a bibliometric analysis of research on carbon tax from 1989 to 2014 abstract as one of the most cost effective means of emission reduction carbon tax has attracted considerable attention from economists and international organizations and has led to a large number of related research using the bibliometric method this paper characterizes the carbon tax literature from 1989 to 2014 based on the network database platform of web of science the results indicate that the usa occupies a leading position in the carbon tax field the vrije university amsterdam massachusetts institute of technology and stanford university were the most productive research institutes energy policy 143 has been the most productive journal followed by energy economics 44 and energy 38 in general the cooperation of authors institutes and nations are continuing to strengthen however the growth rate at the author level was significantly higher than the others in addition the current key research areas in the carbon tax field based on co keyword analysis are as follows climate change and relevant policy carbon emissions trading socio economic effects of carbon tax renewable energy endogenous technological change and carbon capture and storage the results of this paper will help researchers grasp the current research in the carbon tax field but also provide a supporting role for future work

personal carbon allowances a revised model to alleviate distributional issues abstract personal carbon allowances pcas are a policy proposal designed to facilitate carbon emissions reduction and engender carbon consciousness they were investigated by the uk government in 2006 2008 but subsequently shelved with continuing growth of atmospheric co2 concentrations and increasing interest in behaviour change agendas pcas are worthy of fresh development wide variation in energy usage between households of similar incomes implies that under the standard model of pcas significant numbers of low income high emitters would have to purchase top up allowances if pcas penalise some of the worst off in society it creates a major political obstacle to their introduction solving this distributional problem by allocating additional allowances to certain groups or offering compensatory state benefits has been investigated and appears costly and only partially effective this paper proposes a new mean max pca model whereby higher usage is necessary before purchase of top up allowances is required potentially highly effective but consequently the volumes and values of surplus and top up allowances become significantly different this difference renders free market carbon allowance trading unworkable potentially eliminating a hallmark but publicly unpopular pca feature the new model potentially offers the first solution to the distributional problem since it was highlighted in 2008

does health plan generosity enhance hospital market power we test whether the generosity of employer sponsored health insurance facilitates the exercise of market power by hospitals we construct indices of health plan generosity and the price and volume of hospital services using data from truven marketscan for 601 counties from 2001 to 2007 we use variation in the industry and union status of covered workers within a county over time to identify the causal effects of generosity although ols estimates fail to reject the hypothesis that generosity facilitates the exercise of hospital market power iv estimates show a statistically significant and economically important positive effect of plan generosity on hospital prices in uncompetitive markets but not in competitive markets our results suggest that most of the aggregate effect of hospital market structure on prices found in previous work may be coming from areas with generous plans

adjusting input output models for capacity utilization in service industries abstract the input output i o models assume the stability of economic ratios and regional multipliers over the evaluation period for manufacturing sectors constant multipliers within a short term period may present a reasonable picture of the real world production function tourism industry however is composed of a variety of services in which total output and factor inputs are strongly influenced by capacity utilization cu a conceptual model is proposed in this paper which purports that shifts in cu for perishable services will lead to economies of scale in inputs price changes in the final output capacity constraint on domestic supply and substitution between input factors especially between capital and labor these factors simultaneously modify i o ratios and multipliers traditional i o analysis which assumes constant economic ratios and multipliers will therefore lead to biases in tourism impact estimates especially to value added components as it does not reflect the changing costs of operation in response to shifting supply and demand

collective bargaining firm size and pensions in canada abstract the following paper analyzes the provision of job related pensions in canada the empirical results indicate that both unions and firm size have significant effects on the distribution of pensions the significance of unions on the provision of pensions does decline as firm size increases

tax distortions and global climate policy abstract we consider the efficiency implications of policies to reduce global carbon emissions in a world with pre existing tax distortions we first note that the weak double dividend the proposition that the welfare improvement from a tax reform where environmental taxes are used to lower distorting taxes must be greater than the welfare improvement from a reform where the environmental taxes are returned in a lump sum fashion need not hold in a world with multiple distortions we then present a large scale computable general equilibrium model of the world economy with distortionary taxation we use this model to evaluate a number of policies to reduce carbon emissions we find that the weak double dividend is not obtained in a number of european countries results also demonstrate the point that the interplay between carbon policies and pre existing taxes can differ markedly across countries thus one must be cautious in extrapolating the results from a country specific analysis to other countries

sources of intra industry wage dispersion how much do employers matter observed human capital explains less than half of wage variation in bls industry wage surveys establishment based wage differentials controlling for occupation account for 20 70 percent of intra industry wage variation this corresponds to a standard deviation in wages of 14 percent of the mean almost as large as interindustry wage variation investigation suggests that establishment wage differentials are not random variations or returns to usual measures of human capital

union nonunion compensation differentials and industry structure abstract this paper examines the impacts of industry output and labor input market structures on workers total compensation in u s manufacturing for empirical analysis cps may 1983 data were matched with 1982 census of manufacturing results indicate that employees in highly concentrated product markets proxied by four firm concentration ratio crr earn more independent of their union membership second union members in the smaller plant sizes have the most to gain and the union advantage disappears for medium to large plants third and perhaps most important the joint effects of unionism and crr on earnings depend on the size of the manufacturing plant in conclusion the paper finds support for dowrick s 1989 conjecture that profits enhancing product market conditions generally tend to increase earnings

the effect of labor unions on investment in training a dynamic model control over the amount of training required of new entrants is a potentially important tool available to many craft unions this is often exercised through licensing based on schooling and apprenticeship requirements and on passing special examinations the standards are to a large extent determined and monitored by the incumbent practitioners thus physicians are required to train in various forms of schooling internship and residence for up to eight years architects need five years of schooling and three years of apprenticeship accountants require four years of college and one year of apprenticeship less widely known are the schooling and apprenticeship requirements of barbers plumbers and mine foremen which require up to five or six years of investment finally most craft unions require apprenticeship periods of two to four years see kolberg 1976

