inequality resource depletion and welfare accounting applications to indonesia and costa rica abstract ahluwalia and chenery noted that the standard measures of gdp growth imply distributional weights that place greater weight on the income of richer income groups and proposed distribution neutral and pro poor alternatives more recently pilot studies by the world resources institute wri have questioned the sustainability of gdp growth and have introduced natural resource modifications to national income accounting to date no studies have undertaken both revisions concurrently creating a revised measure based on gdp but corrected for both distributional bias and resource depletion such a measure is derived in this paper and its impact illustrated with data from indonesia and costa rica the countries studied by the wri

the optimal allocation of prizes in tournaments of heterogeneous agents tournaments are widely used in organizations explicitly or implicitly to reward the best performing employees for example by promotion or bonuses and or to penalize the worst performing employees for example by demotion withholding bonuses or unfavorable job assignments these incentive schemes can be interpreted as various prize allocations based on the employees relative performance while the optimal prize allocation in tournaments of symmetric agents is relatively well understood little is known about the impact of the allocation of prizes on the effectiveness of tournament incentive schemes for heterogeneous agents we show that while multiple prize allocation rules are equivalent when agents are symmetric in their ability the equivalence is broken in the presence of heterogeneity under a wide range of conditions loser prize tournaments that is tournaments that award a low prize to relatively few bottom performers are optimal for the firm the reason is that low ability agents are discouraged less in such tournaments as compared to winner prize tournaments awarding a high prize to few top performers and hence can be compensated less to meet their participation constraints jel m52 j33 j24

the middle class collapse and the environment abstract the thesis that unequal societies are harmful to the planet was defended by boyce 1994 in a framework based on the unequal bargaining power between rich and poor our study reinvestigates this theory by removing any reference to power in order to study the conditions under which it can still occur we show that a middle class collapse can aggravate or alleviate the burden on the planet depending on income disparities and weight of upward vs downward mobility moreover the paper shows how an appropriate environmental policy can increase the political acceptability of a social one designed for mitigating the deleterious effects of a middle class collapse through the reduction of ex post income disparities

income distribution and environmental quality in china a spatial econometric perspective abstract paying heed to a surge of concern about the serious and continuous environmental degradation that is currently being witnessed in china in this paper we investigate whether income distribution contributes to environmental deterioration environmental degradation can be linked not only to income growth we argue but also to increases in income inequality the study calculated the gini coefficient of 31 province using a data set of 403 city level data in mainland china and estimated the linkage between income distribution and environmental deterioration utilizing balanced data for 31 chinese provinces during the period 1996 2015 first the degree of environmental pollution was calculated by constructing a comprehensive index system which was formulated using the entropy method based on six environmental indicators then a spatial panel regression model was also employed in order to estimate whether income inequality is likely to be a relevant factor in environmental deterioration in china the estimation results showed that using the index and spatial analysis techniques significant spatial positive agglomeration were found existing between chinese provinces in terms of their levels of environmental degradation the influencing factors estimation results substantiated the existence of an invert u shaped relation lending support to the environmental kuznets curve theory more importantly the study found that income inequality played a significant role in preventing environmental degradation suggesting that an appropriate level of income inequality over a delimited period is beneficial to improving environmental quality it should however also be emphasized that optimizing the country s income distribution is remains an important long term task for the chinese government other factors were found to exert different types and magnitudes of impacts on environmental pollution results showed that many factors for instance energy intensity the share of secondary industry population density and foreign direct investment contribute to environmental deterioration conversely our findings also indicate that rising urbanization levels can have a positive effect on environmental quality in addition no clear evidence was found to suggest that local government expenditure is related to environmental degradation

does income inequality harm the environment empirical evidence from the united states abstract this study revisits the growth inequality environment nexus in the context of country specific time series data the short and long run effects of income inequality economic growth and energy consumption on co2 emissions in the u s are examined using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach we find that more equitable distribution of income in the u s results in better environmental quality in the short and long run it is also found that in both the short and long run economic growth has a beneficial effect on environmental quality whereas energy consumption has a detrimental effect on the environment

el salvador s agricultural sector macroeconomic policy agrarian change and the environment abstract this paper argues that current agricultural policy in el salvador is failing to further the goals of macroeconomic growth and stability sustainable livelihood security and environmental sustainability macroeconomic policy has turned relative prices sharply against agriculture the plight of the rural poor has been exacerbated by continuing inequities in the agrarian structure the breakdown in rural livelihoods and limited access to land and other assets is accelerating environmental degradation suggested alternative policies such as more favorable price policies agrarian reform and environmental restoration would promote sustainable development by capitalizing on the complementarity among growth poverty reduction and consolidation of peace

conspicuous consumption and sophisticated thinking consumers purchase conspicuous goods to satisfy not only material needs but also social needs such as prestige in an attempt to meet these social needs producers of conspicuous goods like cars perfumes and watches highlight the exclusivity of their products in this paper we propose a monopoly model of conspicuous consumption using the rational expectations framework and then examine how purchase decisions are affected by the desire for exclusivity and conformity we show that snobs can have an upward sloping demand curve but only in the presence of consumers who are weakly followers laboratory tests lend support for this model prediction and for the rational expectations framework the experimental results suggest that subjects used some degree of sophisticated thinking to arrive at their first period decisions their behavior in the subsequent trials however can be adequately captured by a purely adaptive learning mechanism we discuss the implications of consumer learning for optimal dynamic pricing policy by a monopolist

inequality and the environmental kuznets curve abstract is income inequality harmful to the environment the answer to this question has not reached a consensus in the literature this study seeks to provide insight into this question by examining the influence of income inequality on the environmental kuznets curve ekc i e the impact of income inequality on the ekc turning point two potential mechanisms through which inequality may affect the ekc turning point by reducing public demand for environmental protection and by increasing a power of capital owners to prevent such protection using a large sample n 170 174 of countries we find evidence of the ekc for so2 emissions and income inequality has a significant impact on the ekc turning point income inequality increases the ekc turning point suggesting that high inequality can be damaging to the environment the results are robust to potential outliers different data sources of income inequality a different so2 emissions measure changes in model specification different samples and an alternative estimation method we also find that inequality appears to be more important than corruption in determining the ekc turning point

income inequality and co2 emissions in the g7 1870 2014 evidence from non parametric modelling abstract we examine whether income inequality effected carbon emissions in what are now the world s wealthiest countries over the period 1870 2014 employing a non parametric panel estimation method with cross sectional and time varying coefficients we find that the relationship between income inequality and co2 emissions is highly non linear in terms of signs and significance the nonparametric coefficient function for income inequality is found to vary over the period 1870 2014 income inequality exhibits a significant positive effect from 1870 to 1880 and a significant negative impact from 1950 to 2000 on co2 emissions we also find that for extended periods between 1881 and 1949 and between 2000 and 2014 there is no significant relationship between the two variables

