions between international trade and types of pollution their sink and assimilative capacity need to be analyzed using a general equilibrium approach currently very little knowledge and agreement on the nature of interactions between trade theories development process and environmental quality exist existing studies have shown that the structure of environmental regulations should be modified to reflect the existence of trade under imperfect competition therefore further research on the interaction between new trade theory and environmental regulation is needed also theoretical and quantitative analysis regarding the effects of environmental regulations on competitiveness and location decision is needed the intensity and type of environmental measures vary across issues and countries therefore harmonizing environmental measures creates an inefficient atmosphere and to assume that trade restrictions will either improve or reverse the environmental damages is a serious mistake given the dynamic and intricate nature of the problem trade and environment debate continues despite vast research and poses a challenge for researchers and policy makers in the foreseeable future

an economic analysis of scrappage this article examines the impact of policies aimed at encouraging the retirement of older high polluting vehicles such as the cash for clunkers policy endorsed by president george bush in 1992 the analysis assesses the likely benefits and costs of vehicle scrappage programs i also address the interaction of a scrappage program with other ongoing policies such as improved inspection and maintenance finally the simulation for los angeles suggests plausible design values for a scrappage program

road transport externalities during the last decade much progress has been made in defining measuring the external costs of transport as the cost of tolling equipment falls the set of realistic policy options to internalise these externalities will continue to grow this will determine the research and policy agenda we make three points firstly empirical work is still necessary to better identify marginal external costs including congestion accident and environmental costs secondly any assessment of policy options should treat externalities simultaneously the use of pricing instruments and emissions standards are discussed within this framework thirdly we emphasise the role of government designing the optimal road pricing institutions requires consideration of horizontal and vertical tax competition while double dividend arguments are central to the question of securing public support

reconciling trade and environment towards a comparative advantage for long term policy goals abstract for an economic order to remain within ecological boundaries countries need to respond to ecological feedback effects resulting environmental compliance costs have so far hardly influenced trade flows and firm location decisions future developments of economic integration and the increasing urgency of stricter environmental objectives are shown to change this picture primarily for the case of transnational and global environmental problems countries will need to be relieved from the threat of competitive disadvantage caused by environmental production process regulation that the current international regulatory trade framework implies the first option to do so international harmonization of environmental regulation is connected to a range of shortcomings especially for countries differing in natural endowments and preferences for counterbalancing measures two regulatory frameworks are analyzed based on a a physical inventory system or b a direct environmental compliance cost comparison the adequacy of the physical system is shown to be limited whereas the cost basis option can be applied on a broader range it cannot fully re establish the optimal situation that would be achieved by an often unlikely environmental agreement but would encourage countries to take necessary unilateral environmental action changing current trade regulation in that respect will be crucial to foster sustainable development

an interim evaluation of sulfur dioxide emissions trading ide iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments established the first large scale long term environmental program to rely on tradable emissions permitscalled allowances in this program to control pollution this program was designed to cut acid rain by reducing sulfur dioxide so2 emissions from electric generating plants to about half their 1980 level beginning in 1995 it is of interest both as a response to an important environmental issue and as a landmark experiment in environmental policy this experiment comes at a particularly important time since emission trading is under serious consideration with strong u s backing for use to deal with global climate change by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide co2 the economic stakes in climate change surpass those in acid rain by several orders of magnitude intergovernmental panel on climate change 1996 this article summarizes the results to date of our ongoing empirical analysis of compliance costs and allowance market performance under the u s acid rain program

trade environment and development the issues in perspective abstract this special issue on trade and the environment brings together a number of papers that are constructively critical of the conventional economic wisdom on the topic we think that this criticism is warranted because of the decidely uncritical way in which free trade has been advocated in much of the literature and especially in policy the papers analyse the validity of the underlying assumptions on which the conventional wisdom is based and provide suggestions for ways to facilitate trade that is also adequately protective of the environment sustainability and other social values in this introductory piece we discuss trade the environment and sustainability summarizing arguments in the papers included in this issue and adding a few additional points not covered by them

market failure in incentive based regulation the case of emissions trading abstract among the existing evaluations of the us epa s emissions trading program a consensus has emerged while the program has resulted in significant cost savings it has not even approximately achieved a cost effective allocation of the control responsibility the cost savings have been smaller and the trades fewer than might have been expected at the outset of the program in this article we explore one hypothesis which purports to explain the divergence between the cost minimizing and the observed pattern of trades for nonuniformly mixed pollutants the trading process hypothesis attributes some significant proportion of this divergence to the nature of the process by which emission reduction credits are traded under the bubble policy an examination of actual bubble trades reveals that the actual trading process is sequential and bilateral and hence differs considerably from the implicit process modeled in the existing empirical studies simulations of this more realistic trading process suggest that the resulting equilibria deviate considerably from cost effective allocations of the control responsibility