the value of multipliers and their policy implications abstract this paper examines the nature of tourism multipliers their origins and evolution their misuse their strengths weaknesses and limitations and finally their value for policymaking and planning

from the fringe to the fore labor unions and employee compensation conventional wisdom suggests that labor unions raise worker wages while the newer empirical literature finds only negligible earnings effects i reconcile this apparent contradiction by arguing th

personal carbon trading a critical survey part 2 efficiency and effectiveness abstract equity efficiency and effectiveness are three key criteria use to assess environmental policy instruments part 1 of this survey shows that in terms of equity tradable energy quotas teqs a widely discussed personal carbon trading pct scheme cannot be differentiated from cap and dividend c d or cap and share c s hence part 2 explores whether they can be differentiated in terms of efficiency and or effectiveness the paper reviews two studies that compare the efficiency of teqs and c d whilst their estimates of the costs and abatement potential of teqs differ neither study considers that there is a case on efficiency grounds for its implementation the paper goes on to sketch two arguments for the implementation of pct that might nevertheless be made on efficiency grounds and one relating to public acceptability that might be made on effectiveness grounds exploring the various public surveys conducted on the acceptability of pct the paper concludes that support for pct is not obviously greater than for alternative instruments and notes a methodological limitation in the work reviewed the paper concludes that to date the case against implementation of pct is stronger than the case for

green taxes in a post paris world are millions of nays inevitable turning the paris agreement s greenhouse gas emissions pledges into domestic policies is the next challenge for governments we address the question of the acceptability of cost effective climate policy in a real voting setting first we analyze voting behavior in a large ballot on energy taxes rejected in switzerland in 2015 by more than 2 million people energy taxes were aimed at completely replacing the current value added tax we examine the determinants of voting and find that distributional and competitiveness concerns reduced the acceptability of energy taxes along with the perception of ineffectiveness most people would have preferred tax revenues to be allocated for environmental purposes second at the same time of the ballot we tested the acceptability of alternative designs of a carbon tax with a choice experiment survey on a representative sample of the swiss population survey respondents are informed about environmental distributional and competitiveness effects of each carbon tax design these impacts are estimated with a computable general equilibrium model this original setting generates a series of novel results providing information on the expected environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes reduces the demand for environmental earmarking making distributional effects salient generates an important demand for progressive designs e g social cushioning or recycling via lump sum transfers the case of lump sum recycling is particularly striking it is sufficient to show its desirable distributional properties to make it one of the most preferred designs which corresponds to a completely novel result in the literature we show that providing detailed information on the functioning of environmental taxes may contribute to close both the gap between acceptability ex ante and ex post and the gap between economists prescriptions and the preferences of the general public

an equilibrium model of consumer energy choice using a personal carbon trading scheme based on allowance price abstract changes in consumer behavior due to a personal carbon trading pct scheme are theoretically attractive yet untested in practice in this paper simulations on the basis of an equilibrium model are used to examine the effects of carbon allowance prices on energy use choice under a particular pct scheme it is shown that the equilibrium price of allowances would emerge under the pct scheme considered here further analyses indicate that the quantity of energy consumption under pct is a nonlinear function of the allowance price with a sharp kink at the point of equilibrium when the allowance price is below the equilibrium price consumers would prefer higher carbon energy in contrast when the allowance price is above the equilibrium price consumers would choose lower carbon energy however when the allowance price equals the equilibrium value consumers would purchase lower carbon energy and higher carbon energy simultaneously furthermore it is shown that the initial allowance allocation could also affect energy use choice on the basis of these results one of the main implications is that the allowance price should exceed the breakeven price to stimulate consumers to switch to green energy and progressively live a low carbon lifestyle

differential multipliers for the accomodation sector abstract this study examines differential income and employment multipliers according to types of industrial organization because of differences in production processes and purchasing patterns it is hypothesized that the size of the multipliers varies inversely with size scale degree of affiliation and degree of outside ownership differential multipliers for the accomodation sector were calculated by adapting the regional tourism models developed by archer to an 11 sector input output model of metropolitan victoria bc the findings support the hypotheses of the study since significant variations and correlations were found for the multipliers and other selected variables by organization types

estimating the probability of trade union membership a study of men and women in britain the paper examines the determinants of the individual decision to unionize for british employees and uses micro data from the 1975 national training survey the unionization probability is estimated separately for manual and non manual men and full time and part time women an interesting finding is that personal characteristics of both men and women generally do not affect the unionization probability this result run counter to the common perception that family responsibilities explain low female trade union density

the relevance of attitudinal factors for the acceptance of energy policy measures a micro econometric analysis abstract this paper empirically examines the individual support of the german energy transition in total and especially of six single energy policy measures which are components of the energy transition our micro econometric analysis with binary and ordered probit models on the basis of data from a broad survey of citizens reveals the important role of several attitudinal factors with respect to our indicators for perceived personal costs of the energy transition the estimation results point to a weak evidence for economic self interest due to some negative correlations between expected energy price increases due to the energy transition and the support of single energy policy measures interestingly however the concern that the energy transition alone causes strong energy price increases is not shared by the majority of the respondents the estimation results also suggest that the support of several energy policy measures is strongly correlated with environmental values however the most important attitudinal factor is obviously political identification the econometric analysis suggests that an overall left green policy identification is positively correlated with the support of the energy transition in total and an identification with ecological policy is positively correlated with the acceptance of several single energy policy measures the econometric analysis especially supports the more sophisticated categorization of political orientation since for example a liberal conservative policy orientation is not significantly correlated with the support of the energy transition in total

