toward estimating the incidence of journey to work costs the purpose of this paper is to estimate the extent to which the daily travel to work costs are passed forward to employers in the form of higher wages the incidence is estimated from a sample of glasgow scotland workers who relocated their residences within the city it was found that the elasticity of wages with respect to travel costs is greater than zero for both men and women and perhaps as much as one for men since the relocation within the city led to substantial job change it would seem that wages should be expected to adjust to changes in policy areas such as transport and land zoning which make it cheaper or more expensive for workers to get to employment opportunities

gasoline price volatility and the elasticity of demand for gasoline abstract we examine how gasoline price volatility impacts consumers price elasticity of demand for gasoline results show that volatility in prices decreases consumer demand for gasoline in the intermediate run we also find that consumers appear to be less elastic in response to changes in gasoline price when gasoline price volatility is medium or high compared to when it is low moreover we find that when we control for variance in our econometric model gasoline price elasticity of demand is lower in magnitude in the long run

the commuting time paradox abstract we examine the conditions for the commuting time paradox which states that the average commuting time does not vary between different periods we develop therefore an equilibrium job search model with endogenously chosen commuting costs presuming wage bargaining between workers and firms the optimally chosen maximum commuting costs jointly maximise the worker s and firm s payoffs we demonstrate that when productivity levels increase over time average commuting costs and average wages both increase which affects the optimally chosen commuting time we establish the conditions under which the paradox holds

environmental management in development the evolution of paradigms in the past quarter century environmental management has increasingly become a concern of governments more recently the traditional split between developers and conservationists has begun to break down conceptions of what is economically and technologically practical ecologically necessary and politically feasible are rapidly changing this report discusses the implications of five paradigms of environmental management in development the author notes that the remedial legalistic approach of environmental management is breaking down instead interest in the more economically integrated approach of resource management has recently taken hold several interdependent forces indicate that improving the economic management of pollution and resources may be a necessary but insufficient measure to create the conditions for sustainable development the perception of tradeoffs between development and environmental quality persists in the present debate but its necessity is greatly exaggerated according to this paper finally it is noted that paradigms may be impervious to evidence and institutions and societies too difficult to change whether when and how these issues are resolved may be modern civilization s most significant test

closing coal economic and moral incentives climate policy requires that much of the world s reserves of fossil fuels remain unburned this paper makes the case for implementing this directly through policy to close the global coal industry coal is singled out because of its high emissions intensity low rents per unit value local environmental costs and sheer scale direct supply policy the sequenced closure of coal mines may lead to less policy leakage across countries and time than other policies based on demand or price management it also has the advantage of involving relatively few players and leading to clear cut and observable outcomes appropriately sequenced closure of the world coal industry could we suggest create the moral force needed to mobilize collective international action

explaining differences in public sector efficiency evidence from russia s regions summary using the case of russia s regions this paper extends the literature on public sector efficiency in three directions an attempt to better understand differences in public sector efficiency through the study of subnational governments in one country the first examination of public sector efficiency of subnational governments in emerging markets and the first study of public sector efficiency in russia three types of scores of public sector performance and efficiency indicate substantial differences across regions an econometric examination suggests that they are largely explained by per capita income the share of federal transfers in subnational government revenue quality of governance and democratic control and the level of spending

fiscal policy and regional output volatility evidence from russia eller m fidrmuc j and fungac ova z fiscal policy and regional output volatility evidence from russia regional studies this paper investigates the relationship between fiscal policy and output volatility in russian regions between 2000 and 2009 accounting for endogeneity between output volatility and fiscal developments by using system generalized method of moments gmm estimation techniques the results indicate that discretionary fiscal policy contributes to output volatility and induces macroeconomic instability at the regional level in russia this corroborates previous studies using cross country data to reduce business cycle fluctuations it would be necessary to curtail procyclical fiscal activism at the regional level e g via fiscal rules and sound institutions of fiscal federalism