emotional bidders an analytical and experimental examination of consumers behavior in a priceline like reverse auction e commerce has proved to be fertile ground for new business models which may be patented for up to 20 years and have potentially far reaching impact on the e commerce landscape one such electronic market is the reverse auction model popularized by priceline com there is still uncertainty surrounding the survival of such new electronic markets currently available on the internet understanding user behavior is necessary for better assessment of these sites survival this paper adds to economic analysis a formal representation of the emotions evoked by the auction process specifically the excitement of winning if a bid is accepted and the frustration of losing if it is not we generate and empirically test a number of insights related to 1 the impact of expected excitement at winning and frustration at losing on bids across consumers and biddings scenarios and 2 the dynamic nature of the bidding behavior that is how winning and losing in previous bids influence their future bidding behavior

designing optimal sales contests a theoretical perspective sales contests are commonly used by firms as a short term motivational device to increase salespeople s efforts conceptually sales contests and piece rate schemes such as salary commission or quotas differ in that in sales contests payment to salespeople is based on relative rather than absolute sales levels using the agency theoretic framework where the firm is risk neutral and the salespeople are risk averse we examine how a firm should design an optimal contest to maximize its profit through stimulating salespeople s efforts specifically we investigate how many salespeople should be given awards and how the reward should be allocated between the winners three commonly used sales contest formats are studied in the first format termed as rank order tournament there are many winners and the amount of reward is based on relative rank achieved with larger amounts awarded to higher ranks we also examine two special cases of rank ordered tournament a multiple winners format where the reward is shared equally and a winner take all format where a single winner gets the entire reward we model salespeople s behavior by considering utility of the reward from achieving one of the winning ranks in the contest and assessing incremental chances of winning by exerting more effort the analysis was done for two situations based on whether the total reward is large enough for salespeople to participate in the effort maximizing sales contest or not the analysis shows that factors impacting contest design include the salespeople s degree of risk aversion number of salespeople competing in the contest and degree of sales uncertainty which reflects strength of the sales effort relationship the results show that salespeople exert lower effort when there are larger numbers of participants or when sales uncertainty is high we find that the rank order tournament is superior to the multiple winners contest format in a multiple winners format the salesperson whose performance is just sufficient to win is better off than any of the other winners as he exerts the least effort to win but obtains as high a reward as any other winners specific recommendations on contest designs are obtained assuming that sales follow either a logistic or uniform distribution assuming that sales outcome is logistically distributed and the contest budget is high enough to ensure participation our analysis shows that the total number of winners in a sales contest should not exceed half the number of the contestants this result is due to the symmetric nature of the logistic distribution our analysis also indicates that the total number of winners should be increased and the spread decreased when salespeople are more risk averse when salespeople are more risk averse their marginal values for higher rewards become smaller the spread should increase with ranks when rate of risk tolerance is high and decrease with ranks when the rate of risk tolerance is lower in the extreme case of risk neutral salespeople the optimal design is a winner take all format we also conclude that since the probability of winning the contest decreases with number of contestants the optimal number of winners should increase and interrank spread decrease when there are a larger number of participants if the firm does not allocate a large enough budget for salespeople to participate in the effort maximizing sales contest then the firm may increase the number of winners to more than half the sales force increasing the number of winners and decreasing the spread are required to encourage the salespeople to participate particularly when there are many participants who are risk averse a counterintuitive result is that the number of winners should be reduced and the spread increased when sales uncertainty is high increasing sales uncertainty leads to lower equilibrium effort levels while keeping the expected utility of the contest rewards the same therefore increased uncertainty results in higher participation incentive the firm should thus relatively reduce the number of winners in high uncertainty situations under the assumption of uniformly distributed sales the recommendation is that a winner take all contest induces maximum efforts regardless of the level of risk aversion number of players or the degree of uncertainty when the winner take all format does not meet the participation constraint our analysis recommends offering a big reward to the top salesperson and a small reward to many other sales people the small reward should be just sufficient to ensure that all salespeople participate consistent with logistic distribution the spread should decrease when salespeople are more risk averse or there are more players but should increase when sales uncertainty is larger these results highlight that some of the conclusions drawn may be sensitive to distributional assumptions

do individual preferences explain the environmental kuznets curve abstract some economists maintain the optimistic view that individual preferences of rich people eventually lead to a virtuous circle relationship between rising income and environmental degradation in this article i review some of the models that establish a relationship between individual preferences and environmental quality these models provide a basis for discussion of the key role played by two factors individual preferences and technology they do not however capture the distributive conflicts that occur between different social groups in the process of defining environmental policy neither do they provide a good basis for distinguishing between environmental costs caused by the decisions of particular consumers and those which affect the same consumers this point is related to the various manners in which environmental costs are displaced displacement often occurs within a country for current costs and is even clearer and more relevant when costs are transferred across a great distance or to a remote future in such cases there are few incentives to reduce consumption or alter its composition displacement moreover can become a strategy pursued more or less consciously for maintaining high and rising levels of consumption without dealing with the associated environmental costs

multiperson tournaments an experimental examination modern hierarchical organizations like corporations must motivate agents to work hard given their pyramid structure it is not surprising that one commonly used motivator is the promotion tournament in such tournaments agents compete to advance to positions at higher organizational levels though these tournaments are common little research has empirically looked at the interface of organizational structure and tournament design this paper aims to take a step in filling this void by comparing the performance of various tournament designs using controlled laboratory techniques

is the troika bad for the environment an analysis of eu countries environmental performance in times of economic downturn and austerity memoranda abstract in this paper we examine the effect of the current economic crisis on the environmental performance of the eu countries by employing hierarchical linear multilevel hlm modeling we find that for the period 2000 2015 a drop in the national gdp a recession effect as well as endorsing a memorandum of understanding mou for receiving a imf eu ecb financial rescue package a troika effect have non significant to positive impacts on a number of national environmental quality and policy indicators over and above other economic political and governance predictors for eurozone and non eurozone countries alike nevertheless this changes drastically if we examine these two factors interaction experiencing a recession while being a recipient of a troika sponsored rescue package has detrimental effects on an eu country s national environment

developing country interests in agricultural trade reform this paper examines whether developing countries as a group would be better off in the absence of agricultural protection in the industrial north and if so whether they should support reforms negotiated between the major players in the uruguay round results from the tyers anderson gls model of world food markets suggest that the net effect of industrial country agricultural protection is beneficial to developing countries though by only a small margin even if its removal were to stimulate accelerated technical change in developing countries the same is found to be true of partial reforms which are more palatable politically such as quotas to reduce oversupply in the ec of course many developing countries including those which are members of the cairns group are badly hurt by protection in the north unfortunately however they and the other members of that group stand to gain comparatively little from the reduction of oversupply in the ec through quotas

political and economic inequality and the environment abstract this paper analyzes and tests the hypothesis that political and economic equality result in lower levels of environmental degradation based on formal statements of the argument put forward by boyce r 1994 ecological economics 11 169 178 i show that equality may or may not be necessary to minimize degradation under some plausible conditions greater inequality may even be conducive to lower degradation actual results depend primarily on the intersection between the distribution of preferences across groups and the institutional rules two cross national empirical tests tend to support the contention that distributional issues do not systematically explain variations in environmental quality the results reinforce the conclusion that assumptions about the structure of preferences and workings of social choice institutions ignore complex interactions which influence the relationship between degradation and equality