can personal gasoline permit trading be effective an investigation into permit demand this study proposes a personal gasoline permit trading scheme to limit the total gasoline consumption thus reducing its environmental impact we studied the effectiveness of this scheme by analyzing the permit demand of a gasoline driven vehicle in transportation sector a general utility optimization model is formulated and a cobb douglas utility function is further assumed to analyze the response of permit demand to its price changes with the slutsky decomposition of price effects the results when defined in economic terms indicate that the permit demand of consumers in higher income groups are negatively related to permit price permit demand are also negatively related to permit price for consumers in medium income groups but with positive income effect and the direct relationship between permit demand of lower income groups and the price is defined as a giffen good effect that is for those low income groups when the permit price rises their demand for permits would also increase then us and singapore household expenditure data are used to show comparable results of a pilot personal gasoline permit trading scheme further some regulations on critical parameters such as permit allocation and permit prices in the policy design are proposed to make the scheme feasible in different income groups based on these results implications limitation and suggestions for future study are discussed

capacity utilization measures underlying economic theory and an alternative approach measures of industrial capacity utilization hereafter cu have been used extensively in helping to explain changes in the rate of investment labor productivity and inflation the cu measures have also been used to obtain indices of capital in use as distinct from capital stock in place a number of alternative measures of cu are periodically calculated and published the 1980 economic report of the president for example contains three series that by the federal reserve board the u s department of commerce bureau of economic analysis and the wharton school of finance other publicly available series are those prepared by mcgraw hill publishing company the u s department of commerce bureau of the census and rinfret boston associates inc although a host of cu measures is publicly available it is not at all clear how one should interpret changes over time in each measure or variations among them a principal reason underlying these interpretation problems is that the crucial link between underlying economic theory and the constructed measure of cu is weak one way in which this issue has manifested itself in the policy domain over the last five years has been with respect to the uncertain effects of dramatic increases in energy prices on capacity output and on cu each of the cu measures noted above is computed in such a way that explicitly ignores any role for energy prices yet several times during the last decade though growth to apparently high rates of cu had taken place investment and average labor productivity were much lower than expected and the rate of price increase much greater in brief during the last decade the explanatory power of alternative cu measures has dropped sharply some have conjectured that post opec energy price increases may have brought about major changes in the u s economy so that old quantitative relationships between measured cu and investment labor productivity and price inflation may have been altered substantially in order to assess effects of changes in pe on cu a re examination of the notion and measurement of cu is needed based on the framework of the economic theory of the firm that is the focus of this paper

carbon tax simulations using a household demand model abstract the main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy to achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non durable consumer demand in sweden that utilises micro and macro data in the simulations we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the co2 tax one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower vat and one that subsidise public transport one conclusion from the simulations is that the co2 tax has regional distribution effects in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden

tourism in mauritius an economic impact study with marketing implications abstract tourism impact analysis is traditionally used to measure the volume of income employment public sector revenue and imports generated in a holiday area by tourist spending and to calculate the differential impacts made by visitors from various origins this article on mauritius shows how such analysis can provide useful marketing information to help maximize the economic impact of tourism in a small island economy

employers provision of pensions and sick pay evidence from the 1990 workplace indistrial relations survey this paper examines the determinants of pension and sick pay provision using data on some 1100 private sector establishments with 25 or more employees it also compares the wages of employees eligible for a pension or for sick pay with the wages of those for whom no such provision was made using ordered probit techniques three levels of provision were examined with respect to each type of benefit no provision provision for white collar employees only and provision for all employees benefit provision was found to be associated with work place size and with the extent to which employment was white collar it was negatively associated with the level of part time working new establishments were slightly less likely to offer pensions than older ones but age had no impact on sick pay provision perhaps because it is less complex and costly than pension provision establishments which recognized trade unions were more likely to offer fringe benefits than those which did not however blue collar unions se

union nonunion wage differentials in the public administration educational and private sectors 1970 1983 over the past thirty years union membership and bargaining activity in the united states has been declining in the private sector and rising in the public sector the authors use two large micro databases to estimate changes in the union wage premium among public administration education and private sector workers for the decade of the 1970s and early 1980s their empirical analysis indicates that the union relative wage effects continue to be lower in the public sector than in the private sector despite the relative gains in public sector union membership and bargaining activities copyright 1987 by mit press

estimation of multipliers for the activity of hotels and restaurants abstract the purpose of this paper is to model and estimate the multipliers for hotels and restaurants the most characteristic of the industries that make up the tourism business this multiplier can be used for estimating the economic impact of tourism demand likewise a tool for planners and policy makers is provided the data source is the set of input output tables gathered by the oecd which in its last edition has collected a sufficiently representative number of countries with an equally suitable disaggregation level two models are elaborated for the estimation of the rasmussen backwards multiplier and of the imports multiplier respectively some explanatory variables previously used in the literature are confirmed while others are proposed as alternative ones

job satisfaction trade unions and exit voice revisited many studies have found that unionized workers express less job satisfaction than nonunion workers the exit voice explanation of this phenomenon is that dissatisfied nonunion workers tend to qui

the measurement of tourist income multipliers abstract there have been many area studies measuring tourism income multipliers and these have been well covered in a number of review articles however the treatment of income is not always made explicit and the term is only loosely defined this article addresses the issue of personal taxation and social insurance contributions and shows that the stage at which they are deducted as leakages can have very different effects on the resulting multiplier values

the structural determinants of union bargaining power this paper investigates the structural determinants of variation in union power across manufacturing industries using a pooled sample of unionized establishments from the expenditure on employee compensation surveys of 1968 72 the author estimates wage equations augmented with measures of product market structure bargaining structure and the size distribution of unions the results suggest that union wage gains are greatest where discretionary pricing power enhances employers ability to pay and where unions achieve high coverage practice centralized bargaining and avoid union fragmentation on the other hand centralized bargaining provides no advantage in competitive industries

unions pension wealth and age compensation profiles this paper examines the effect of unions on both the magnitude and distribution of pension benefits an analysis of experience during 1973 79 under a sample of defined benefit plans shows that beneficiaries retire at an earlier age under collectively bargained plans than under other plans receive larger benefits when they retire and receive larger increases in their benefits after they retire also benefit differentials within and across cohorts of retirees are smaller among union than nonunion beneficiaries the average union nonunion differential is therefore greater in total compensation wages plus pension benefits than in wages alone because pension benefits grow more rapidly with years of service in the nonunion sector however the total compensation differential narrows with age more quickly than the wage differential