from frugal jane to wasteful john a quantile regression analysis of swiss households electricity demand abstract in this article we investigate the heterogeneity in the responsiveness of swiss household electricity demand to changes in prices and income we focus on segments of consumers with different intensities of electricity consumption by using a panel quantile regression approach this estimation strategy is applied to a rich micro level longitudinal data set of 3880 observations from more than 1400 households matched with a unique price data set extracted from the swiss electricity regulator s online sources while the findings show an inelastic electricity demand across all groups an interesting pattern of variation emerges between lower and upper quantiles of electricity demand respectively frugal and intensive users results show that households in the first conditional quartile and at the median react significantly to changes in prices while those at the lowest quantile and upper quantiles exhibit insignificant price elasticities the main policy implications of this work concern the design of price based measures for reducing electricity consumption in the residential sector and the possibility of accounting for individual responses in tailoring policies for specific consumer segments

growth in post soviet russia a tale of two transitions abstract in the early stages of post soviet russia s economic transition small scale entrepreneurial activity appeared to be a strong engine of growth moreover striking regional variations in initial conditions and adopted policy reforms appeared useful in accounting statistically for observed regional variations in entrepreneurial activity here we investigate whether these relationships have persisted as russia s transition has continued to evolve and find that they have not we then document that the emergence of bank issued credit virtually non existent outside of moscow prior to 2000 has been an important engine of growth since 2000 thus to date russia s post soviet development appears as a tale of two distinct transition paths

wage premia in employment clusters how important is worker heterogeneity this article tests whether the correlation between wages and concentration of employment can be explained by unobserved worker productivity residential location is used as a proxy for unobserved productivity and average commute time to workplace is used to test whether location based productivity differences are compensated away by longer commutes analyses using confidential data from the 2000 decennial census find that estimates of agglomeration wage premia within metropolitan areas are robust to comparisons within residential location and that estimates do not persist after controlling for commuting costs suggesting that the productivity differences across locations are due to location not individual unobservables

gasoline taxes or efficiency standards a heterogeneous household demand analysis abstract using detailed consumer expenditure survey data and a flexible semiparametric dynamic demand model this paper estimates the price elasticity and fuel efficiency elasticity of gasoline demand at the household level the goal is to assess the effectiveness of gasoline taxes and vehicle fuel efficiency standards on fuel consumption the results reveal substantial interaction between vehicle fuel efficiency and the price elasticity of gasoline demand the improvement of vehicle fuel efficiency leads to lower price elasticity and weakens consumers sensitivity to gasoline price changes the offsetting effect also differs across households due to demographic heterogeneity these findings imply that when gasoline taxes are in place tightening efficiency standards will partially offset the strength of taxes on reducing fuel consumption

patterns of transition from plan to market patterns of transition from plan to market martha de melo cevdet denizer and alan gelb hungary s bankruptcy experience 1992 1993 cheryl w gray sabine schlorke and miklos szanyi why and when do governments initiate public enterprise reform jose edgardo campos and hadi salehi esfahani roads land use and deforestation a spatial model applied to belize kenneth m chomitz and david a gray industrial centralization in indonesia j vernon henderson and ari kuncoro guidlines on searching for a dalton improving tax reform an illustration with data from indonesia shlomo yitzhaki and jeffrey d lewis a new data set measuring income inequality klaus deininger and lyn squire

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 1 theoretical framework abstract this is the first part of a two part paper providing an analytical model of the indirect rebound effect given a direct rebound estimate that integrates consumer demand theory with the embodied energy of household spending from environmentally extended input output analysis the second part applies the model developed in part one to simulate the direct and indirect rebound for the average u s household in terms of primary energy co2e nox and so2 emissions and for energy efficiency investments in electricity natural gas or gasoline services part one provides a critical review of the largely independent economic and industrial ecology literatures on the indirect rebound by studying the two goods case and the n goods case we demonstrate that the indirect rebound is bounded by the consumer budget constraint and inversely related to the direct rebound we also compare the common proportional spending and income elasticity spending assumptions with our model of cross price elasticities including both substitution and income effects for the indirect rebound by assuming zero incremental capital costs and the same embodied energy as conventional technologies for efficient appliances we model an upper bound of the indirect rebound future work should also consider the increase in consumer welfare possible through the rebound effect