testing the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis across the u s evidence from panel mean group estimators abstract it is widely believed that greenhouse gases contribute to a warmer climate since global warming is a serious threat and greenhouse gas emissions are one of the main causes of it analyzing the effects of economic development on environment have great importance in this study the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for the 50 u s states during the 1960 2010 period using recent panel data estimators that take cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity into account accordingly the cross sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity robust estimators augmented mean group amg and common correlated effects mean group estimator ccemg provide mixed results the amg estimator strongly validates the ekc hypothesis asserting that the ekc holds in 30 of the 50 states with turning points for income per capita lie between 1292 and 48597 on the contrary the ccemg estimator provides only weak evidence on the ekc hypothesis and the ekc holds only in 10 states with turning points between 2457 and 14603

endogenous price policies and international wheat prices vanzetti and kennedy s herein vk comment on our earlier paper sarris and freebairn gives us the opportunity first to clarify the differences in the models to present a generalization of the analysis that includes their results as well as ours as special cases and then to point out some salient features of our model that seem to have been unnoticed by them consider our model of a homogenous commodity produced consumed and traded by n countries which are characterized by the following linear demand and supply curves notation follows vk except that we maintain the additive random variables and hence keep the time subscript

alliances in the shadow of conflict victorious alliances often fight about the spoils of war this article presents an experiment on the determinants of whether alliances break up and fight internally after having defeated a joint enemy first if peaceful sharing yields an asymmetric rent distribution this increases the likelihood of fighting in turn anticipation of the higher likelihood of internal fight reduces the alliance s ability to succeed against the outside enemy second the option to make nonbinding nonaggression declarations between alliance members does not make peaceful settlement within the alliance more likely third higher differences in the alliance players contributions to alliance effort lead to more internal conflict and more intense fighting

incentives versus reciprocity insights from a field experiment abstractthe authors conduct a field experiment in which they vary the sales force compensation scheme at an asian enterprise that sells consumer durable goods with variation generated by the experimental treatments the authors model sales force performance to identify the effectiveness of various forms of conditional and unconditional compensation they account for salesperson heterogeneity using a hierarchical bayesian framework to estimate the model they find conditional compensation in the form of quota bonus incentives to improve performance however such compensation may lead to lower future performance the authors find little difference in effectiveness between a quota bonus plan and punitive bonus plans framed as a penalty for not achieving quota they find that unconditional compensation in the form of reciprocity is effective at improving sales force performance only when it is given as a delayed reward however the effectiveness of this plan decreases with repeated exposure the authors

nature roads or hospitals an empirical evaluation of sustainable development preferences while a key proposition is that a sustainable path is one where wealth does not decline whether losses in natural capital can be compensated in wellbeing terms by more produced social or natural capital remains an area of controversy in this paper we seek to better understand preferences for different combinations of assets that comprise part of the asset portfolio of a nation in a study of coastal and marine natural assets we test for the existence of weak or strong sustainability preferences using different compensation options respectively produced capital and natural capital offered to a sample of the public in spain in the case of possible future oil spills as a further element of this test we provide an empirical reflection on aldred 2002 2006 and turner 2007 who speculate that individuals may not view money as compensating for certain environmental losses whereas investments in social assets may offer a more acceptable compensation option our results do appear to circumscribe in some way the acceptability of investing in produced capital and reveal a tendency towards a preference for social capital compensation nevertheless the size of the oil spill and the environmental beliefs of respondents also influence choices over the natural capital compensation option

is income inequality a driver for renewable energy consumption abstract although many initiatives have been made to research the effect of income inequality on environmental issues the question of whether income inequality affects renewable energy consumption hasn t been answered this gap in the literature raises an important question that needs to be answered by researchers can the income inequality affect renewable energy consumption as far as is known the study is the first attempt to discover this relationship therefore the impact of income inequality on renewable energy consumption is examined theoretically and empirically in 43 developed and developing countries for 2000 2015 in order to avoid the omitted variable problem economic environmental and institutional variables such as gdp per capita corruption co2 emissions and trade openness are included in the model the results demonstrate that the decline in income inequality will enhance renewable energy consumption in other words policymakers have the opportunity to reduce income inequality and environmental degradation at the same time similarly corruption control and raise co2 emissions will increase also renewable energy consumption otherwise economic determinants such as economic growth and trade openness have no meaningful effect on renewable energy consumption

the role of natural capital in sustaining livelihoods in remote mountainous regions the case of upper svaneti republic of georgia in the greater caucasus of the republic of georgia proponents of a new ski tourism zone and long term timber concessions claim that new wage opportunities will benefit households these developments will also limit access to common pool resources cprs this study uses the sustainable livelihoods framework to identify the conditions under which a development strategy will improve livelihood outcomes in the region analysis of original household survey data in depth interviews and field observation reveals that households depend on cprs for a range of market and non market benefits low income households depend on cprs for up to 60 of their total income ols regression estimates show that households in villages farthest from market centers have a higher income dependence on cprs and are more likely to participate in forest use activities a majority of households report that there are few available substitutes to improve livelihood outcomes a development strategy should secure access to market benefits from cprs or wage income must increase in proportion to lost cpr income and affordable substitutes must be provided access to non substitutable components of cprs must be secured and the distribution of changes in access to natural capital and new wage opportunities must be accounted for

economic contests comparative reward schemes contests are situations in which an individual s reward depends on his performance relative to others students are graded on a curve the candidate with the most votes gets the political office the underling who performs best is promoted to the executive position contests are useful in dealing with indivisible rewards reducing monitoring costs and minimizing risks from common uncertainties they are employed to sort potential participants and once they have entered to induce appropriate effort from them with monitoring precision and prize spreads as potential choice variables optimal contest structures are derived for fair and unfair contests among equal and unequal participants the converse problems of climbing low ability individuals enter the contest designed for high ability candidates and slumming are shown to be manageable

the environment and the ethics of discounting an empirical analysis abstract this paper examines the application of discount rates by individuals and by governments when they make decisions about environmental resource use the paper is presented in the context of ethics as determined by what is good and also by what is right for society since in this instance there appears to be no conflict between the two perspectives in addition the paper assesses whether ethical considerations are included in decision making frameworks at the individual and community levels consistency of discount rate applications between individuals and governments is also investigated since consistency is an element of ethical arguments empirical data from a study of soil conservation adoption by philippines upland farmers are used in the analysis individual discount rates are assessed in relation to income and poverty interest rates paid on debt purpose of borrowings land tenure income inequality and soil conservation adoption some of the results appear to be counter intuitive and reasons for this phenomenon are sought the overall results have policy implications and suggestions are made about how an ethical perspective might be developed by governments to help ensure that decision making criteria are more consistent with the practices of individuals within the communities they serve it is suggested that this approach would lead to greater intergenerational and intragenerational equity and better environmental quality