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

union effects on nonunion wages evidence from panel data on industries and cities the authors test for threat and crowding effects of unions on non union wages at the industry and city levels using panel data on the percent organized and nonunion industry and city wage differentials constructed from current population surveys over the period 1973 89 at the industry level increases in the percent organized were associated with decreases in the nonunion industry wage differential suggesting that crowding effects were the predominant union effect on nonunion industry wage differentials in contrast at the city level increases in the percent organized were associated with increases in the nonunion city wage differential suggesting that threat effects predominated the authors also find evidence of negative cross occupation union effects on nonunion industry wage differentials supporting their hypothesis that the industry level results were partly driven by complementarity between union and nonunion labor

partitioning seasonal employment in the hospitality industry abstract adjustment of labor to variation in demand is known to be a major tool in hotel productivity management the pace and timing of hotel labor adjustment depends presumably on the characteristics of the hotel internal labor force as well as prevailing conditions in the external labor markets the actual adjustment process depends however on past experience of hotel operators and on their expectations with respect to future occupancy rates this paper analyzes longitudinal employment adjustment trends in eight tourist centers in israel five variables are employed in order to account for monthly variation in hotel employment these are measures of foreign and domestic demand rates of bed occupancy and indices of the expected monthly fluctuation and long term trend most results confirm the hypothesized relationships with r2 ranging from 0 47 to 0 95 only the effect of the occupancy rate was found to be inversely related to the level of monthly hotel employment the results suggest that while hotel operators are accustomed to hiring and firing employees according to the rhythm of regular seasonal fluctuations they are less prepared unwilling or unable to fully synchronize labor to demand major differences appear to exist among the eight local tourist centers in the way hotel operators adjust internal employment to their respective external labor markets

government employment and the provision of fringe benefits this study uses individual level data from the united states to examine the influence of government employment on the provision of five major fringe benefits four of the five benefits are more likely to be provided to government workers than to their private sector counterparts unlike wage comparisons which typically find substantial overpayment only for federal workers the findings suggest that past wage differentials underestimate the true compensation advantage enjoyed by government workers

unions and workers welfare in chinese firms based on a survey of 1 268 firms in 12 cities this article empirically studies unions effects on worker welfare in china regressions carried out on a rich set of specifications show that unionization is significantly associated with higher hourly wages and larger pension coverage and weakly associated with lower monthly working hours further econometric analysis finds that unions promote individual and collective contracts the effect of collective contracts vanishes when unions are present whereas individual contracts have independent and positive effects in addition unions have effects on workers welfare independent of collective and individual contracts

the effect of teachers unions on education production evidence from union election certifications in three midwestern states using a unique data set on teachers union election certifications from iowa indiana and minnesota i estimate the effect of teachers unions on school district resources and on student educational attainment my empirical strategy allows for nonparametric leads and lags of union age i find no impact on teacher pay or per student district expenditures but that unions increase teacher employment by 5 i find no class size effect because of enrollment increases in unionized districts and i estimate that unions have no net effect on high school dropout rates these findings highlight the importance of correctly measuring unionization status

estimates from a consumer demand system implications for the incidence of environmental taxes abstract most studies suggest that environmental taxes are regressive making them less attractive policy options we consider the distributional effects of a gasoline tax increase using four incidence measures and under three scenarios for gas tax revenue use to incorporate behavioral responses we use consumer expenditure survey data to estimate a consumer demand system that includes gasoline other goods and leisure our estimates confirm that when revenues are not recycled a gasoline tax is regressive use of incidence measures that ignore demand responses however will substantially overstate this regressivity in contrast the differences between the equivalent variation and easier to implement consumer surplus measures are relatively small in addition our results suggest that using the additional gas tax revenue to fund labor tax cuts makes the policy substantially less regressive while using the revenue to fund lump sum transfers actually makes it progressive

does britain or the united states have the right gasoline tax this paper develops an analytical framework to assess the second best optimal level of gasoline taxation taking into account unpriced pollution congestion and accident externalities as well as interactions with the broader fiscal system we provide calculations of the optimal taxes for the us and the uk under a variety of parameter scenarios under our central parameter values the second best optimal gasoline tax is 1 01 gal for the us and 1 34 gal for the uk current tax rates are much lower than this in the us and higher in the uk the calculations are moderately sensitive to alternative parameter assumptions the congestion externality is the largest component in both nations revenue raising needs also play a significant role as do accident externalities and local air pollution potential welfare gains from reducing the current uk tax rate are estimated at nearly one fourth the production cost of all gasoline used in the uk even larger gains could be achieved by switching to a tax on vehicle miles with equal revenue yield for the us the welfare gains from optimizing the gasoline tax are smaller but those from switching to an optimal tax on vehicle miles are very large

overtime pay overtime hours and labor unions this article analyzes the effect of labor unions on overtime compensation and overtime hours estimates from may 1985 current population survey data indicate that unionization increases the prevalence of premium pay for overtime and reduces the incidence and extent of overtime hours along with the finding of previous research that unionized workers are more susceptible to temporary layoffs these results are consistent with a model in which unions use overtime pay to stabilize working hours and expand membership

the impact of the minimum wage if workers can adjust effort abstract in traditional models a binding minimum wage creates a excess supply of low skilled workers for minimum wage jobs employment falls and some jobs are reallocated from high to low rent workers this disequilibrium cannot persist competition to secure the property rights to now scarce jobs undoes most of the effects of the minimum wage workers who attach the highest value to the jobs are willing to work harder to keep them marginal workers are squeezed out of the market as high rent workers ratchet up effort level this process erodes the rent conferred by the minimum wage but also increases the value of marginal product which reduces the size of the employment effect the minimum wage confers more money income on low skilled workers and creates some distortion in the optimum combination of wage rate and effort level under plausible conditions the minimum wage has little effect on rent employment output and profits