green commuting and gasoline taxes in the united states abstract this paper analyzes how gasoline tax rates are related to the time workers in the united states spend commuting by private car public transport or with other physical modes of transport our identification strategy relies on both inter state differences and time variations in gasoline taxes using the american time use surveys for the years 2003 2015 we find that higher gasoline tax rates are related to less time spent in commuting furthermore higher gasoline taxes are related to less commuting by private car and more commuting by public transport and or a physical mode of transport walking or cycling our results highlight the importance of gasoline taxes in the consumption of energy for personal transport as higher gasoline taxes are related to a greater use of green modes of transport showing that fuel taxes are important for good environmental management

the role of site and job characteristics in hedonic wage models recent economic analyses of wage rate differentials have generally used some form of hedonic framework in explaining the observed wage structure while these studies have adopted this common theoretical justification the models have been used to serve two distinct objectives the first of these is an empirical test of the theory of equalizing differences originally introduced by adam smith in such applications see brown 7 lucas 26 olson 28 thaler and rosen 36 and viscusi 40 as examples specific job characteristics measured with technical information or with worker perceptions have been used to explain differences in wage rates across individuals and jobs while there are a number of these studies there has not been a consistent pattern of support for the theory indeed with the exception of job risks many characteristics that a priori would be expected to lead to equalizing differences have often exhibited incorrect and or statistically insignificant measured effects on wages the second use for wage models has been as the basis for an index of the quality of life in urban areas in this framework households are assumed to select residential locations so as to maximize their individual welfare migration between cities provides the mechanism for an equilibrium household assignment under ideal conditions the pattern of equilibrium wage rates reflects the attributes of the cities involved see hoch 20 izraeli 23 cropper lo cropper and arriaga salinas 111 and rosen 31 as examples the purpose of this paper is to develop a model for wage rate differentials that includes both job and site characteristics and to estimate the model with a large micro data set our wage models provide estimates of a market clearing envelope which includes each of two types of past analyses as a

a tale of two reforms i identify the absence of well functioning product markets in transition economies as a sufficient condition under which big bang reduces output initially while a chinese style reform increases output big bang dismantles central planning or centralized organization of production permitting monopolistic and vertically interdependent enterprises to pursue their own monopoly profits by restricting output and inter firm trade to the detriment of the economy as a whole the chinese reform by maintaining central planning but allowing enterprises to produce for the emerging product markets after they have fulfilled their output quotas under planning gives enterprises incentives to expand output beyond planned targets

wealth and sustainability for economists in 1974 it was a live question whether the exhaustion of natural resources such as oil would necessarily lead to the decline of economic activity solow showed that constant levels of consumption could be sustained in the face of exhaustibility if there is sufficient substitutability between produced and natural factors of production hartwick then proved that underpinning this result is a saving rule set investment in produced capital equal to the value of resource depletion at each point in time a large literature has shown that a comprehensive measure of the change in real wealth net saving plays a central role in determining whether current well being can be sustained in particular current declines in real wealth signal that future well being will also decline a result that has been confirmed empirically using data for developing countries changes in wealth and sustainability are therefore joined at the hip the current composition of wealth serves to define the policy challenges that countries face in achieving sustainable development if substitution possibilities are limited between natural and other factors of production as one might expect then technical progress is a necessary complement to policies for sustainability

heterogeneity in the response to gasoline prices evidence from pennsylvania and implications for the rebound effect abstract the consumer response to changing gasoline prices has long interested economists and policymakers for it has important implications for the effects of gasoline taxation and vehicle energy efficiency policies this study examines both the elasticity of driving with respect to changing gasoline prices and heterogeneity in this elasticity by geography the fuel economy of the vehicle and the age of the vehicle we use detailed annual vehicle level emissions inspection test data from pennsylvania that include odometer readings inspection zip codes and extensive vehicle characteristics we estimate a short run gasoline price elasticity of driving demand of 0 10 and find substantial heterogeneity in this responsiveness the elasticity is largely driven by low fuel economy vehicles as well as vehicles between 3 and 7 years old our findings help reconcile some of the recent literature and provide guidance on the magnitude of the direct rebound effect from light duty vehicle energy efficiency policies