the political drivers of renewable energies policies this paper empirically analyzes how political factors affect the deployment of renewable energy re sources and compares their explanatory power to that of other economic energy and environmental drivers that have received greater attention in the literature so far the sample encompasses the eu countries bound to attain the target of 20 share of gross final energy consumption by 2020 the panel data analysis shows that lobbying by the manufacturing industry negatively affects re deployment whereas standard measures of government quality show a positive effect furthermore left wing parties promote the deployment of re more than right wing parties

the environment left wing political orientation and ecological economics the objectives of this commentary are twofold the first is to examine the relationship between a party s position within the left right political spectrum and its stance on environmental issues as stated in party manifestos the second is to examine the relationship between individuals ideological orientation and pro environmental beliefs attitudes and self reported behavior equality distributional concerns and market skepticism are typically regarded as defining factors of left wing political orientation our results suggest that left wing parties and individuals are also more pro environmental than their right wing counterparts ecological economics similarly embraces sustainability efficient resource allocation and equitable distribution and is skeptical towards the ability of unregulated markets to achieve these objectives the hypothesis is put forward that ecological economics is more likely to be supported by left wing parties and individuals

an inquiry into power and participatory natural resource management decentralised environmental governance based on community participation is increasingly replacing top down natural resource management there is increasing awareness however that such mechanisms might fail to ensure effective participation by all stakeholders and be prone to producing and or perpetuating power inequalities against this backdrop we claim that power should be positioned at the centre of analyses of natural resource management in this paper we provide a taxonomy of positions to analyse participatory decision making in natural resource management we operationalise this framework to analyse two failures of participatory natural resource management in turkey focusing on reasons for failure and the role of power asymmetries our results are based on case studies comprising in depth interviews focus groups and a survey administered to 944 individuals we conclude that participatory mechanisms are highly unlikely to bring democratic and equitable outcomes unless power relations are addressed at both institutional and local levels copyright oxford university press

inequality as a cause of environmental degradation abstract this paper advances two hypotheses first the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners who derive net benefits from the activity and the losers who bear net costs second greater inequalities of power and wealth lead all else equal to more environmental degradation

asymmetric tournaments equal opportunity laws and affirmative action some experimental results this paper assesses whether affirmative action programs and equal opportunity laws affect the output of economic agents more precisely we find that equal opportunity laws and affirmative action programs always benefit disadvantaged groups equal opportunity laws also increase the effort levels of all subjects and hence the profits of the tournament administrator usually the firm the effects of affirmative action programs depend on the severity of a group s cost disadvantage when the cost disadvantage is severe these programs significantly increase effort levels and hence profits the opposite is true when the disadvantage is slight

income inequality and carbon consumption evidence from environmental engel curves abstract i investigate the relationship between income inequality and the carbon dioxide co2 content of consumption i quantify the co2 content of household expenditure using input output analysis and estimate environmental engel curves eecs which describe the income emissions relationship using eecs for the united states between 1996 and 2009 i decompose the change in co2 over time and the distribution of emissions across households in both cases income is an important driver of household carbon finally i describe a potential equity pollution dilemma progressive income redistribution may raise the demand for aggregate greenhouse gas emissions i estimate that transfers raise emissions by 5 1 at the margin and by 2 3 under complete redistribution

power distribution the environment and public health a state level analysis abstract this paper examines relationships among power distribution the environment and public health by means of a cross sectional analysis of the 50 us states a measure of inter state variations in power distribution is derived from data on voter participation tax fairness medicaid access and educational attainment we develop and estimate a recursive model linking the distribution of power to environmental policy environmental stress and public health the results support the hypothesis that greater power inequality leads to weaker environmental policies which in turn lead to greater environmental degradation and to adverse public health outcomes

the shading and distancing of commerce when internalization is not enough abstract a political economy of degradation and of sustainability should account not only for the full range of production costs but the sources of those costs it should consider how the pursuit of wealth can deliberately or not lead to uncounted costs and unaccountable actors this article explores the conditions of cost generation and externalization especially those that are largely unintended and inadvertent it shows how the pursuit of wealth the expansion of markets the mobility of capital and the entanglements of production processes can lead to the unwitting generation and displacement of costs it analyzes competitive business strategy and patterns of production and consumption for their contribution to such costs business strategy and state policy tend to create a never ending search for frontiers however simulated and however unecological they may be the costs generated in those frontiers are a function of shading that is obscuring of costs and distancing the separation of production and consumption decisions both of which impede ecological and social feedback and create cognitive institutional and ethical lags between initial benefits and eventual full costs as distance increases along dimensions of geography culture bargaining power or agency negative feedback loops are severed stakeholders expand while decision making contracts environmental problems are displaced and shading and cost externalization increase the likelihood of sustainable resource use increases as distance is lowered as institutions locate decision authority in those who receive negative ecological feedback and who have the capacity and incentives to act on that feedback and as the burden of proof for economic interventions shifts to the interveners

how does income inequality affect energy efficiency empirical evidence from 33 belt and road initiative countries abstract at present income distribution and environmental pollution are serious issues faced by the belt and road initiative bri countries and exploring the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is meaningful for the sustainability of bri countries using the panel data of 33 bri countries from 2000 to 2016 we first evaluate the energy efficiency of the countries by dynamic dea model and then adopt the tobit regression model to investigate the nonlinear effect of income inequality on energy efficiency the results suggest that first during 2000 2016 the overall energy efficiency of 33 bri countries is relatively low falling to 0 38 while the overall energy efficiency of high income bri countries is much higher than that of the middle and low income bri countries second the average energy efficiency of the bri countries has declined since year 2013 third there is an inverted u type effect of income inequality on energy efficiency in the whole sample but the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is heterogeneous for countries at different income levels specifically in high income bri countries income inequality shows a u type effect on energy efficiency while in middle and low income bri countries the relationship between income inequality and energy efficiency is an inverted u type moreover economic growth positively impacts the energy efficiency while industrialization and energy structure negatively influence the energy efficiency

economic inequality and the value of nature abstract understanding what influences the value of nature is crucial for informing environmental policy from a sustainability perspective economic valuation should not only seek to determine a society s willingness to pay for environmental goods to devise an efficient allocation of scarce resources but should also account for distributional effects to ensure justice yet how economic inequality affects the value of non market environmental goods remains understudied combining recently developed theoretical results with empirical evidence this commentary shows that more equal societies have a higher valuation for environmental public goods and that non market benefits of environmental policy accrue over proportionally to poorer households on this ground we discuss implications for environmental valuation management and policy making and identify a number of fruitful areas for future research we conclude that environmental valuation should explicitly account for economic inequality and that encompassing assessments of the distributional effects of environmental policies must consider the distribution of non market environmental benefits

are competitors forward looking in strategic interactions field evidence from multistage tournaments abstract this paper investigates whether decision makers are forward looking in dynamic strategic interactions and incorporate variations of continuation values in their choices using data from professional and semi professional basketball tournaments we find that the expected relative strength of a team in future interactions indeed affects behavior in the present the results also show that the response to changes in the continuation value is stronger if the structure of prizes is convex across stages if the players are in a decisive game and if the prevalence of free riding within a team is low