beyond energy efficiency and individual behaviours policy insights from social practice theories abstract this conceptual paper deals ultimately with the intricate relationships existing between quantity and quality in the field of energy conservation policies it discusses how current policy approaches to energy conservation have energy efficiency and individuals behavioural change as principle target it then argues that their limited impacts derive largely from how they are principally informed by quantitative estimates of reductions in energy inputs and neglect how qualitative changes generated in the energy outputs can either offset these reductions e g more energy efficient motors can enable the production of larger cars consuming more energy or cause higher savings e g smaller cars can consume less energy even with less efficient motors the paper also explains these limited impacts in terms of overly simplistic cause effect relationships assumed to exist between given exogenous factors e g provision of information price signals etc and individuals behaviours it then shows how radically alternative policies for energy conservation can target qualitative changes and re organisations in energy outputs in doing so it takes social practice theories as theoretical background finally it discusses the potentially very high impacts and the alternative character of policies informed by these theories and shows how and where they indicate to intervene

case study on initial allocation of shanghai carbon emission trading based on shapley value abstract carbon emission trading is an effective measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide china has publicized plans to initiate the demonstration of carbon emission trading in seven regions as of 2013 initial allocation is fundamental but it proposes difficulty in the mechanism design of the carbon emission trading system benchmark grandfathering and the shapley value have been employed to simulate a specific case which consists of the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances of three power plants in shanghai china the results of the shapley value are regarded as a theoretical equitable reference the results of benchmark are similar to those of the shapley value however it is apparent that the allocation regarding grandfathering is inequitable considering other factors we proposed the following at the introduction of experimental stage free allocation pertaining to grandfathering can be adopted meanwhile benchmark should be prepared and adopted at the appropriate time furthermore a portion of the initial allowances can be reserved for auction and this portion for auction will escalate to the extent of 100 upon entering the formal stage in addition the tiered price mechanism and the subsidy policy are also suggested

combining price and quantity controls to mitigate global climate change abstract uncertainty about compliance costs causes otherwise equivalent price and quantity controls to behave differently and leads to divergent welfare consequences although most of the debate on global climate change policy has focused on quantity controls due to their political appeal this paper argues that price controls are more efficient simulations based on a stochastic computable general equilibrium model indicate that the expected welfare gain from the optimal price policy is five times higher than the expected gain from the optimal quantity policy an alternative hybrid policy combines both the political appeal of quantity controls with the efficiency of prices using an initial distribution of tradeable permits to set a quantitative target but allowing additional permits to be purchased at a fixed trigger price even sub optimal hybrid policies offer dramatic efficiency improvements over otherwise standard quantity controls for example a 50 trigger price per ton of carbon converts the 3 trillion expected loss associated with a simple 1990 emission target to a 150 billion gain these results suggest that a hybrid policy is an attractive alternative to either a pure price or quantity system

union effects on health insurance provision and coverage in the united states during the past two decades union density has declined in the united states and employer provision of health benefits has changed substantially in extent and form using individual survey data spanning the years 1983 97 combined with employer survey data for 1993 the authors update and extend previous analyses of private sector union effects on employer provided health benefits they find that the union effect on health insurance coverage rates has fallen somewhat but remains large due to an increase over time in the union effect on employee take up of offered insurance and that declining unionization explains 20 35 of the decline in employee health coverage the increasing union take up effect is linked to union effects on employees direct costs for health insurance and the availability of retiree coverage

what occupational safety tells us about political power in union firms this article tests hypotheses on the distribution ofpower within unionized firms by measuring which workers preferences determine the level offirm supplied occupational safety an egalitarian model in which all workers have equal impact can be easily rejected as can a medianworker model the dominant groups appear to be the most senior workers with more than ten years of seniority and recently hired workers with three or fewer years of seniority this suggests that unions pursue the objectives of the most senior workers while management tries to set a safety level that is attractive to the more mobile workers

history and social responses to environmental tax reform in the united kingdom abstract this paper gives a short history of fuel taxation and the climate change levy in the uk the research described was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them interviews were conducted with selected policy makers and companies focus groups were conducted with quota samples of the general public the research shows that the problem that etr faces in terms of public acceptance is not so much outright hostility to environmental taxation as conceptual problems with the design similar conceptual problems were also found in the interviews with business people these can be summarised as lack of trust about use of the revenues difficulty in understanding the purpose of a tax shift and a desire for incentives for good behaviour as well as perceived penalties for bad behaviour

public acceptability of personal carbon trading and carbon tax abstract climate change is one of the greatest challenges confronting the international community requiring action to achieve deep cuts in carbon emissions the implementation of potentially uncomfortable but necessary policy measures is though critically dependent upon public acceptability this paper reports a novel application of stated preference techniques to explore the influence of key design attributes on the acceptability of a personal carbon trading scheme in isolation and when compared to a carbon tax illustrative forecasts from the models developed indicate the importance of design attributes especially the basis of the initial permit allocation for personal carbon trading and the use to which revenues are put for carbon tax results indicate that the best scheme designs could be acceptable to a majority of respondents

tiered gasoline pricing a personal carbon trading perspective abstract this paper proffers a tiered gasoline pricing method from a personal carbon trading perspective an optimization model of personal carbon trading is proposed and then an equilibrium carbon price is derived according to the market clearing condition based on the derived equilibrium carbon price this paper proposes a calculation method of tiered gasoline pricing then sensitivity analyses and consumers surplus analyses are conducted it can be shown that a rise in gasoline price or a more generous allowance allocation would incur a decrease in the equilibrium carbon price making the first tiered price higher but the second tiered price lower it is further verified that the proposed tiered pricing method is progressive because it would relieve the pressure of the low income groups who consume less gasoline while imposing a greater burden on the high income groups who consume more gasoline based on these results implications limitations and suggestions for future studies are provided