economic growth inequality and poverty estimating the growth elasticity of poverty summary this paper uses a new data set of 126 intervals from 60 developing countries to analyze the growth elasticity of poverty that is how much does poverty decline in percentage terms with a given percentage rise in economic growth the data set is both broader in coverage and more selective in terms of quality controls than those used in the past the study finds that while economic growth does reduce poverty in developing countries the rate of poverty reduction depends very much on how economic growth is defined controlling for changes in income inequality when economic growth is measured by changes in survey mean income consumption the growth elasticity of poverty excluding eastern europe and central asia is 2 79 that is a 10 increase in the survey mean will reduce poverty 1 00 person day by 27 9 but when growth is measured by changes in gdp per capita the growth elasticity of poverty is a statistically insignificant 2 27 which is lower than has previously been estimated

carbon geography the political economy of congressional support for legislation intended to mitigate greenhouse gas production over the last 5 years the u s congress has voted on several pieces of legislation intended to sharply reduce the nation s greenhouse gas emissions given that climate change is a world public bad standard economic logic would predict that the united states would free ride and wait for other nations to reduce their emissions within the congress there are clear patterns to who votes in favor of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions this paper presents a political economy analysis of the determinants of pro green votes on such legislation conservatives consistently vote against such legislation controlling for a representative s ideology representatives from richer districts and districts with a lower per capita carbon dioxide footprint are more likely to vote in favor of climate change mitigation legislation representatives from districts where industrial emissions represent a larger share of greenhouse gas emissions are more likely to vote no jel q54 q58 r50

government and business an introduction this article considers the apparent renewal of interest in interventionist industrial policies among oecd governments asking just what if anything is new with particular reference to the uk it outlines the theoretical justifications for such interventions and discusses issues concerning intangibles innovation and infrastructure it describes the special emphasis placed on re balancing the structure of production the central role accorded to human capital and the salience of spatial aspects of policy it stresses the potential for government and administrative failure just as much as market failure copyright 2013 oxford university press

reform without losers an interpretation of china s dual track approach to transition this paper develops a simple model to analyze the dual track approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient pareto improving economic reform that is reform achieving efficiency without creating losers the approach based on the continued enforcement of the existing plan while simultaneously liberalizing the market can be understood as a method for making implicit lump sum transfers to compensate potential losers of the reform the model highlights the critical roles of enforcement of the plan for achieving pareto improvement and full liberalization of the market track for achieving efficiency we examine how the dual track approach has worked in product and labor market liberalization in china

the transition to a market economy pitfalls of partial reform we present a theory of a partial economic reform of a planned economy similar to the one that took place in russia since 1988 and in china earlier in such a reform some markets are liberalized in the sense that producers can sell output to whomever they want including private firms at free prices but at the same time must sell to state firms at state prices we show that such a reform can result in a substantial diversion of subsidized inputs away from state firms and toward private firms even when state firms value these inputs more the result may be a reduction of total output the simple analysis sheds light on many consequences of the soviet reform such as breakdown of coordination of production increased state policing of delivery quotas prohibitions of trading cooperatives and opposition to privatization the model also explains why partial reform failed in russia but worked in china

quasi experimental taxation elasticities of us gasoline demand abstract taxation elasticities provide useful inputs in public policy aimed at raising revenues using the quasi experimental method this paper calculates gasoline taxation elasticities for the usa over 1952 1986 the median mean elasticity over this period is found to be 0 075 0 122 however the elasticity following the oil shock of 1973 is found to be statistically different from the pre shock elasticity reasons for this change in elasticity are discussed the implication of this analysis is that tax policies based on price elasticities rather than on tax elasticities might be using an inappropriate elasticity estimate and consequently misinterpreting the government s ability to raise tax revenues especially in the post embargo era

gasoline prices gasoline consumption and new vehicle fuel economy evidence for a large sample of countries abstract countries differ considerably in terms of the price drivers pay for gasoline this paper uses data for 132 countries for the period 1995 2008 to investigate the implications of these differences for the consumption of gasoline for road transport to address the potential for simultaneity bias we use both a country s oil reserves and the international crude oil price as instruments for a country s average gasoline pump price we obtain estimates of the long run price elasticity of gasoline demand of between 0 2 and 0 5 using newly available data for a sub sample of 43 countries we also find that higher gasoline prices induce consumers to substitute to vehicles that are more fuel efficient with an estimated elasticity of 0 2 despite the small size of our elasticity estimates there is considerable scope for low price countries to achieve gasoline savings and vehicle fuel economy improvements via reducing gasoline subsidies and or increasing gasoline taxes