spatial heterogeneity contract design and the efficiency of carbon sequestration policies for agriculture abstract in this paper we develop methods to investigate the efficiency of alternative contracts for carbon c sequestration in cropland soils taking into account the spatial heterogeneity of agricultural production systems and the costs of implementing more efficient contracts we describe contracts being proposed for implementation in the united states and other countries that would pay farmers for adoption of specified practices per hectare contracts we also describe more efficient contracts that would pay farmers per tonne of soil c sequestered and we show how to estimate the costs of implementing these more efficient contracts in a case study of a major agricultural region in the united states we confirm that the relative inefficiency of per hectare contracts varies spatially and increases with the degree of spatial heterogeneity the results also show that per hectare contracts are as much as five times more costly than per tonne contracts a degree of inefficiency similar to that found in assessments of command and control industrial emissions regulations measurement costs to implement the per tonne contracts are found to be positively related to spatial heterogeneity but are estimated to be at least an order of magnitude smaller than the efficiency losses of the per hectare contract for reasonable error levels this finding implies that contracting parties could afford to bear a significant cost to implement per tonne contracts and achieve a lower total cost than would be possible with the less efficient per hectare contracts

education and economic performance simplistic theories and their policy consequences a largely unquestioned consensus proclaims that educational policy is an effective tool for delivering prosperity and increasing rates of economic growth this consensus rests on far less secure foundations than is commonly supposed international comparisons confirm that as they become richer people seek ever more education for their children but provide no clear cut evidence of economic benefits accruing to countries which are high spending in education terms analyses which extrapolate from the incomes of educated individuals rest on assumptions about how wages are determined and the extent to which rewards are for skills acquired in schooling which are highly questionable moreover an uncritical belief in educational expansion leads to target driven policies with serious negative effects on educational quality a more realistic view of education s economic impact and a move away from centralized planning for economic ends would actually improve the quality of education copyright 2004 oxford university press

forest resource trade between japan and southeast asia the structure of dual decay abstract forest resource trade between southeast asia and japan has been noteworthy because of its documented effects on the deforestation of southeast asia s environment this paper expands the focus of this issue to include an examination of the effects of this trade on japanese domestic forests our goal is to redefine the scope of discussions of trade environment issues we assert that the environmental problems of the importer and the exporter can be understood as a set of structurally connected phenomena which we refer to as dual decay we examine the underlying dynamics of renewable resource trade and the effects of trade liberalization on both importers and exporters environments

the redistribution of income in canada this original study challenges the widely held belief that government policies to redistribute income have made canada a more egalitarian state the author bases his conclusions on extensive documentation of the real effect of changes in taxes transfers and government expenditures

equilibrium pollution taxes in a two industry open economy abstract this paper involves strategic implications of environmental policy in case of two international oligopolies when countries take part in an international environmental agreement and have agreed on national target levels for a global pollutant this set up permits an analysis of the design of optimal emission taxes across domestic producers by differentiating taxes between industries with different abatement cost demand and number of domestic firms governments are in a position to raise national net foreign rents it is argued that a single national emission trading programme encompassing all domestic producers cannot provide the equivalent strategic policy design

fiscal federalism and interjurisdictional externalities new results and an application to us air pollution abstract the economics of fiscal federalism has identified two book end departures from first best provision of a public good local governments may respond to local conditions but ignore inter jurisdictional spillovers alternatively central governments may internalize spillovers but impose uniform incentives ignoring local heterogeneity we provide a simple model that demonstrates that the choice of pricing policy also depends crucially on a third factor the shape of marginal costs of providing the public good if marginal costs are convex then marginal abatement cost elasticities will be higher around the local policies this increases the deadweight loss of those policies relative to the centralized policy ceteris paribus if they are concave then the opposite is true using a detailed simulation model of the us electricity sector we then empirically explore these tradeoffs for us air pollution we find that us states acting in their own interest lose about 31 5 of the potential first best benefits whereas the second best uniform policy loses only 0 2 of benefits the centralized policy outperforms the state policy for two reasons first inter state spillovers are simply more important that inter state heterogeneity in this application second because of the convexity of the marginal cost functions elasticities are much lower over the range relevant to the centralized policy dampening the distortions