the effect of unionism on fringe benefits this study analyzes the impact of unionism on fringes paid to production workers using data on individual establishments it compares fringe expenditures in establishments having the same level of compensation per hour and finds that unionism raises the share of compensation allotted to fringes particularly to pensions vacation pay and life accident and health insurance in addition since unionism also raises the straight time wage rate itself a prime determinant of expenditures on fringes unionism has a very sizeable impact on total fringe expenditures as well as on the fringe share of compensation the union fringe effect exceeds in percentage terms the union wage effect and is sufficiently large to suggest that standard union wage studies understate the union effect on total compensation the study also compares the fringe expenditures of production and non production workers within the same establishment controlling for within establishment pay policies the findings suggest that the pres

a rural myth sources and implications of the perceived unfairness of carbon taxes in rural communities abstract since british columbia s carbon tax was implemented in 2008 local interest groups and municipal politicians have claimed that the tax places an unfair burden on rural communities we investigate the sources of this perception of unfairness and its implications for policymaking we examine the distributive effects of british columbia s carbon tax using a computable general equilibrium model of the canadian economy we find that the rural population would indeed have experienced a disproportionate burden had the carbon tax been introduced without redistributive measures but that the revenue recycling program introduced in parallel with the tax was sufficient to balance the inequity hence the northern and rural homeowner benefit program a transfer program introduced later in response to public protests was unnecessary additionally analysis of polling data shows that the new program failed to increase support for the carbon tax in rural communities despite making these households better off on average than households in large urban centers we therefore conclude that this ongoing opposition is based on a rural myth policymakers should carefully investigate distributive impacts of carbon policies and address evidential inequities yet before overcompensating groups that still feel disadvantaged policymakers should address the myth of unfairness at its source

a future for carbon taxes abstract carbon taxes have been frequently advocated as a cost effective instrument for reducing emissions however in the practice of environmental policies only six countries have implemented taxes based on the carbon content of the energy products in this paper we evaluate carbon taxes with regard to their competitiveness distributional and environmental impacts the evidence shows that carbon taxes may be an interesting policy option and that their main negative impacts may be compensated through the design of the tax and the use of the generated fiscal revenues

prices versus quantities with incomplete enforcement abstract i study whether incomplete enforcement of a regulation has any impact on the choice between price e g taxes and quantity e g tradeable quotas instruments results indicate that a second best design accounting for incomplete enforcement can be implemented equally well with either instrument as long as the benefit and cost curves are known with certainty if these curves are uncertain to the regulator however the quantity instrument performs relatively better than the price instrument the reason is that the effective amount of control under the quantity instrument is no longer fixed which makes this instrument come closer to a non linear instrument

emission taxes and tradable permits a comparison of views on long run efficiency we compare three different views on the long runefficiencies of emission taxes which includethresholds inframarginalexemptions and of tradeable emission permitswhere some permits areinitially free the differences are caused bydifferent assumptions aboutwhether thresholds and free permits should besubsidies given only to firmsthat produce or full property rights treatingtax thresholds as well asfree permits as property rights would departfrom the conventional view but would allow greater flexibility in makingeconomic instruments bothefficient and acceptable such flexibilitycould be very important inachieving efficient control of greenhouse gasemissions

union nonunion compensation differentials across plant sizes evidence from cps 1983 previous empirical work on the relationship between plant size and union nonunion differentials has focused either on wages podgursky 1986 or benefits bramley wunnava and robinson 1989 freeman 1981 this note extends this research by simultaneously focusing on both wages and benefits there are several arguments that can be made in explaining union nonunion differentials across plant sizes 1 union threat effects 2 efficiency wage effects and 3 wage dispersion effects our study focuses on measuring the union nonunion differential in total compensation for this end estimates of total compensation are obtained using mellow s suggestion 1982 for combining hourly wage information with qualitative data on pensions and health insurance and ross s imputations 1989 for holidays and vacations benefits our results based on the may 1983 cps supplemented by bls data on pensions health insurance holidays and vacation benefits indicate significant union nonunion total compensation differentials exist only for workers in establishments with less than 500 workers these results are consistent with podgursky s wage differential findings

explanatory meta analysis for the comparison and transfer of regional tourist income multipliers baaijens s r nijkamp p and van montfort k 1998 explanatory meta analysis for the comparison and transfer of regional tourist income multipliers reg studies 32 839 849 this paper aims to demonstrate the potential of quantitative research synthesis in particular meta analysis as a methodology for comparative research with a particular view on tourist impact analysis the attention is focused on regional tourist multipliers which measure the effects of tourist expenditure on the economy of a given area on the basis of a varied sample of studies on tourist multipliers differences among tourist income multipliers are ex post examined the preliminaries of this investigation are discussed in order to elucidate some important issues meta analysis may be confronted with in addition the results of the comparative analysis of previous studies are transferred to the greek island of lesvos this area was estimated to have an average tourist income multiplier falling in between 0 55 and 0 67 baaije

policy v individual heterogeneity in the benefits of climate change mitigation evidence from a stated preference survey abstract we use stated preference methods to investigate the public s preferences for decarbonization policies we ask three research questions first does the willingness to pay wtp for each ton of co2 emissions reductions depend on the policies and on individual characteristics of the respondents second how extensive is the variation associated with these factors third what factors affect support for or opposition to a carbon tax based on the responses to discrete choice experiments from a sample of italians we find that the wtp per ton of co2 ranges between zero and 230 the variation associated with the policy instrument is approximately of the same order of magnitude as that associated with individual characteristics of the respondents