policy reform and growth in post soviet russia in pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates moreover the implementation of economic reforms has also differed markedly across regions we analyze whether regional differences in reform policies can account for regional differences in growth rates and conclude that to a considerable degree they can most notably we find that regional differences in price liberalization policies exhibit a positive direct correspondence with growth we also find that regional differences in large scale privatization exhibit a positive correspondence with the regional formation of new legal enterprises which in turn exhibits a strong positive correspondence with growth

unemployment vs mismatch of talents reconsidering unemployment benefits we develop an equilibrium search matching model with risk neutral agents and two sided ex ante heterogeneity unemployment insurance has the standard effect of reducing employment but also helps workers to get a suitable job we show through calibrations how the mere difference on unemployment insurance when countries experience a common skilled biased technological shock may result in differences in unemployment productivity growth and wage inequality these results are consistent with the contrasting performance of the labour market in europe and the united states in the last twenty five years the model is used to address some political economy issues

frontiers in the economics of energy efficiency abstract energy efficiency has become an essential instrument to obtain effective greenhouse gas mitigation and reduced energy dependence this introductory article contextualizes the contributions of the supplemental issue by showing the new setting for energy efficiency economics and policy discussing the role of price instruments to promote energy savings presenting new approaches for energy efficiency policies and placing energy efficiency within a wider energy and environmental framework

environmental policy and the economic downturn this paper considers how environmental policies should respond to macroeconomic downturns it first explores the implications of the global economic downturn of 2008 09 for environmental policies focusing in particular on the example of action against climate change the arguments for and against activist fiscal policies in general are then reviewed and the case made that a demand induced downturn provides a very good opportunity to undertake a necessary step change in the public spending component of environmental policies and to start working through a backlog of public investment to improve the environment fiscal policy should be used to improve the allocation of resources across time and space recent fiscal stimuli are considered in the light of this discussion it is also argued that there is little cause to delay the introduction of price signals to internalise environmental externalities but the levels at which such signals should be set requires careful analysis changes over the business cycle may be warranted depending on the nature of the environmental externality and the cause s of the business cycle in question

human capital tangible wealth and the intangible capital residual since income is the return on wealth the total wealth of any given country should be on the order of 20 times its gdp instead the average observed ratio from the balance sheet accounts of the system of national accounts sna is a factor of 2 6 to 6 6 depending on whether natural resource stocks are included in the balance sheet the clear implication is that the sna wealth accounts are incomplete with the most obvious omission being human capital estimating the value of human capital using the lifetime income approach for a sample of thirteen mostly high income countries yields a mean share of human capital in total wealth of 62 four times the value of produced capital and 15 times the value of natural capital but for selected high income countries in the sample there is still an average of 25 of total wealth which is unaccounted it is neither produced nor natural nor human capital this residual intangible wealth is arguably the stock equivalent of total factor productivity the value of assets such as institutional quality and social capital which augment the capacity of produced natural and human capital to support a stream of consumption into the future

time use during the great recession using data from the american time use survey between 2003 and 2010 we document that home production absorbs roughly 30 percent of foregone market work hours at business cycle frequencies leisure absorbs roughly 50 percent of foregone market work hours with sleeping and television watching accounting for most of this increase we document significant increases in time spent on shopping child care education and health job search absorbs between 2 and 6 percent of foregone market work hours we discuss the implications of our results for business cycle models with home production and non separable preferences jel codes d13 e32 j22

a bayesian sampling approach to measuring the price responsiveness of gasoline demand using a constrained partially linear model partial linear models provide an intuitively appealing way to examine gasoline demand because one can examine how response to price varies according to the price level and people s income however despite their intuitive appeal partial linear models have tended to produce implausible and or erratic price effects blundell et al 2012 propose a solution to this problem that involves using slutsky shape restrictions to improve the precision of the nonparametric estimate of the demand function they propose estimating a constrained partially linear model through three steps where the weights are optimized by minimizing an objective function under the slutsky constraint bandwidths are selected through least squares cross validation and linear coefficients are estimated using profile least squares a limitation of their three step estimation method is that bandwidths are selected based on pre estimated parameters we improve on the blundell et al 2012 solution in that we derive a posterior and develop a posterior simulation algorithm to simultaneously estimate the linear coefficients bandwidths in the kernel estimator and the weights imposed by the slutsky condition with our proposed sampling algorithm we estimate a constrained partially linear model of household gasoline demand employing household survey data for the united states for 1991 and 2001 and for canada for 2006 2009 and find plausible price effects