price effects inefficient environmental policy and windfall profits we examine conditions under which a new or tighter restriction on emissions from a competitive polluting industry creates price effects in adjacent markets price effects may arise when a quantity restriction on emissions causes output to fall and therefore output price to rise they may also arise when the required reduction in output causes the price of a polluting input to fall we model emissions as a fixed proportion of output limiting the possibilities for input substitutions the possibility of price effects exists whenever the set of regulated firms is large relative to its input or output markets a possibility that is expressly ruled out in montgomery s j econ theory 5 395 418 1972 paper two potential implications of price effects are explored one is an efficiency concern a welfare maximizing regulator who neglects price effects will require more than the optimal level of abatement the other is a distributional concern an emissions restriction might create windfall profits for the polluting industry

the equal absolute sacrifice principle revisited abstract we summarize the literature on equal absolute sacrifice income taxes and make some extensions we adapt the utilitarian equal sacrifice criterion to a wide class of rank dependent social welfare functions and find that liabilities depend on both income and position in the distribution we investigate whether such taxes need be progressive using a combination of analytics and simulation and in the process uncover tax functions not previously recognized as equating sacrifices finally out of horizontal equity considerations a new concept of the equal treatment of equals by an income tax emerges with implications for future work whose significance is discussed

economic assessment of the regional clean air incentives market a new emissions trading program for los angeles this article documents the methodology used to compare policy alternatives considered for reclaim an emissions trading program for los angeles which commenced january 1994 reclaim reduces no x and so x emissions from stationary sources with declining emissions credit allocations the emissions trading model etm includes credit supply and demand spatial restrictions and opportunity costs of owning credits the etm solves interactively with a regional model that estimates economic impacts predicted emissions distributions are input into airshed and exposure models the models predict similar improvements in air quality and public health as command and control regulations but with lower costs and employment impacts

environmental benefits from marketable discharge permits or an ecological vs economical perspective on marketable permits abstract economists typically extol the virtues of marketable discharge permits based on their ability to obtain a given environmental standard at least cost previous empirical studies of marketable permits have quantified the benefits from the use of permits relative to a command and control system in terms of cost savings occasionally the benefits of a permit system are described by noting that the efficiency of such systems would allow improved environmental quality relative to a command and control system for the same cost that is the increased efficiency resulting from a permit system would allow environmental regulators to tighten emission standards resulting in less pollution while still holding costs at their initial level this paper presents a simple conceptual model that examines the potential emission savings from a marketable permit system the conceptual model is empirically implemented with data on abatement costs for light duty vehicles in california the emission saving potential is directly compared with the cost saving potential although cost savings from a marketable permit system in this context are found to be relatively modest on the order of 1 to 10 the emission savings potential is found to be much larger estimates of the emission savings possibilities range from about 7 to 65

technological change trade and the environment abstract trade policies and environmental policies have evolved largely independently and until recently their interactions attracted little attention there is much discussion of the institutional arrangements and economic instruments needed to embody environmental concerns in trade policy but relatively little discussion of the role of technology this paper describes the long term environmentally motivated technological change involved in shifting from an end of pipe approach for capturing pollutants after they are generated to a focus on the prevention of environmental degradation the new engineering field of industrial ecology promotes design and manufacturing practices that are based on an examination of the full life cycle of a product in order to improve environmental performance industrial ecology is spreading quickly in the industrialized countries but its repercussions are transmitted widely through international trade plastics provide a good example of both the opportunities and the difficulties surrounding environmental protection technological change and trade concerns over solid waste in the rich countries may result in new market opportunities for biomass based polymers but the success of these products depends upon a complex set of factors including very different alternative ways individual countries may choose to deal with solid waste the implications for the developing countries are examined for the case of plastics and more generally

the failure of training in britain analysis and prescription in the last decade education and training et reform has become a major issue in many of the world s industrial powers one theme which runs throughout these reform initiatives is the need to adapt et systems to the changing economic environment these changes include the increasing integration of world markets the shift in mass manufacturing towards newly developed nations and the rapid development of new technologies most notably information technologies education and training are seen to play a crucial role in restoring or maintaining international competitiveness both on the macro level by easing the transition of the workforce into new industries and at the micro level where firms producing high quality specialized goods and services require a well qualified workforce capable of rapid adjustment in the work process and continual product innovation this paper will highlight the need for policy makers and academics to take account of the two way nature of the relationship between et and the economy