pollution tax heuristics an empirical study of willingness to pay higher gasoline taxes economists widely agree that in concept pollution taxes are the most cost effective means of reducing pollution with the advent of monitoring and enforcement technologies the case for pollution taxation is generally getting stronger on the merits despite widespread agreement among economists however pollution taxes remain unpopular especially in north america some oppose pollution taxes because of a suspicion that government would misspend the tax proceeds while others oppose pollution taxes because they would impose economic hardships upon certain individuals groups or industries and there is no pollution tax more pathologically hated as the gasoline tax this is unfortunate from an economic perspective as a gasoline tax is easy to implement and is a reasonable pigouvian tax scaling proportionately with the harms of consumption surprisingly there is a dearth of theory explaining this cleave between economists and virtually everybody else drawing on behavioralist literatures this paper introduces several theories as to why people and governments so vehemently oppose pollution taxes using the example of gasoline taxes we provide some empirical evidence for these theories we also show that revenue recycling the use of tax proceeds to reduce other taxes is an effective means of reducing opposition to gasoline taxes

public preferences for carbon tax attributes the impacts of climate change are already visible throughout the world recognizing the threats posed by climate change the durban platform the 17th session of the conference of parties cop 17 underscores that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation and ambitious action by all countries a crucial starting point for the design of effective and publicly acceptable policies is to explore public preferences for climate policy instruments using a choice experiment this study investigates public preferences for carbon tax attributes in a developing country context the results account for heterogeneity in preferences and show that turkish people prefer a carbon tax with a progressive cost distribution rather than one with a regressive cost distribution the private cost has a negative effect on the probability of choosing the tax earmarking carbon tax revenues increases the public acceptability of the tax moreover there is a preference for a carbon tax that promotes public awareness of climate change

a meta analysis of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a sur approach abstract automobile gasoline demand can be expressed as a multiplicative function of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership this implies a linear relationship between the price elasticity of total fuel demand and the price elasticities of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership in this meta analytical study we aim to investigate and explain the variation in empirical estimates of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a methodological novelty is that we use the linear relationship between the elasticities to develop a meta analytical estimation approach based on a seemingly unrelated regression sur model with cross equation restrictions this approach enables us to combine observations of different elasticities and thus increase our sample size furthermore it allows for a more detailed interpretation of our meta regression results the empirical results of the study demonstrate that the sur approach leads to more precise results i e lower standard errors than a standard meta analytical approach we find that with mean short run and long run price elasticities of 0 34 and 0 84 respectively the demand for gasoline is not very price sensitive both in the short and the long run the impact of a change in the gasoline price on demand is mainly driven by responses in fuel efficiency and mileage per car and to a slightly lesser degree by changes in car ownership furthermore we find that study characteristics relating to the geographic area studied the year of the study the type of data used the time horizon and the functional specification of the demand equation have a significant impact on the estimated value of the price elasticity of gasoline demand

cheaper oil a turning point in paris climate talk abstract the 2015 paris climate conference is designed to achieve a legally binding agreement on climate change for the first time in over 20 years however the participants face a much tougher task in striking a new deal after the disappointing preparatory climate change talks in lima however falling oil prices have created more room to maneuver for the forthcoming global climate talks than previously thought average global oil prices have plunged from usd 110 per barrel in june 2014 to approximately usd 60 per barrel in may 2015 with the sharply falling oil prices and the downward pressure on gas and coal prices both the removal of fossil fuel subsidies ffs and the implementation of a carbon tax could be conducted without raising energy costs a growing body of research suggests that removing ffs and implementing a carbon tax could significantly reduce carbon emissions thus the approximately 50 drop in oil prices has provided a window of opportunity to reduce carbon emissions by removing ffs and internalizing climatic externalities worldwide as this window will not last forever both these measures should be implemented quickly and be considered central to the paris climate change conference compared with the lack of success in the previous two decades of climate diplomacy these two measures constitute technical and economic factors that will make a difference in the 2015 un climate change conference

nominal and real union wage differentials and the effects of industry and smsa density 1973 83 many studies have examined the influence of union density union members as a percentage of all workers on earnings in the private sector but few such studies have looked at the public sector using data from the 1991 current population survey this

the implications of job matching for retirement health insurance and leave benefits this paper focuses on potential reasons for variations in benefit packages in particular variations in the availability of retirement health insurance and leave an important feature of our analysis is that we do not start with heterogeneity in workforces to explain fringe benefit differences across employers it would be straightforward to say that differences across employers in fringe benefit packages simply represent differences in the preferences of their workforces rather we focus on heterogeneity across employers as an important source of differences in fringe benefit packages preliminary evidence is found supportive of the predicted differences in the likelihood of such fringe benefits as retirement health insurance and leave based upon two variables the extent of on the job training offered by the employer and the size of the employers we also examine the implied links between these fringe benefits and such variables as average tenture and the proportion of the workforce that is female

impact of cap and trade policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on u s households abstract proposals being considered by the u s congress would establish a cap and trade system to cut greenhouse gas ghg emissions approximately 2 annually through 2050 past cap and trade policies for other pollutants have distributed allowances free to the regulated companies leaving consumers uncompensated for passed through costs needed to achieve the required reductions social equity concerns were not a major issue because the total costs were relatively small however americans currently spend about 1 trillion year on energy directly and indirectly via the goods and services they consume if a cap on carbon emissions results in significant increases in energy prices social equity concerns could quickly dominate the debate over climate policy this paper confirms earlier studies that a traditional cap and trade policy is regressive and would cause the cost of reducing ghg emissions to fall disproportionately on low income households this paper explores ways to ameliorate those effects using highly disaggregated data available on consumer expenditures and energy input output analyses of the u s economy emissions are estimated based on direct and embodied energy use at the household level social equity concerns are taken into account and the consequences of cap and trade policies are assessed by quantifying the extent to which the expenditure patterns of the poor are significantly more energy intensive than those of the rich

the effects of union membership on wages and employee benefits the case of australia in australia pay awards by government tribunals cover nearly the entire work force and those awards set equal pay for comparable union and nonunion workers union members may however secure higher compensation through plant level bargaining this study uses 1984 88 panel data to estimate the magnitude of union effects on compensation by examining changes in the compensation of employees who enter and leave union jobs relative to changes in the compensation of workers who remain union or nonunion the results show that union workers in australia enjoy 7 18 higher wages than comparable nonunion workers and are also more likely to have access to a pension plan