taking natural capital seriously the paper sets out a pragmatic case for preserving the aggregate level of natural capital in the face of the declines in biodiversity and the rising population and major increases in consumption that economic growth will bring in this century the accounting framework to achieving this objective is considered focused on the role of asset registers particular attention is paid to renewable assets at risk of falling below critical thresholds these assets are key components of the balance sheet capital maintenance expenditures are required to maintain the value of assets intact since renewable natural assets should not be depreciated but rather treated as assets in perpetuity within the aggregate substitutions with other forms of capital are permitted but only if there is compensation for any detriment to natural capital offsetting is one mechanism for achieving this compensation the case for enhancing the aggregate is considered and the paper shows how a broader national plan over a generation could contribute to the policy objective of leaving the next generation with a richer endowment of natural capital the policy instruments for embedding natural capital into public policy are reviewed

modeling gasoline demand in the united states a flexible semiparametric approach abstract the focus of this paper is on the modeling and estimation of quarterly state level gasoline demand in the united states the existing literature may not appropriately evaluate the price elasticity and income elasticity of gasoline demand most studies fail to address the possible heterogeneity in gasoline demand elasticities that may arise from a variety of sources the endogeneity issue of gasoline price has remained redundant throughout the literature i address these challenges using a flexible demand model and a recently developed estimation technique the econometric approach allows for functional coefficients to accommodate the heterogeneity in demand elasticities several instrumental variables are used to investigate the endogeneity of gasoline price the estimation results provide strong evidence of heterogeneous gasoline demand elasticities across states and over time some state level attributes along with income and macroeconomic shocks are the potential sources of heterogeneity

inclusive green growth in india s aspirational democracy this paper critically examines the feasibility and desirability of green growth in india currently its environment is being plundered at all levels local national and global the stresses that result raise the fundamental question of whether the aspirations of indians for greater material comfort can ever be fulfilled the current 5 year plan aims for faster and more inclusive sustainable growth but it is clear that the emphasis of the plan is mostly on growth and inclusion rather than sustainability a modelling exercise reported here suggests that a visionary development growth scenario with major social and environmental benefits is possible for india at low cost however combining that scenario with a low carbon growth trajectory consistent with international aspirations to limit climate change would be significantly more expensive as it is not clear that the indian people would be willing to bear these extra costs some combination of accelerated low carbon innovation technology transfer from developed countries and climate finance from outside the country will be needed if green growth is to take root in india

heterogeneity in the rebound effect further evidence for germany rebound effects measure the behaviorally induced offset in the reduction of energy consumption following efficiency improvements using both panel estimation and quantile regression methods on household travel diary data collected in germany between 1997 and 2009 this study investigates the heterogeneity of the rebound effect in private transport with the average rebound effect being in the range of 57 to 62 our results are in line with a recent german study by frondel peters and vance 2008 but are substantially larger than those obtained from other studies furthermore our quantile regression results indicate that the magnitude of estimated fuel price elasticities from which rebound effects can be derived depends inversely on the household s driving intensity households with low vehicle mileage exhibit fuel price elasticities and hence rebound effects that are significantly larger than those for households with high vehicle mileage

new evidence of regional income divergence in post reform russia this article investigates regional income convergence in russia during 2000 2008 we test the hypothesis in which income divergence across regions of the country should give place to income convergence as the country moves toward free market economy with strong market institutions the study contributes to the existing literature by using the exponential smooth autoregressive augmented dickey fuller adf unit root test in a panel setup a novel econometric technique which encompasses cross sectional dependence results show strong evidence of on going regional income divergence in post reform period