political affiliation and willingness to pay an examination of the nature of benefits and means of provision non market techniques are widely used for valuing environmental goods and services recent articles obtain results showing respondents to the right of the political spectrum are significantly less likely to vote in favour of environmental programs that provide public goods through public means in consequence their wtp is lower than that of individuals on the political left we examine whether wtp differs systematically in accordance with political affiliation by using data from three stated preference surveys we obtain results similar to the previous literature from only one survey our other two surveys employ different contexts that change the nature of the benefits from the good and or its provision mechanism the first of these finds no significant differences in wtp by respondent political affiliation and the second finds that respondents on the right of the political spectrum have statistically higher wtps for a good when it is privately provided than under collective provision our results provide further support that context matters and that preferences elicited from surveys for environmental goods are not necessarily independent of the means by which the good is provided

adjustment toward peace an introduction abstract the recent experience of el salvador offers valuable lessons for economic policy in post conflictual transitions in the wake of a negotiated settlement to a civil war economic policy must support the adjustment toward peace in the short run policy must promote not only macroeconomic stabilization but also political stabilization this requires the mobilization of resources and the maintenance of political will for implementation of immediate peace related needs such as the reintegration of excombatants into civil society and the strengthening of democratic institutions long run policy objectives must encompass not only the attainment of macroeconomic balances but also equity that is balance in the distribution of income and wealth balanced investment in human natural and physical capital and democratization in the broad sense of a more balanced distribution of power in the end policies which fail to build on the crucial complementarities between peace and development are unlikely to achieve either goal

relationship organization and price delegation an experimental study price delegation to the salesforce is a practice widely adopted by firms this paper examines the relationship between price delegation and managerial profits using a laboratory economics experiment a novel feature of our experiment is that we study how varying the relationship organization of the sales manager and salesperson to allow for 1 requests by the salesperson for the manager to choose price delegation and for 2 the manager to award a small bonus after observing the salesperson s decisions can affect behavior the results show that contrary to the theoretical prediction managers choose price delegation frequently and salespeople respond reciprocally leading to higher manager profits under price delegation moreover this behavior increases when requests and bonuses are allowed we show that a behavioral economics model that incorporates positive reciprocity can explain these results well data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2013 1778 this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta marketing

does inequality affect environmental quality evidence from major japanese cities abstract this study investigates whether income inequality affects environmental degradation we use city level data in japan where local governments have limited authority and often use voluntary agreements with private firms we test the hypothesis that inequality weakens residents bargaining power over polluters and has a negative effect on environmental quality our results show that inequality negatively affected air quality in residential and commercial areas during the 1990s but not in industrial areas this evidence suggests that the inequality pollution relationship is not just a correlation but reflects a causal effect of residents bargaining power on environmental quality this implies that equal communities can pressure firms into accepting pollution prevention agreements

intra generational equity and sustainable welfare a time series analysis for the uk and sweden this paper discusses the importance of intra generational equity to sustainable development it outlines a number of methodologies for measuring income inequality in the economy and presents several possible ways of incorporating the impact of distributional effects into measures of welfare in the economy the authors highlight in particular an index developed by atkinson atkinson a b 1970 distributive politics and economic growth q j econ may 465 490 based on the social welfare model this method possesses two main advantages over other methods firstly it is expressed directly in terms of social well being secondly value judgements incorporated into the measure are made explicit through the parameter o which expresses society s degree of aversion to income inequality the paper calculates the value of the atkinson index for two case study countries sweden and the uk between 1950 and 1996 for a central estimate of o0 8 the results show that the welfare loss due to inequalities in the distribution of income varied between 5 and 10 for sweden and between 6 and 14 for the uk with the higher values coming towards the end of the period the paper explores the sensitivity of these results to changes in the value of o for the case of the uk and discusses the relevance of the work to the measurement of sustainable welfare 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

poverty and environmental degradation a review and analysis of the nexus abstract there is much controversy surrounding the poverty environmental degradation nexus the predominant school of thought argues that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation and if policy makers want to address environmental issues then they must first address the poverty problem another school of thought argues that a direct link between poverty and environmental degradation is too simplistic and the nexus is governed by a complex web of factors in this paper a formal structure for analyzing the complex web of factors is formulated and used to review the existing literature on the links between poverty and the degradation of four natural resource sectors the analysis highlights the important role institutional and market failure in encouraging agents from various income groups to exhibit unsustainable activities which in turn forces some of the agents to fall into poverty another important factor is the role of conflicts between different agents income groups in the povertyenvironmental degradation nexus the analysis also highlights the presence of feedback loops between environmental degradation and poverty

measuring resource inequalities the concepts and methodology for an area based gini coefficient abstract although inequalities in income and expenditure are relatively well researched comparatively little attention has been paid to date to inequalities in resource use this is clearly a shortcoming when it comes to developing informed policies for sustainable consumption and social justice this paper describes an indicator of inequality in resource use called the ar gini the ar gini is an area based measure of resource inequality that estimates inequalities between neighbourhoods with regard to the consumption of specific consumer goods it is also capable of estimating inequalities in the emissions resulting from resource use such as carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and solid waste arisings from material resource use the indicator is designed to be used as a basis for broadening the discussion concerning food deserts to inequalities in other types of resource use by estimating the ar gini for a wide range of goods and services we aim to enhance our understanding of resource inequalities and their drivers identify which resources have highest inequalities and to explore trends in inequalities the paper describes the concepts underlying the construction of the ar gini and its methodology its use is illustrated by pilot applications specifically men s and boys clothing carpets refrigerators freezers and clothes washer driers the results illustrate that different levels of inequality are associated with different commodities the paper concludes with a brief discussion of some possible policy implications of the ar gini

public attitudes towards renewable energy technologies in norway the role of party preferences abstract transition to a sustainable society requires large scale conversion of the energy system to new renewable non fossil sources of energy this presupposes public support for new technologies which means the public must deal with challenges in terms of placement area requirements ecological degradation and price developments this paper discusses how citizens view renewable energy technologies it analyses responses to representative surveys of the norwegian population on the desirability of various energy technologies such as hydroelectric dams onshore and offshore wind energy bioenergy plants and for contrast gas plants with and without carbon capture and storage our main focus is on the influence of party political preference on views of renewable energy we find that the sometimes lukewarm enthusiasm for renewable energy technologies cannot be fully explained by existing theories and that political party preference has a larger impact on energy technology attitudes than previously believed

the theory of reform and indian indirect taxes abstract given a set of value judgements an initial state and a model of the economy one can ask whether some feasible tax change would increase welfare we do this by defining the marginal cost in terms of welfare of raising an extra rupee from the i th good the inverse optimum problem is the calculation of non negative welfare weights on households which imply that the initial state is optimum if no such welfare weights exist then a pareto improvement is possible we illustrate the concepts and results using data from the indian economy for 1979 1980 directions of tax reform for a number of specific social welfare functions and for pareto improvements are presented