globalizing carbon lock in this paper extends the arguments surrounding carbon lock in elaborated in unruh energy policy 28 2000 817 30 2002 317 to countries currently undergoing industrialization it argues that for numerous reasons industrializing countries are unlikely to leapfrog carbon intensive energy development on the contrary carbon lock in may be globalizing and could further constrain climate change mitigation options it is then argued that many policy recommendations ignore carbon lock in possibly limiting their potential for successful implementation the paper then discusses four policy approaches that appear to have advantages given lock in conditions it is recognized however that relative ease of implementation does not necessarily equate with superiority instead it is merely a path dependent outcome of past development decisions pursuing policies on the basis of relative implementation ease may help address the issue of climate change but could also result in sub optimal outcomes along other dimensions of sustainable development

adaptation to an irrigation water restriction imposed through local governance abstract we estimate how farmers adapted to a water restriction imposed through local governance the restriction imposed a uniform quota on water use with a 5 year allocation and allowed trading of the quota within the restricted area our analysis exploits unique micro level data on irrigated water use irrigated acreage and crops we use a difference in differences econometric strategy that also includes farmer time fixed effects to estimate the response to the restriction where we exploit water rights between 2 and 5 miles of the policy boundary as a control group results indicate that farmers reduced water use by 26 due to the policy with most of the response due to reductions in water use intensity on the same crops rather than through reductions in irrigated acreage or changes in crops the results imply that the short run welfare impact of the policy was smaller than a policy that reduces irrigated acreage

education human capital and growth a personal perspective this article reviews the literature on the relationship of economic growth to the education levels of the labor force the emphasis is on yoram ben porath s contribution to some of the issues in this field the endogeneity of schooling the role of the public sector as an absorber of educated labor and the importance of personal human capital created by investments in reputation and personal relationships the f connection

the net benefits of incentive based regulation a case study of environmental standard setting economists interested in environmental safety and health regulation have long argued that decentralized incentive based or ib policies are more efficient than centralized command and control or cac approaches see charles schultze 1977 for instance these arguments generally have been based on the assumption that ib policies will accomplish the same goals as their cac counterparts but at less cost to society however some of those touting ib policies have overlooked an important point environmental workplace or even productsafety standards typically take the form of maximum permissible concentrations of harmful substances so that compliance only requires that all monitoring points or samples register readings below these critical levels for this reason ib policies typically assign a shadow price of zero to improvements that exceed the standard s while more crude cac policies generally result in overcontrol beyond the standards if there is no value to this overcontrol cac policies will not improve at all on ib approaches and will indeed be more expensive if however reduced concentrations below the level of the standards bring with them further improvements in health or the environment cac approaches will produce greater benefits than ib approaches thus a fair comparison between the two necessitates that any additional benefits associated with cac policies be offset against the cost advantages enjoyed by their ib counterparts although this possibility has been recognized by others scott atkinson and t h tietenberg 1982 for instance it is little appreciated and its empirical significance has never been ascertained that is our purpose here we do so by developing data on the costs and benefits of controlling a common air pollutant total suspended particulates or tsp in baltimore by comparing the tsp levels likely under both ib and cac approaches we are able to estimate the marginal costs and benefits associated with a variety of alternative air quality standards which take the form of maximum permissible concentrations this in turn allows us to determine the net benefits arising from the two kinds of regimes in the next section we present a simple conceptual framework for our analysis section ii describes the estimation of the costs and benefits of our hypothesized air pollution controls in baltimore section iii presents our somewhat surprising findings and section iv discusses those findings and their potential significance for regulation in the real world

operationalizing sustainable development dynamic ecological economic models abstract since the mid eighties a vast literature has evolved around the concept of sustainable development it shows a wide support for changes in policy making and decision making for instance to integrate environmental interests in national and international political processes remarkably recommendations of contours and new elements of research methods and policy analysis for sustainable development are rare although this is just as essential as the renewed attention for the political dimension a clear view on how to use and change adequately existing techniques and models for sustainable development will contribute to a more satisfactory operationalization of it this paper examines the implications of ecologically sustainable economic development for integrated dynamic modelling after a concise discussion of sustainable development it is suggested that five concepts are central to it intergenerational equity the regional scale multiple use long term uncertainty and economic ecological integration the discussion of each of these issues is focused on the implications for model elements and uses thereby old ideas are reviewed and new ones are proposed the aim is not to come up with a rigid framework for dealing with sustainable development but rather to suggest which alternatives are available to deal with the central concepts although in a section on economic ecological integration general requirements for dynamic economic ecological models are mentioned explicitly in order to offer a general frame of reference these requirements are fairly general and may be taken up in ensuing discussions of the methodological aspects related to sustainable development the main conclusions are the following we view economic ecological integration in the sense of combining processes instead of one process and a variable to deal with intergenerational equity one may choose objectives various constraints or a combination of both for regional models one may consider various types of conditions on cross boundary flows and external factors of regional processes multiple use can be modelled as an intermediate stage between single resource models with a partial view and complex models with a general view sensitivity probability and scenario analyses can be used to deal partially with the various types of long term uncertainty although this remains difficult for the very important class of unexpected events or catastrophes such surprises can at best be turned into risk by scenario analyses and examination of dynamic behaviour of the system as a whole