markets for tradeable emission and ambient permits a dynamic approach this paper discusses trade mechanisms in pollutionpermit markets proofs are given that sequential bilateral trade in tradeable emissions permitsconverges to a market equilibrium with minimal totalcosts of pollution control if ambient or depositionpermits are traded the convergence of bilateraltransactions occurs only in the case of a singlereceptor for multiple receptors the proof ofconvergence for tradeable emissions and ambientpermits is given for two trade mechanisms sequential multilateral trade and a walrasian auction

taxes fringe benefits and faculty the growth of employee benefits in academe has closely paralleled their economy wide growth this study estimates a complete system describing the demand for benefits and wages using panel data on 1477 institutions of higher learning the demand for benefits is very responsive to changes in real income and the tax price of benefits these conclusions are robust with respect to varying definitions of the tax price treating it as endogenous and accounting for unmeasured individual effects on demand simulations suggest that the tax reform act of 1986 sharply reduced the demand for benefits extrapolating the impact to the entire economy the annual flow of compensation shifted away from benefits by at least 15 billion copyright 1992 by mit press

do workers accept lower wages in exchange for health benefits compensating wage theory predicts that workers receiving more generous fringe benefits are paid a lower wage than comparable workers who prefer fewer fringe benefits this study tests this prediction for employer provided health insurance by modeling the wages of married women employed full time in the labor market husband s union status husband s firm size and husband s health coverage through his job are used as instruments for his wife s own employer health insurance benefits the estimates suggest wives with own employer health insurance accept a wage about 20 lower than what they would have received working in a job without benefits

an empirical model of employed search unemployed search and nonsearch the 1969 1971 national longitudinal surveys data on young men were used to study the employed worker s choice among employed search unemployed search and not searching for a new job we assume that an unobserved variable search intensity governs this choice such that unemployed search involves a greater intensity than employed search which of course is associated with greater intensity than nonsearch the principal results are that current wages seniority collective bargaining coverage employment outside construction and employment by government are each ceteris paribus negatively associated with search intensity further each of these variables lowers the probability of not searching and raises the probabilities of employed and unemployed job search

valuations of aircraft noise experiments in stated preference the aim of this paper is to report new evidence relating to residents valuations of aircraft noise in three countries with an emphasis on a comparison of the valuations obtained using two contrasting approaches one might be regarded as a standard stated choice approach offering pairwise comparisons of two alternatives characterised by a limited number of attributes the other choice format adopted is innovative in drawing inspiration from the priority evaluator approach to embed aircraft movements alongside a wide range of other local factors that impact on residents quality of life the paper addresses the differences in the results of the two approaches and explores the possible explanations for these variations although not conclusive there is a suspicion that strategic bias may have influenced the results and we urge further research regarding incentives to such bias

company s affordability of increased energy costs due to climate policies a survey by sector in china this paper estimates the affordability of chinese companies on energy cost increases due to the introduction of market based climate policies the data were collected from 170 respondents mainly from iron and steel cement and chemical industries using a multiple bounded discrete choice mbdc format estimations indicate that a mean of 8 8 in energy cost increase would be acceptable for all the samples the chemical companies express a slightly higher affordability with the mean of acceptable ratios of energy cost increases being 9 9 while the cement companies show slightly lower affordability with a mean of 7 7 econometric analysis confirms that the market competition degree has a significant but negative relationship with the affordability while the company s size is significantly and positively associated with the affordability calculations indicate that the mean of affordable energy cost increases roughly equals a carbon price of 83 7 cny t co2 about 12 usd t co2 for chemical companies and around 40 cny t co2 about 6 usd t co2 for iron and steel and cement sectors this result provides a meaningful referendum for the development of carbon tax and the establishment of a domestic carbon emissions trading scheme in china especially from the perspective of surveyed industries

planning carbon emission trading for beijing s electric power systems under dual uncertainties in this study a full infinite interval stochastic mixed integer programming fimp method is developed for planning carbon emission trading cet under dual uncertainties fimp has advantages in uncertainty reflection and policy analysis particularly when the input parameters are provided as crisp and functional intervals as well as probabilistic distributions the developed fimp is applied to a real case study for managing carbon dioxide co2 emissions with trading scheme of beijing s electric power system eps electric power industry is one of the major sources of co2 emission in china it is essential to accumulate relevant experience to provide a reliable basis for establishing a regional or national cet market so as to prepare for docking with the international market this is the first attempt to introduce cet scheme into beijing s eps to mitigate co2 emissions the solutions for energy supply electricity generation carbon quota allocation and capacity expansion are obtained they cannot only be used for formulating co2 reduction policies and assessing the associated economic implications in purchasing emission permits or bearing economic penalties but also facilitate analyzing various policies when pre regulated electricity generation plans and pre defined co2 emission schemes are violated

substitution between wage and nonwage benefits you gotta be kidding ollie you re just robbing yourself schuylkill mutual offers a terrific deal on keogh and we could plug you in in fact we advise plugging you in on the corporate end so not a nickel comes out of your personal pocket it comes out of the corporate pocket and there s that much less for uncle to tax these poor saps carrying their own premiums with no company input are living in the dark ages there s nothing shady about rigging it this way we re just using the laws the government has put there they want people to take advantage it all works to up the gross national product you know what i mean by keogh don t you you re looking kind of blank john updike p 296

do unions contract for added employment the efficient contract model predicts unions will contract for added employment that is a level of employment higher than would be predicted by the demand curve for labor using three data sets on canadian industries in 1971 81 u s industries in 1972 and u s construction projects in 1973 74 and several estimation techniques the author estimates and compares labor demand equations for both union and nonunion firms some regressions that control for few variables support the added employment hypothesis but those with more complete specifications reject it