carbon dioxide emission and income a temporal analysis of cross country distributional patterns the existence of a cointegrating relationship between income and co2 emission for individual country groups suggests existence of a corresponding relationship between the inter country disparities in the levels of income and co2 emission this paper explores the relationship between the patterns of cross country distribution of income and co2 emission and temporal shifts in such a relationship this paper also examines how the mean level of per capita co2 emission and its distributional inequality are related to the corresponding mean income level and the distributional inequality of income the analysis is based on a cross country panel data set at the level of country group environmental quality demanded is treated as a private good and not as a public good as done in most other studies the technique of lorenz and specific concentration curve analysis are used as the basic analytical framework to argue that a measure of relative distributional inequality of income should be used as an explanatory variable in the environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship along with the mean income level in the empirical exercise johansen s cointegration analysis technique is used to explore existence of statistically significant cointegrating vector s relating mean level of emission and specific concentration ratio scr of emission to mean income level and lorenz ratio lr of income the empirical results confirm that the pattern of cross country income distribution has significant effect on the mean level of emission for all the country groups considered

pricing of conspicuous goods a competitive analysis of social effects abstract social needs play an important role in the purchase of conspicuous goods in this article the authors extend traditional economic models to accommodate social needs such as desire for uniqueness and conformism and examine their implications for pricing conspicuous goods first in the context of a duopoly the authors identify the conditions under which the desire for uniqueness can increase demand among some consumers as the price of a product increases second the authors show that though the desire for uniqueness leads to higher prices and firm profits a desire for conformity leads to lower prices and profits third the authors find that consumers purchase high quality products not because of their desire for uniqueness but despite it finally marketers of conspicuous goods may find it beneficial not to emphasize the functional differences among their products when the need for uniqueness is high in a laboratory test the authors find support for the claim that demand for a product amo

are left wing party strength and corporatism good for the environment evidence from panel analysis of air pollution in oecd countries abstract the effect of left wing party strength and corporatism on air pollution levels in up to 21 oecd countries over the period 1980 or 1990 1999 is tested with both fixed effects and random effects estimators controlling for scale composition technique as well as aggregate time effects robust evidence is found that parliamentary green left libertarian party strength is associated with lower pollution levels the rise of ecologically oriented parties has thus had a real impact on air pollution levels traditional left wing party strength is possibly also associated with lower pollution levels but the evidence is less consistent and robust combined left wing party strength in government is possibly associated with higher pollution levels but this result is also far from robust and is practically small no evidence is found for a consistent systematic impact of corporatism on pollution levels

heterogeneity and collective management evidence from common forests in himachal pradesh india summary this paper conducts a statistical investigation into the impact of differences in economic benefits wealth and social classes within the community on collective management of forests there are two key results first social parochialism is not a pre requisite for collective management of forests moderate levels of social diversity are associated with low collective management but at high levels of social diversity collective management is high second moderate wealth heterogeneity is beneficial however at high levels and in the presence of benefit heterogeneity it decreases collective management similarly benefit heterogeneity reduces collective management if wealth heterogeneity also exists these results run counter to the dominant understanding of heterogeneity but may be seen as alternate explanations under a specific socioeconomic context

the trade off between income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions abstract we investigate the theoretically ambiguous link between income inequality and per capita carbon dioxide emissions using a panel data set that is substantially larger in both regional and temporal coverage than those used in the existing literature using an arguably superior group fixed effects estimator we find that the relationship between income inequality and per capita emissions depends on the level of income we show that for low and middle income economies higher income inequality is associated with lower carbon emissions while in upper middle income and high income economies higher income inequality increases per capita emissions the result is robust to the inclusion of plausible transmission variables

the political economy of the paris agreement income inequality and climate policy abstract we empirically assess how both between country inequality and within country inequality relate to climate policy ambition as defined by ndc pledges of the paris agreement cop21 we exploit the difference between high and low ambition targets submitted by parties to construct a climate policy ambition index we find that both inequalities shape countries pledges first low income countries tend to be more ambitious in setting their pledges when external support is received second within country inequality is associated with i lower mitigation ambition in low and middle low income countries and with ii higher mitigation ambition although non statistically significant for upperhigh and high income countries our results are discussed in terms of i climate policy being a superior good in rich countries and ii elites benefiting from emitting economic activities in poorer countries

designing multiperson tournaments with asymmetric contestants an experimental study is the right amount of effort exerted in multiperson tournaments where contestants have two different levels of initial endowments termed favorites and underdogs we develop theoretical predictions for the level of effort and the effect of varying the prize structure we test these predictions for three person tournaments using an economic experiment in a social environment where contest outcomes are publicly announced we find that both favorites and underdogs overexert effort relative to the theoretical point predictions moreover in the treatment with two favorites and one underdog favorites increase their effort when the number of prizes is increased from one to two contrary to the theory prediction we show that a generalized model that allows for psychological losses from losing for favorites and psychological gains from winning for underdogs because of social comparisons tracks the experimental results better than the standard theoretical model this paper was accepted by peter wakker decision analysis

end of pipe or cleaner production how to go green in presence of income inequality and pro environmental behavior in this paper we consider a vertically differentiated duopoly model in which a green producer competes with a brown rival in a market in which consumers are environmentally concerned in particular consumers are assumed to value not only the intrinsic quality of a certain product but also its environmental impact this environmental valuation has a positional content consumers attach a positive attribute to the green product while penalizing the brown one in this context we consider the choice of the green firm between cleaner and end of pipe abatement efforts we find that the interplay between the intensity of market competition consumers income disparity and environmental concern can play a crucial role in directing the green producer towards one or the other technological choice more precisely the adoption of cleaner production technologies can be discouraged by low average income and by tough competition while it can be spurred by the moral social incentive towards pro environmental behavior

voting on the environment price or ideology evidence from swiss referendums studies on preferences for environmental quality usually posit that price and income explain most of the observed choices however we argue that conceptions of social norms and the common good are equally important when analyzing environmental voting outcomes and are a significant component of the environmental demand we study aggregate results of three ballot proposals in switzerland put to vote in the year 2000 which foresaw different tax schemes on fossil energy all three bills were rejected by the electorate we are able to show that regions with producer interests car commuting habits and elderly population are less supportive of ecological tax reforms unlike higher education and leftist political affinity that work in favor of the bills though more importantly our results underline the importance of including variables pertaining to the notion of ideology both in terms of statistical fit and obtaining unbiased estimates for price and income determinants

forest loss and economic inequality in the solomon islands using small area estimation to link environmental change to welfare outcomes abstract to study welfare effects of environmental change data from household surveys may be linked to remote sensing data using spatial aggregation to link risks ecological fallacy since surveys are usually representative for areas larger than the spatial scale of decision making units this paper uses survey to census imputation to estimate welfare indicators for small areas to study the effect of deforestation on subsequent inequality in the rural solomon islands this country depends on logging for almost half of foreign exchange and one sixth of government revenue and most forested land remains under customary ownership a sharp increase in log exports to seven times the sustainable yield and a major shift in export destinations as other countries withdrew from the tropical log trade represents an exogenous shock that helps to identify effects of deforestation on inequality rather than the reverse relationship a standard deviation increase in the rate of forest loss over 2000 to 2012 raises the gini index of inequality in 2013 by one third of a standard deviation mean incomes and poverty rates are also higher implying that deforestation makes some households richer while others become poorer these precisely estimated effects would be obscured using more spatially aggregated data