economic instruments for emission abatement under appreciable technological indivisibilities the paper explores the performance of decentralized incentives when abatement involves technological indivisibilities technologically pollution abatement is often carried out as a discrete process if pollution reduction involves relatively large scale investments in emission abatement equipment consequently the firm s response to decentralized economic incentives for pollution abatement is affected by the indivisible property of the technology it can be shown that in such cases efficiency may not be realized installing an abatement device may entail too much or too little investment compared with the eficient solution

distortions interventions and productivity growth is east asia different but some of the successes have been spectacular the east asian economies as a group consistently outperformed other developing regions over the past 3 decades and policymakers everywhere are asking why in particular economies such as japan korea and taiwan progressed remarkably well under fairly interventionist policies and now china is registering the most rapid and sustained growth for any large country in the world with only gradual market reforms researchers have attributed east asia s performance to various factors some of them contradictory market orientation is responsible argue some government interventions argue others the crucial questions are were government policies for growth very different in east asia than in other regions and were the effects of government policies very different in east asia this article addresses these questions by distinguishing between government interventions and distortions and investigating their association with productivity growth in east asia as compared with other developing countries the study differs from other empirical investigations of growth in three aspects 1 it assesses the role of government in east asia where interventions are widespread and pervasive 2 it distinguishes interventions or government actions from distortions some of which are results of government actions and 3 it uses new composite measures of government policies as a sensitivity check of results derived from panel data analyses that use individual policies including our own earlier work 2 we focus on east asia because no other single geographical region of the world has a group of economies that outperformed others so consistently both in the 1960s 70s and in the 1980s 90s a few econo

trade and the environment from a southern perspective the relationship between free trade and the environment is one of the main issues of contention between environmental and ecological economics environmental economics assumes a positive relationship between free trade economic growth and environmental policies environmental externalities may cause important damage however trade is not to be blamed for this instead the fault lies with policy inadequacies at the national level on the other hand some ecological economists criticise the assumptions of environmental economics especially the immobility of production factors and the positive correlation between income and environmental quality they plead for measures to prevent deterioration of northern environmental standards in a race to the bottom due to ecological dumping from the south in this paper we argue that neither environmental economics nor northern ecological economics take into account the structural conditions determining the international trade system based on some new empirical evidence on material flows we stress the notion of environmental cost shifting if physical and political ecology perspectives are adopted a southern approach to the trade and environment issue may arise 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

are educated workers really more productive abstract this paper presents a new method for examining the productive nature of education it outlines an econometric model which simultaneously estimates an earnings function and a production function for workers and the firms where they are employed this approach permits a direct comparison to be made between the relative wage and relative productivity of workers with different levels of education using a unique data set from ghana two primary questions are addressed 1 are educated workers more productive than workers with no formal education and 2 do earnings differentials between workers with different levels of education reflect genuine productivity differentials the results suggest that education is positively correlated with productivity in ghanaian manufacturing and that firms pay workers according to their productivity

traders teachers and tyrants democracy globalization and public investment in education this article develops a model of the redistributive political economy of education spending focusing on the role of democracy and economic openness in determining the provision of education i argue that democratization should be associated with higher levels of public education spending lower private education spending and a shift from tertiary education spending toward primary education spending furthermore i argue that integration with the international economy should lead to higher public education spending conditioned on regime type and income and should push the balance between tertiary and primary education toward states particular comparative advantages these propositions are tested on a data set of more than one hundred states from 1960 to 2000 using a variety of panel data techniques including instruments for democracy the logic of the causal mechanism developed in the formal model is also tested on a number of case histories including the philippines which shows great variation in democracy and openness and india and malaysia which constitute unusual cases that lie off the diagonal of open democracies and autarkic autocracies the author would like to thank beth simmons torben iversen michael hiscox jeffry frieden jim alt teri caraway john freeman jane gingrich david samuels w phillips shively mark kayser john ahlquist and michael kellerman for highly useful comments and criticisms in addition i thank the current and past editors lou pauly emanuel adler david stasavage and lisa martin and three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions

