environmental regulation technological innovation and energy consumption a cross region analysis in china abstract china has encountered the environmental issues and energy pressures in the middle income stage strengthening environmental regulation is a crucial measure to prevent environment deterioration and energy dilemma this paper investigates the three types of environmental regulations on energy consumption using feasible generalized least squares method during 1997 2015 in direct and indirect path the main conclusions are as follows in the direct path the economical and supervised types of environmental regulations have inhibited energy consumption whilst legal environmental regulation has no significant impact as for indirect path the rebound effect of energy is greater than the energy conservation generated by technological innovation which is embodied as an inhibitory effect the effects of environmental regulation display regional difference the legal and supervised types of environmental regulations have significant cost effect and rebound effect on energy consumption in the entire samples on the contrary the economical environmental regulation shows the opposite sigh in eastern regions the counterfactual simulation results show that the net effects of environmental regulations on energy consumption are negative which is beneficial for relieving energy pressures based on the findings this paper provides pertinent policy implications

garp for kids on the development of rational choice behavior in this paper we examine the extent to which consumption choices by 7 and 11 year old children and college undergraduates satisfy the axioms of revealed preference we find that choices by even the 7 year olds are considerably more likely to obey revealed preference axioms than would be true if they were choosing randomly 11 year olds do better still while college students do no better than 11 year old children we also find that mathematical ability is not correlated with choosing rationally we argue that this evidence suggests that the ability to choose rationally is not innate but that it does develop quickly

an experiment on risky choice amongst households a host of experiments have examined theories of risky choice using individuals however many important economic decisions are taken within multi adult households this paper reports on the first economic experiment designed to test theories of household choice we use established couples and face them individually and jointly with decisions involving monetary payoffs we find that joint choices typically are more risk averse than those made by individuals meanwhile choices made by couples exhibit the same kinds of departures from expected utility theory e g the common ratio and common consequence effects as are regularly recorded with individuals

the economics of roscas and intrahousehold resource allocation this paper investigates individual motives to participate in rotating savings and credit associations roscas detailed evidence from roscas in a kenyan slum nairobi suggests that most roscas are predominantly composed of women particularly those living in a couple and earning an independent income to explain this phenomenon we propose an argument based on conflictual interactions within the household participation in a rosca is a strategy a wife employs to protect her savings against claims by her husband for immediate consumption the empirical implications of the model are then tested using the data collected in kenya

should russia increase domestic prices for natural gas previous analyses of russia s dual pricing system and hidden subsidies for natural gas have neglected to assess the dual pricing system as a domestic environmental policy if dual pricing is considered as a policy to reduce conventional air pollutants it is more than economically justified in russia on the basis of avoided health risks in the short term the substitution of coal for natural gas may result in significant additional human health risk which translates into economic damage an alternative abatement possibility is expensive and unlikely enforceable due to weak environmental regulation the authors conclude that while the price differential can be expected to diminish over time as russia increasingly moves to a market economy in the near term dual pricing of natural gas remains the most efficient environmental policy for russia

the global markets for coking coal and iron ore complementary goods integrated mining companies and strategic behavior abstract the global market for coking coal is linked to the global market for iron ore since both goods are complementary inputs in pig iron production moreover international trade of both commodities is highly concentrated with only a few large companies active on both input markets given this setting the paper presented investigates the strategy of quantity setting cournot mining companies that own both a coking coal and an iron ore division do these firms optimize the divisions output on a firm level or by each division separately division by division first using a theoretical model of two cournot duopolies of complementary goods we find that there exists a critical capacity constraint below above at which firm level optimization results in identical superior profits compared with division level optimization second by applying a spatial multi input equilibrium simulation model of the coking coal and iron ore markets we find that due to the limited capacity firms gain no substantial additional benefit from optimizing output on a firm level

an analytical framework for joint vs separate decisions by couples in choice experiments the case of coastal water quality in tobago this paper offers an analytical framework for analyzing joint and separate decisions by couples in the context of choice experiments for nonmarket valuation it reports results from an attribute based stated preference study in which members of couples are asked to conduct a choice experiment first individually and then jointly the choice context was the selection of which beach to visit while on vacation in tobago available alternatives differed in attributes related to coastal water and beach quality such as level of coastal development and fish abundance tests of preference equality are reported and structured so as to identify the intra couple decision making patterns under taste heterogeneity with both finite and continuous mixed logit results from the latter suggest that women s preferences are found to be predominant in the joint choice experiment results suggest caution in using individual choice rather than joint couple choice when valuing quality changes impacting on couple activities such as water and beach quality in tobago and call for further research on the topic