gasoline savings from clean vehicle adoption abstract conventional counterfactuals used in literature may underestimate fuel savings from clean vehicle adoption thus overestimating the costs of securing associated environmental benefits using a large scale nationally representative sample of u s new car buyers we propose a choice model based counterfactual approach to predict what consumers would purchase if clean vehicles were unavailable we find that gasoline consumption under a no clean vehicle scenario increases by 1 7 compared with 1 1 based on a conventional counterfactual the conventional counterfactual overestimates the cost of gasoline savings from clean vehicle adoption incentives by 1 16 27 per gallon compared with the choice model based counterfactual

a tale of two tails commuting and the fuel price response in driving abstract pricing greenhouse gases is widely understood as the most efficient approach for mitigating climate change yet distributional effects hamper political acceptance these distributional effects are especially important in transport the fastest growing sector for greenhouse gas emissions using rich data covering the entire population of vehicles and households in denmark this study uncovers an important feature of driving demand two groups of much more responsive households in the lower and upper tails of the work distance distribution we further estimate the causal effect of public transport a critical determinant of the upper tail and show how public transport access can both reconcile differences in fuel price elasticities between the united states and europe and considerably influence the distributional effects of fuel pricing

green industrial policy green growth requires green technologies production techniques that economize on exhaustible resources and emit fewer greenhouse gases the availability of green technologies both lowers social costs in the transition to a green growth path and helps achieve a satisfactory rate of material progress under that path the theoretical case in favour of using industrial policy to facilitate green growth is quite strong economists traditional scepticism on industrial policy is grounded instead on pragmatic considerations having to do with the difficulty of achieving well targeted and effective interventions in practice while these objections deserve serious attention i argue that they are not insurmountable a key objective of this paper is to show how the practice of industrial policy can be improved by designing institutional frameworks that counter both informational and political risks

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

household gasoline demand in the united states supported by the mit center for energy and environmental policy research the u s dept of energy and the national science foundation

industrial profitability and trade among the former soviet republics the break up of the soviet union claudia senik leygonie and gordon hughes this article looks at profitability and trade in the republics of the former soviet union looking at individual industries republic by republic there emerges a picture of some highly profitable sectors along with others with negative value added the most profitable industries mostly associated with oil and gas extraction are the least protected the least intensive in labour and already the most developed the least efficient industries include food processing and light industry and are the most protected ones trade patterns both within the former soviet union and with the rest of the world are unrelated to comparative advantage consequently sizable gains from trade are potentially available and the relevant industries are identified when the single trade balance constraint is replaced by constraints at the republic level it is clear that russia stands to benefit from not having to cover with its surpluses the deficits of the other republics russia again along with kazakhstan and ukraine should benefit from a shift to market based terms of trade

inventories and the automobile market this article studies the within model year pricing production and inventory management of new automobiles using new monthly data on u s transaction prices we document that for the typical vehicle prices fall over the model year at a 9 0 annual rate concurrently both sales and inventories are hump shaped to explain these time series we formulate an industry model for new automobiles in which inventory and pricing decisions are made simultaneously the model predicts that automakers build to stock inventory management policy substantially influences the time series of prices and sales accounting for four tenths of the price decline observed over the model year

should policy makers allocate funding to vehicle electrification or end use energy efficiency as a strategy for climate change mitigation and energy reductions rethinking electric utilities efficiency programs in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the united states by an order of magnitude a portfolio of mitigation strategies is needed currently many utilities pursue energy efficiency programs we study a case where utilities could choose whether to allocate their energy efficiency budget to either end use efficiency or vehicle electrification as a means to reduce co2 emissions we build a decision space that displays the conditions under which utilities should pursue either strategy to build such decision space assumptions are needed on how consumers respond to electric vehicle incentives and what would be the baseline vehicle selected by consumers if no incentives were in place since these two aspects are highly uncertain we treat them parametrically if consumers are replacing a conventional vehicle with a phev utility incentive programs to induce phev adoption appear to be cost effective for a wide range of efficiency program costs and grid emissions factors

gasoline price and new vehicle fuel efficiency evidence from canada abstract using data on all new vehicles registered in canada from 2000 to 2010 we estimate the elasticity of the fuel economy of the new vehicle stock with respect to gasoline price we find that a 10 increase in gasoline price causes a 0 8 improvement in the fuel economy of new vehicles however we also show that consumers respond much more strongly to fuel taxes than to other components of the gasoline price finally we provide evidence that consumers in dense urban areas are more responsive to changes in fuel prices than consumers living on the urban periphery