voluntary compliance with market based environmental policy evidence from the u s acid rain program the u s acid rain program implemented a nationwide market for electric utilities sulfur dioxide so2 emissions and included voluntary compliance possibilities for nonaffected sources i observe significant voluntary participation albeit with small impact on the so2 market mostly from sources with counterfactual emissions below their allowance allocations an ex post analysis suggests that costs from the resulting higher emissions outweigh savings from shifts in emissions reductions from high cost affected sources to low cost nonaffected sources further utilities voluntary participation is well explained by economic variables which provides new evidence of cost effective compliance strategies and low transaction costs

environmental technological change and governance in sustainable development policy abstract an evolutionary economics perspective between technological innovation and public policy is applied to analyse the relationships between technological change sustainable development and industrial competitiveness this leads us to emphasise the fundamental role that firm s strategies vis a vis the endogenisation of technological change can play for giving effect to win win strategies however allowing industrial competition to become the only factor determining win win strategies could lead to locked technological and social options being chosen which do not contribute to overall goals of ecological social and economic sustainability for this reason we introduce as complements to competitiveness the requirement of new forms of governance in pursuit of ecological economic sustainability

comparing environmental markets with standards this paper argues that the traditional approach to comparing environmental markets and standards can be enhanced in two ways the first is by providing a more realistic assessment of the impact of various uncertainties on policy outcomes the second is by providing a more realistic assessment of the political constraints that limit the range of feasible policies the analysis examines how the introduction of these enhancements could affect instrument choice comparisons

the empirical properties of two classes of designs for transferable discharge permit markets abstract previous work by atkinson and lewis j environ econ manag 1 237 250 1974 and anderson et al an analysis of alternative policies for attaining and maintaining a short term no2 standard mathtech inc princeton n j 1979 has indicated the tremendous cost advantages to be achieved by moving from a policy based on emission standards to one based on marketable emission permits as tietenberg land econ 56 391 416 1980 points out however neither of the major permit designs treated in the literature are optimal from all points of view this has triggered a search for alternative permit designs which while they may not minimize compliance costs have sufficient other virtues as to make them attractive on other grounds the purpose of this paper is to examine within the context of an empirical mathematical programming model the air quality emission and cost consequences of two classes of the permit designs which can be implemented in the absence of information on control costs this case study involves particulate control in st louis

consumer s surplus and price uncertainty this paper investigates the conditions under which expected equivalent variation provides a correct ranking of stabilized and uncertain price situations expected equivalent variation can be recovered from ordinal preferences whereas ex ante equivalent variation requires additional information regarding con sumer attitudes toward income risk the two measures are equal for income risk neutral consumers more important for applied welfare analysis where income risk aversion is presumed expected equivalent variation provides a lower bound for ex ante equivalent variation these two features of expected equivalent variation commend it as a viable welfare measure for applied work copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

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

fishing quota markets abstract in 1986 new zealand responded to the open access problem by establishing the world s largest individual transferable quota itq system using a 15 year panel dataset from new zealand that covers 33 species and more than 150 markets for fishing quotas we assess trends in market activity price dispersion and the fundamentals determining quota prices we find that market activity is sufficiently high in the economically important markets and that price dispersion has decreased we also find evidence of economically rational behavior through the relationship between quota lease and sale prices and fishing output and input prices ecological variability and market interest rates controlling for these factors our results show a greater increase in quota prices for fish stocks that faced significant reductions consistent with increased profitability due to rationalization overall this suggests that these markets are operating reasonably well implying that itqs can be effective instruments for efficient fisheries management