do husbands and wives pool their resources evidence from the united kingdom child benefit common preference models of family behavior imply income pooling a restriction on family demand functions such that only the sum of husband s income and wife s income affects the allocation of goods and time testing the pooling hypothesis is difficult because most family income sources are not exogenous to the allocations being analyzed in this paper we present an alternative test based on a natural experiment a policy change in the united kingdom that transferred a substantial child allowance to wives in the late 1970s using family expenditure survey data we find strong evidence that a shift toward greater expenditures on women s clothing and children s clothing relative to men s clothing coincided with this income redistribution

benefit incidence of public recreation areas have the winners taken almost all this study presents a framework for investigating the benefit incidence of provision of public recreation opportunities the proportion of individuals who use outdoor recreation services increases with income and frequency of use differs by the users gender and life situation e g depending on whether they are students or older citizens the decomposition of distributive incidence shows that a bias in favor of high income groups may be accentuated when the perceived value of these services is taken into account in monetary terms we compare alternative strategies in terms of equity for improving recreation opportunities e g reduced distance to or increased acreage of recreation sites our results indicate that although these strategies improve the welfare distribution among the income groups a considerable proportion of benefits nevertheless accrue to high income groups

the emissions trading paradox abstract this article considers the price history of co2 allowances in the eu emission trading scheme since european emissions trading started in 2005 the prices of allowances have varied between less than one and thirty euro per ton of co2 this previously unpredicted volatility and more notably a significant price crash in may 2005 led to the hypothesis that electricity producers might use their market power to influence the prices of allowances besides market power the combination of information asymmetry and price interdependencies between prices of primary goods especially electricity and allowances plays an important role in explaining the emissions trading paradox the model presented will show that banking can lead to such a price crash if market participators act rationally furthermore in such a scenario banking can be profitable for sellers at the cost of buyers

recovering hicksian consumer surplus within a collective model hausman s method for the household the purpose of this paper is to describe the implications of the collective model of household behavior for the methods used to estimate the economic value of non marketed environmental resources after demonstrating how the separability restrictions inherent in the collective model allow individual preference and household income allocation choices to be distinguished the paper demonstrates how the framework can be used to recover hicksian consumer surplus an algebraic example is used to illustrate how the framework can be used in valuing environmental resources

conspicuous consumption and dynamic pricing how do firms develop marketing strategy when consumers seek to satisfy both quality and status related considerations we develop an analytical model to study this issue examining both pricing and product management decisions in markets for conspicuous durable goods our analysis yields many interesting and nontrivial insights first we demonstrate that high intrinsic quality indirectly generates exclusivity via pricing effects in turn this exclusivity generates considerable social payoffs where consumers value status this insight reverses the direction of causality in the existing literature wherein only status considerations matter and mere price increases may enhance consumer utility second our dynamic model indicates that where consumers prioritize status benefits producers incur substantial price depreciation in equilibrium third we examine the product management strategies used by firms to preserve early adopter exclusivity finally we discuss the boundary conditions of our results as well as our results implications for managerial and policy issues

participatory exclusions community forestry and gender an analysis for south asia and a conceptual framework abstract the idea of people s participation has long been part of development thinking but today the management of local natural resources by village communities is widely accepted as an institutional imperative it is therefore essential to examine how these institutions perform especially from the perspective of the more disadvantaged based on extensive fieldwork among community forestry groups in india and nepal and existing case studies this paper demonstrates how seemingly participatory institutions can exclude significant sections such as women it provides a typology of participation spells out the gender equity and efficiency implications of such exclusions and analyzes what underlies them it also outlines a conceptual framework to help analyze the process of gender exclusion and how it might be alleviated

introduction to the special issue things we do and don t understand about the household and the environment environmental economics has been slow to incorporate the full and complex nature of the household into its analytical structures and to reflect empirical evidence on household decision making this paper provides an overview of some of the main unanswered questions

efficient intra household allocations a general characterization and empirical tests the neoclassical theory of demand applies to individuals yet in empirical work it is usually taken as valid for households with many members this paper explores what the theory of individuals implies for households that have more than one member we make minimal assumptions about how the individual members of the household resolve conflicts all we assume is that however decisions are made outcomes are efficient we refer to this as the collective setting we show that in the collective setting household demands must satisfy a symmetry and rank condition on the slutsky matrix we also present some further results on the effects on demands of variables that do not modify preferences but that do affect how decisions are made we apply our theory to a series of surveys of household expenditures from canada the tests of the usual symmetry conditions are rejected for two person households but not for one person households we also show that income pooling is rejected for two person households we then test for our collective setting conditions on the couples data none of the collective setting restrictions are rejected we conclude that the collective setting is a plausible and tractable next step to take in the analysis of household behavior

individual and household willingness to pay for public goods the issue of whether willingness to pay wtp for the benefits generated by a public good should be elicited on an individual or on a household basis is addressed differences between individual and household wtp may arise when members of the household are mutually altruistic it is shown that for general specifications of altruism household wtp is less than the sum of household members individual wtp implications for the choice between household and individual measures of wtp are considered and issues in the elicitation of household wtp are addressed