identifying the impacts of income inequality on co2 emissions empirical evidences from oecd countries and non oecd countries abstract the emergence of environmental quality challenges is rooted in social problems which mainly come from income inequality and power gap income inequality and climate change have been highlighted as hindering the achievement of sustainable development and environmental protection globally though existing literature has estimated the influences of income inequality on co2 emissions relatively little is known about the long run and short run effects from a cross national perspective therefore the aim of this study is to shed light on the long run and short run relationships between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions based on balanced country level panel dataset for 78 countries from 1990 to 2017 in order to understand how a country s economic level affects the link between inequality and co2 emissions this study classified the sample countries into three groups oecd countries low income non oecd countries and high income non oecd countries the fmols and dols model is applied to examine the relationship between the income inequality and per capita co2 emission meanwhile the estimates of an ardl model revealed the long run and short run effects our empirical results indicate that there is a long term cointegration relationship between income inequality and per capita co2 emissions higher income inequality promotes emission reductions in oecd countries and high income non oecd countries while the influences are insignificant in low income non oecd countries in the long run per capita income carbon intensity population size and urbanization were also considered in this study the estimates of an ardl model indicate that whilst income inequality does not have a significant impact on co2 emissions in the short run per capita national income positively affects co2 emissions meaning that income growth will accelerate emissions carbon intensity positively affects co2 emissions in the long term indicating that increased income facilitates increased energy use and emissions but that progress in co2 recycling technology may ultimately reduce emissions neither population size nor urbanization rate exerted any obvious effects on per capita co2 emissions from a policy perspective governments have an onerous task ahead of them in balancing economic efficiency and distributary justice lastly we provide insights for policy makers that in order to realize the goal of emission reductions in the long run it may be best to proceed by making reasonable national income redistribution policies and by adjusting the welfare system

progressive taxation in a tournament economy abstract not enough is known about the responsiveness of individuals in particular those who work under different incentives to changes in marginal tax rates we ask whether changes in tax rates are less distortionary for workers engaged in a contest to examine this potential rationale for a more progressive tax code we first model the effort decisions of workers faced with progressive taxation under tournaments and piece rates because of the difficulty identifying any distortion that may be induced by the tax code in naturally occurring data we then report on the results of a real effort experiment based on this model consistent with a behavioral approach to public finance we find that competitive tournament workers are less sensitive and hint in our discussion at the possible welfare benefits of progressive taxation in tournament economies

the income inequality and carbon emissions trade off revisited abstract this paper investigates the marginal effect of income inequality on carbon emissions per capita we use a panel consisting of 68 countries over a 50 year period from 1961 to 2010 we report estimates that support the hypothesis that there is a trade off between carbon emissions per capita and income inequality this trade off is not homogeneous across countries and depends upon the level of development measured by income per capita using panel smooth transition regression we find that this relationship is negative for countries with low to moderate income per capita but becomes slightly positive after passing a threshold located around fifteen thousand 2011 us dollars moreover the inequality elasticity of emissions per capita is comparable in magnitude to its income elasticity therefore both inequality and income levels are crucial to define policies to reduce carbon emissions this implies a challenge to policymakers who pursue to reduce both income inequality and carbon emissions

the impact of information on environmental commodity valuation decisions a conceptual model is developed which provides insight into how information affects willingness to pay for environmental commodities a refutable hypothesis of the effects of a specific information type on the magnitude of willingness to pay for an environmental commodity is developed this hypothesis is tested using a contingent valuation method experiment results indicate that information affects willingness to pay in a theoretically plausible manner the results support the contention that information is important for accurate environmental commodity consumer valuations

income distribution and co2 emission a comparative analysis for china and india abstract the aim of this paper is to test whether income inequality contributes to environmental degradation in china and india where both countries are giving a great concern about the implications of their unsustainable energy consumption to the environment not only to themselves but also to the global environmental sustainability by applying the bounds test approach to cointegration we found in both countries a long run but not a statistically significant relationship between income inequality and co 2 emissions both in the long run and in the short run the robustness of our cointegration results is also ascertained by using three different long run tests furthermore applying the variance decomposition analysis to examine the dynamic causal relationship between the gini coefficient of income distribution and co 2 emissions we found that income inequality was the least important factor in determining co 2 emissions and that there was no causality running in any direction between co 2 emissions and income inequality in both countries still income and energy consumption are the major determinants of co 2 emissions in both countries nevertheless even though the evidence is not statistically significant in the case of china it indicates that reducing income inequality can have a positive impact on environmental quality while in india redistributing income to improve environmental degradation may not be effective

balance of power and the propensity of conflict we study the role of an imbalance in fighting strengths when players bargain in the shadow of conflict our experimental results suggest in a simple bargaining game with an exogenous mediation proposal the likelihood of conflict is independent of the balance of power if bargaining involves endogenous demand choices however the likelihood of conflict is higher if power is more imbalanced even though endogenous bargaining outcomes reflect the players unequal fighting strengths strategic uncertainty causes outcomes to be most efficient when power is balanced in turn the importance of exogenous mediation proposals depends on the balance of power

does skewed pattern of income distribution matter for the environmental quality evidence from selected brics economies with an application of quantile on quantile regression qqr approach abstract using annual data from 1980 to 2014 the study explores the relationship between carbon emissions and skewed pattern of income distribution among 4 selected brics economies e g brazil india china and south africa using quantile on quantile regression qqr technique of sim and zhou 2015 it tries to contribute towards an empirical understanding on the quantile structure of both the variables for the selected brics countries it finds for india and brazil that as income rises although both lower and upper income people degrade the environmental quality by releasing more co2 emissions but interestingly it is the poor who intensively degrade the environmental quality than the rich in sharp contrast for china and south africa it finds that it is the poor who relatively contribute less to the environmental degradation by reducing co2 emissions than the rich these findings have greater policy significances which are discussed at the concluding section in greater detail

designing sales contests does the prize structure matter abstract sales contests are short term incentives that managers use to raise sales effort the extant marketing theory predicts that the optimal prize structure should have two characteristics 1 the number of prizewinners should be greater than one and 2 prize values should be unique and rank ordered however this theory has not been empirically examined this article presents two empirical studies that examine whether the prize structure of a sales contest affects sales performance in each study the authors investigate the incremental effects of introducing multiple prizewinners and unique rank ordered prizes into a sales contest the first study consists of two laboratory experiments in which participants make decisions that closely reflect the decision trade offs in the theoretical model of sales contests the second study consists of two field economic experiments in which trained salespeople sell fundraising sponsorships to companies the results across the experiments are remarkably consist

the role of education in the environmental kuznets curve evidence from australian data abstract this paper is based on the underlying idea that the use of energy resources in a society significantly depends on their level of education then it is hypothesized that education might directly affect environmental quality by worsening it at early stages and improving it once education expands from its certain level thus we pursue an extension of the standard environmental kuznets curve by including an indicator of the evolution of citizens education this empirical strategy might avoid bias on income coefficients and in turn assess the value of education as environmental policy an application for australia is given to illustrate this possibility by using higher education data for a large time span 1950 2014 empirical results suggest that in most of the studied period expansion in education rate has increasingly compensated the rise of per capita co 2 emissions stemming from the economic growth moreover only in recent years both per capita income and education expansion have been proved to reduce emissions however provided that income growth is difficult to manage it would be worth considering the possibility of promoting education in order to achieve environmental objectives