virtual land use and agricultural trade estimating environmental and socio economic impacts abstract liberalization has caused an increase in the global trade of goods and services in particular the value and physical volume of agricultural goods traded have largely increased as the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex they are rarely included in the national and international agricultural policies one reason is that there is a lack of concepts and methods for assessing the environmental and social impacts of trade policies in this paper we develop a method for quantifying and assessing the land use hidden in the export and import of agricultural goods for the case of switzerland for our analysis we focus on arable crops the first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of switzerland with countries all over the world through the import and export of land use for arable crops the second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio economic impacts of agricultural land use we applied the method to the case of wheat cultivation within switzerland and import to switzerland the major problem we were confronted with was the availability of data which had both to be reliable and available for the countries wheat is imported from the results show that the calculation of land use is credible in spite of the problems related with data availability the assessment results for each indicator are in agreement with the current situation in the respective countries in addition the aggregation seems to accurately reflect the countries agricultural polices the developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio economic impacts of an increase in wheat imports to switzerland we argue that this method could be applied for anticipating potential impacts of trade agreements still further research is required for fine tuning of the utility functions including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure for practical applications important aspects like water shortage should enlarge our limited set of indicators in addition the average impact on a country level was assessed to refine that different agricultural systems ranging from intensive to extensive to organic should be considered beyond our scope was to analyze impacts due to other life cycle stages than the agricultural production for informed decision however information on the whole life cycle of agricultural products is required

the relevance of standard estimates of rates of return to schooling for education policy a critical assessment abstract this paper examines the accuracy and usefulness of estimated rates of return to schooling based on the standard human capital model of becker and mincer regarding accuracy it investigates whether failure to account for differences in ability and school quality lead to significant biases estimates using ghanaian data confirm this possibility even when accurate estimated rates of return to additional years of schooling may have limited policy implications more useful for governments are rates of return to investments in school quality the paper uses data on cognitive skills to estimate rates of return to three types of school quality improvements

trade and pollution linkages piecemeal reform and optimal intervention we demonstrate how coordinated trade and environmental policy can achieve ef ficiency and pollution mitigation gains superior to those obtained without such coordination we show how trade and environment linkages give rise to complex second best policy issues and derive optimal interventions and sufficient conditions for welfare improving piecemeal trade and environmental policy reforms in a small economy changing trade and environ ment distortions in proportion to their optimal levels increases welfare we decompose the economic and environment effects of policies targeted at trade and pollution in both con sumption and production we also decompose production responses into output adjustments and changes in pollution intensities

agricultural trade liberalization price changes and environmental effects many analyses of agricultural trade liberalization have been undertaken but few have considered the effects on the environment for the developed countries reducing the degree of protection would result in less intensive production therefore environmental stress would be reduced a reduction of trade barriers in industrial countries would result in higher world prices and in a somewhat lower world price variability assuming initially no policy changes for developing countries the question is how the liberalization would affect the environment higher prices in developing countries increase the level of production by intensifying production particularly in the commercial sector and by an area expansion both result in negative environmental effects these could be partly offset by an increase in hired labor in the commercial sector which might reduce pressure at the frontier and on marginal lands as well as by the income effect these off setting effects may be small however the direction of the overall environmental effects cannot be determined unambiguously without empirical examination at the global level the beneficial economic effects of agricultural trade liberalization probably outweigh the expected negative environmental effects in developing countries but this cannot be unambiguously established without valuation

comparing environmental policy instruments in the presence of imperfect compliance a case study in this paper we aim to include rule making implementation monitoring and enforcement costs into the cost comparison of policy instruments we use a simple partial equilibrium model and apply it to the textile industry the model includes discrete abatement functions and costly monitoring and enforcement the case study uses individual firm data to simulate the differences in abatement costs and compliance decisions between firms we compare combinations of regulatory instruments emission taxes emission standards and technology standards and enforcement instruments criminal fines civil fines and transaction offers we show that the inclusion of information monitoring and enforcement costs indeed alters the relative cost efficiency of the different instruments

regulation of externalities in an open economy abstract this paper considers the ranking of second best policies for an open economy that regulate externalities arising from the production of an exportable pesticides and other chemicals used in us agriculture are good examples uncertainty originates from three sources random shifts in production cost and external costs and the random fluctuations in the world price of a traded good world prices become unreliable indicators of comparative advantages in the presence of external costs nonintervention of free trade can encourage excessive production and exports of commodities with spurious comparative advantages the paper analyses the properties of the optimal state contingent tax or first best tax which is difficult to implement these properties are then used to rank second best policies that are determined before uncertainties are resolved it is shown that ex ante taxes and quotas are equivalent when the marginal external cost is subject to random shifts when the world price is uncertain the optimal ex ante effluent charge dominates the optimal quantity standard when the marginal production cost of the exportable is subject to random shifts the ranking of second best policies is generally ambiguous