market power and transferable property rights the appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal when competition is not a foregone conclusion the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage this paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights first a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence this is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem the control of particulate sulfates in the los angeles region

market power with interdependent demand sale of emission permits and natural gas from russia with implementation of the kyoto protocol russia will most likely be able to exert market power in the emission permit market but as russia is also a big exporter of fossil fuels the incentives to boost the permit price may be weak however a significant share of russia s fossil fuel exports is natural gas if a high permit price boosts the demand for natural gas through substitution from more polluting fuels and thus increase gas profits this may increase the incentives to exert monopoly power in the permit market moreover a large fossil fuel exporter may use its market position to influence the effective demand for permits hence the relationship between permit income and fossil fuels exports runs in both directions in this article we explore the interdependence between the revenues from permit and fossil fuel exports both theoretically and numerically a computable general equilibrium model suggests the fact that russia as a big gas exporter has small effect on the incentives to exert monopoly power in the permit market moreover russia s monopoly power in the permit market has a small but non negligible impact on the optimal level of russian gas exports

do high oil prices matter evidence on the mobility behavior of german households focusing on travel survey data from germany this paper investigates the determinants of automobile travel with the specific aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices and fuel economy the analysis is predicated on the notion that car mileage is a two stage decision process comprising the discrete choice of whether to own a car and the continuous choice of distance traveled to capture this process we employ censored regression models consisting of probit and ols estimators which allows us to gauge the extent to which sample selectivity may bias the results our elasticity estimates indicate a significant positive association between increased fuel economy and increased driving and a significantly negative fuel price elasticity which ranges between 35 and 41 taken together these results suggest that fuel taxes are likely to be a more effective policy measure in reducing emissions than fuel efficiency standards

public good valuation and intra family allocation i derive values of marginal changes in a public good for two person households measured alternatively by household member i s willingness to pay wtp for the good on behalf of the household wtp i h or by the sum of individual wtp values across family members wtp c households are assumed to allocate their resources in efficient nash bargains over private and common household goods wtp i h is then defined by trade offs between the public good and the household good and wtp c by trade offs of between the public good and private goods wtp i h is found to be higher lower than wtp c when member i has a relatively high low marginal valuation of the public good but tends on average to equal wtp c as a consequence individuals tend to represent households correctly on average when questioned about the household s wtp for a public good even when they are purely selfish and answer truthfully adding all members wtp answers on behalf of the household then leads to double counting pure and paternalistic altruism the latter attached to consumption of the public good move each member s wtp on behalf of the household closer to the true sum of individual wtp but only paternalistic altruism raises this sum

use of contingent valuation to elicit willingness to pay for the benefits of developmental health risk reductions we report the results of several contingent valuation cv surveys to elicit willingness to pay values from the general public for risk reductions associated with decreases in exposure to a chemical pcbs in the environment we also develop quality adjusted life years qalys from the survey using both standard gamble and time tradeoff elicitation methods to explore the relationship between qalys and willingness to pay wtp and to develop qaly weights for subtle developmental effects the results of the cv surveys are designed for incorporation into a case study of an integrated risk model to monetize the benefits of predicted risk reductions respondents showed a nearly proportional positive relationship between decreasing the risk of a 6 point reduction in iq a standard measure of intelligence and wtp but showed a negative relationship between risk reduction and wtp for reading comprehension as an outcome the range of mortality risks that respondents would accept on behalf of their hypothetical 10 year old child is 2 in 10 000 to 9 in 1 000 per iq point and wtp per iq point is 466 380 520 qaly weights elicited via time tradeoff reduction in life expectancy were significantly different from qaly weights elicited via a standard gamble p 0 001 respondents who answered questions about ecological endpoints first were willing to pay a small additional amount when asked about human health effects but those respondents who answered questions about human health endpoints first were not willing to pay any additional amount when subsequently asked about ecological effects

do children matter an examination of gender differences in environmental valuation abstract this paper is concerned with the role played by children in a household on choice behaviour related to willingness to pay wtp for environmental goods improvements data from a contingent valuation cvm survey dealing with three environmental improvements are used to examine three hypotheses the first is that after controlling for income individuals with children have higher wtp than childless individuals the second hypothesis is that women with children are willing to pay more for environmental improvements than men with children particularly in the case where there is concern for environmental health risks the third is that childless men and women exhibit significant differences in wtp that arise from greater time constraints faced by women estimated wtp functions are shown to be statistically different for four groups of individuals women with children men with children women without children and men without children parents of either gender are willing to pay more than their childless counterparts valuations of mothers and fathers are statistically different for only one of the three goods being evaluated interestingly it is the fathers mean valuations that are higher this may arise from the fact that these environmental improvements lead to better recreational opportunities and as indicated earlier men are less time constrained further support for this view comes from results that show that valuations of childless men are significantly greater than those for childless women for two goods the paper concludes with some directions for future research in the area