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

income inequality and the development of environmental technologies within rich countries a large dispersion in the capacity of generating environmental innovations appears correlated to the level of inequality previous works analyze the relationship between inequality and environmental quality in a static setting this paper builds a dynamic model more suitable to analyze technological externalities driven by the emergence of a new demand for green products under fairly general assumptions on technology and preferences we show that 1 the relationship between inequality and environmental innovation is highly non linear and crucially depends on per capita income 2 an excessive inequality harms the development of environmental technologies especially in rich countries key to our results is the fact that externalities generated by pioneer consumers of green products benefit the entire population only for relatively low income distances the empirical analysis robustly confirms our theoretical results that is whereas for rich countries inequality negatively affects the diffusion of innovations per capita income is paramount in poorer ones

favoring the winner or loser in repeated contests should a firm favor a weaker or stronger employee in a contest despite a widespread emphasis on rewarding the best employees managers continue to tolerate and even favor poor performers contest theory reveals that evenly matched contests are the most intense which implies that a contest designer can maximize each player s effort by artificially boosting the underdog s chances we apply this type of handicapping to a two period repeated contest between employees in which the only information available about their abilities is their performance in the first period in this setting employees are strategic and forward looking such that they fully anticipate the potential impact of the first period contest result on the second period contest and thus adjust their behaviors accordingly the manager also incorporates these strategic behaviors of employees when determining an optimal handicapping policy if employees abilities are sufficiently different favoring the first period loser in the second period increases the total effort over both periods however if abilities are sufficiently similar we find the opposite result occurs total effort increases the most in response to a handicapping strategy of favoring the first period winner

income inequality and carbon emissions in the united states a state level analysis 1997 2012 abstract this study investigates the relationship between u s state level co 2 emissions and two measures of income inequality the income share of the top 10 and the gini coefficient each of the inequality measures which focus on unique characteristics of income distributions is used to evaluate the arguments of different analytical approaches results of the longitudinal analysis for the 1997 to 2012 period indicate that state level emissions are positively associated with the income share of the top 10 while the effect of the gini coefficient on emissions is non significant the statistically significant relationship between co 2 emissions and the concentration of income among the top 10 is consistent with analytical approaches that focus on political economy dynamics and veblen effects which highlight the potential political and economic power and emulative influence of the wealthy the null effect of the gini coefficient is generally inconsistent with the marginal propensity to emit approach which posits that when incomes become more equally distributed the poor will increase their consumption of energy and other carbon intensive products as they move into the middle class

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

globalization and the connection of remote communities a review of household effects and their biodiversity implications abstract the remote regions of the world provide refuge to a disproportionate amount of the earth s biodiversity as globalization continues isolated human communities in these regions are increasingly connected to global market migration and technology networks we review the diffuse literature on the household effects of changing market access migration and technology adoption in remote regions and implications for native biodiversity market access affects biodiversity in remote communities through changes in household economics and social networks migration either to or from remote settlements affects biodiversity through changes in population remittances human capital and social networks finally we consider effects due to production public infrastructure and information and communication technologies there is much ambiguity surrounding these causal pathways and thus we also examine the roles of various ecological household community and institutional mediating factors in determining the impacts of global connection finally we explore the limitations of our current knowledge and research practices and propose directions for future work to address key uncertainties in theory and evidence as well as weaknesses in methodological approaches we recommend a broad and interdisciplinary mode of inquiry as the best means toward clarifying globalization s impacts on human settlements and the biodiversity harbored in the earth s remaining remote regions

what are political leaders environmental intentions the impact of social identification processes and macro economic conditions abstract evidence of continued environmental degradation has led to a questioning of the traditional vision of unlimited economic growth in favour of sustainable development although several explicit environmental strategies were designed at the supranational level the pursuit of environmental sustainability remains an aim driven by political concerns at the country level this study aims to investigate the role of both internal cognitive and motivational factors and external social forces and macro economic conditions contexts in influencing the propensity of political leaders regarding environmental matters the findings indicate that cognitive and motivational factors tend to shape the environmental intentions of political leaders whereas the external context does not have a significant impact our results suggest that the political leaders propensity for addressing environmental matters is largely affected by the desire of leaders to establish or confirm an individual status through political processes or to conform to group norms however younger political leaders demonstrate a higher environmental propensity than do older leaders

social loss aversion and optimal contest design when managers are designing a contest to motivate effort by salespeople service employees franchisees or product development teams a key question is what should the optimal proportion of winne

the nexus between income inequality and co2 emissions in turkey abstract environmental degradation and income inequality are two of the most important international debates that await immediate resolution despite that their interaction in the environmental economics literature has been very little analysis the aim of this study is to examine the impact of income distribution on the co2 emissions in turkey during 1984 2014 an autoregressive distributed lag model ardl test is employed to determine possible long term and short term nexus among the series the ardl test results show that the series are cointegrated and that income inequality has a positive effect on co2 emissions we also find that the environmental kuznets curve ekc is valid in turkey the toda yamamoto causality test denotes that gini coefficient is the granger cause of co2 emission the results show that deterioration in income distribution will reduce environmental quality in turkey which validates that political economy approach is valid in turkey study results can be an important guide for policymakers reducing income inequality for a new strategy in the fight against environmental problems may lead to a win win situation for turkey and the international community

the carbon footprint of european households and income distribution abstract this paper calculates the carbon footprint of private consumption in the eu27 by five groups of household income using a fully fledged macroeconomic input output model covering 59 industries and five groups of household income for the eu27 due to macroeconomic feedback mechanisms this methodology besides induced intermediate demand also quantifies i private consumption induced in the other household groups ii impacts on other endogenous final demand components and iii negative feedback effects due to output price effects of household demand the carbon footprint is calculated separately for the consumption vector of each of the five income groups the simulation results yield a non linear income elasticity of direct and indirect emissions at each income level the value of the direct footprint income elasticity decreases from 1 32 first quintile to 0 69 fourth quintile the value of the indirect footprint income elasticity is always below unity and decreases from 0 89 to 0 62 the results in general reveal a relative decoupling effect the share of the top income group in income 45 is much larger than its share in the carbon footprint 37 and vice versa for the bottom income group 6 in income and 8 in footprint

relief for the environment the importance of an increasingly unimportant industrial sector deindustrialization stagnant real incomes of production workers and increasing inequality are latter day features of many economies it is common to assume that such developments pressure policymakers to relax environmental standards however when heavily polluting industries become less important economically their political importance also tends to diminish consequently a regulator may increase the stringency of environmental policies like some other studies we find that declining industrial employment translates into stricter environmental standards in contrast to previous studies but consistent with our argument we find that greater income inequality is associated with policies that promote a cleaner environment jel q58 p16 j31 c23