trade liberalization economic specialization and the environment abstract a great deal has been written and a great deal of debate has raged on the effects of international trade and trade liberalization on the environment given that it is only recently that the general agreement on tariffs and trade has begun to address the interdependence of the international economy and the international environment in a systematic way it is likely that the debate will continue for quite some time it will be argued that the economic case for there being benign environmental consequences associated with trade liberalization is flawed in important ways this is due to statistical empirical and conceptual issues which affect the estimation of such effects moreover it will be argued that despite the intensity of the debate the effects of international trade on the environment have in fact only been addressed in an incidental manner rather the debate has concentrated on factors that may coexist with trade but not on the role of trade itself this has served to obscure the more fundamental environmental effects of trade liberalization through the homogenization and specialization of ecosystems

economic incentives and natural resource management among small scale farmers addressing the missing link small scale farmers face numerous challenges to invest in natural resource management practices the problems are interlinked with such perverse economic problems as high transaction costs and risk rooted in the lack of comprehensive institutional and organizational services to farmers for risk reduction and incentive creation failure to address such a missing link undermines success in natural resource management this paper ponders the importance of such a missing link and proposes analytic framework that explicitly integrates the economics of natural resource management into institutional and organizational analysis the framework features the instrumentality of integrated institutional and organizational innovation to create opportunities and incentives to small scale farmers to encourage investment in natural resource management practices

equity and policy effectiveness with imperfect targeting abstract we propose a general approach that jointly integrates horizontal and vertical equity criteria in the assessment of poverty alleviation programs with the strength of each criterion being captured through its own inequity aversion parameter this contrasts with the assessment of poverty alleviation programs done with simple under coverage and leakage ratios or with other methods that do not take into account the heterogeneity of the poor and that do not address directly the social benefits of achieving normative criteria our methodology is illustrated using tunisian data and two alternative poverty alleviation policies we find inter alia that the social ranking of commodity and socio demographic targeting in tunisia depends on the policymaker s comparative preference for vertical and horizontal equity

tradeable permits for pollution control when emission location matters what have we learned our knowledge about tradeable permit approaches to pollution control has grown rapidly in the two decades in which they have received serious analytical attention not only have the theoretical models become more focused and the empirical work more detailed but we have now had over a decade of experience with them in the u s this article draws upon economic theory empirical studies and actual experience with implementation to summarize what we have learned about applying tradeable permits to air pollution control in the special circumstance where the spatial aspects of the problem are a prime consideration

the interface between environmental and trade policies last march i gave the frank paish lecture to the society under the title economic life in a greenhouse in my lecture i tried both to survey professional opinion as to some of the possible climatic implications of the greenhouse effect and also to draw out the economic consequences which might follow towards the end of my talk i made reference to some preliminary joint work with randy wigle 2 a colleague at wilfrid laurier university in canada on the global consequences of carbon tax schemes designed to limit and or reduce the build up of co2 emissions a key element underlying the greenhouse effect the written version of the lecture consciously does not reproduce the survey material which made up the first part of the lecture instead it elaborates on the issues raised towards the end it incorporates the work by randy wigle and myself and offers some thoughts on what seems to be a growing issue for the iggos namely the consequences for the international trading system of interactions between trade issues and both future global and current national environmental policies what follows emphasises that if they occur in the next few decades global policy responses3 carbon taxes tradeable permit schemes to environmental concerns will almost certainly have large economic effects among these are likely to be significant effects on trade patterns and trade volumes large interregional effects will also accompany such policies depending upon how such policies are implemented also the i99os may see a growing use of trade measures to achieve objectives set for environmental policies environmental policies towards such countries as brazil the philippines and others where deforestation is a concern may increasingly take the form of threatened trade sanctions unless compliance with global environmental policy objectives occurs 4

toward enhancement of the contribution of theory to environmental policy theory can be helpful to policy makers by pointing out surprising relationships unlikely to be recognized by unaided common sense by noting significant exeptions to principles widely accepted and by offering generalizations of its own the paper argues that theorists may not have done enough of the first two and may have overstressed the last giving insufficient warnings of pitfalls examples of each of the three are provided the first is illustrated by a theorem which shows that any new energy source such as gasohol which is supplied only because of a subsidy prospectively uses up more energy than it creates the important exception application is illustrated by showing that subsidies which reward reduced emissions by the firm tend to increase pollution by the industry finally the paper discusses inadvertent bias in the empirical evidence reasserting the superior performance of fiscal incentives for reduced environmental damage as compared to direct controls thus casting doubt on the allegedly universal superiority of incentives