a semiparametric model of household gasoline demand gasoline demand studies typically generate a single price and income elasticity for a country it is however possible that these elasticities may differ among various socio economic groups at the same time parametric gasoline demand models may not be flexible enough to capture the changes in price elasticities with different levels of income this paper models us gasoline demand using more flexible semiparametric techniques accommodating the possibility of differences in responses among households the econometric model employs a non parametric bivariate smoothing for price and income and a parametric representation of other explanatory variables possible heterogeneity in price and income elasticities is modelled through interacting price and income with demographic variables results show that price responses do vary with demographic variables such as income multiple vehicle holding presence of multiple wage earners or rural or urban residential locations households responses to a price change decrease with higher income multiple vehicle and multiple earner households also show higher sensitivity to a price change households located in urban areas reduce consumption more than those in rural areas in response to an increase in price comparison of the flexible semiparametric model with a parametric translog model however reveals no significant differences between results and the parametric models have the advantage of lower computational requirements and better interpretability

green growth degrowth and the commons the concepts of green growth and degrowth occupy central positions in the public debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment while proponents of the former approach claim that environmental measures can promote growth by for example more efficient use of natural resources proponents of the latter maintain that environmental integrity can only be upheld by slowing down growth this paper argues that both approaches constitute inadequate foundations for public policy as they fail to appropriately conceptualize social welfare we show how policy aimed at social welfare can be understood as managing a portfolio of capital stocks some of which exhibit the characteristics of commons i e common pool resources and public goods we then propose a programme of welfare diagnostics which aims at establishing minimum thresholds for capital stocks essential to welfare as a guide for real world policy formulation and discuss the role of appropriation of natural resource rents for its practical implementation we conclude by highlighting the central role of scientific policy advice in determining how different conceptions of welfare would be reflected in setting targets and choosing the means to achieve them

the rebound effect for automobile travel asymmetric response to price changes and novel features of the 2000s abstract previous research suggests that the elasticity of light duty motor vehicle travel with respect to fuel cost known as the rebound effect is modest in size and probably declined in magnitude between the 1960s and the late 1990s however turmoil in energy markets during the early 2000s has raised new questions about the stability of this elasticity using panel data on u s states we revisit the simultaneous equations methodology of small and van dender 2007 and hymel et al 2010 to see whether structural parameters have changed using data through 2009 we confirm the earlier finding of a rebound effect that declines in magnitude with income but we also find an upward shift in its magnitude of about 0 025 during the years 2003 2009 in addition we find that the rebound effect is much greater in magnitude in years when gasoline prices are rising than when they are falling it is also greater during times of media attention and price volatility which explains about half the upward shift just mentioned

wages and commuting quasi natural experiments evidence from firms that relocate we examine individual level compensating differentials for commuting distance in a quasi natural experiment setting by examining how wages respond to changes in commuting distance induced by firm relocations this set up enables us to test for the relevance of job search frictions within labour market models due to the quasi experimental set up we are able to avoid a range of endogeneity issues we demonstrate that a 1 km increase in commuting distance induces an almost negligible wage increase in the year after the relocation but a more substantial wage increase of about 0 15 three years later 2013 royal economic society

simultaneous equations bias in disaggregated econometric models with the language of econometrics agents may be said to take prices as exogenously given which suggests that prices are econometrically exogenous in individual behavioural equations this involves semantic confusion between different meanings of the word exogenous simultaneity problems cannot generally be dispelled by working with disaggregated data in particular nothing is gained by disaggregating the dependent variable in a regression equation if the micro and macro equations use the same regressors however there may be substantial gains from disaggregation of the regressors in the theory of competitive markets agents act as if they do not affect equilibrium market prices by analogy with the language of econometrics agents may be said to take prices as exogenously given having thus stated the price taking assumption it may seem that prices are econometrically exogenous in behavioural equations for individual agents such as labour demand curves this involves semantic confusion between two different meanings of the word exogenous for example even if each buyer has a negligible influence on the market price there may still be an important correlation between the price and the disturbance in an individual demand equation so that treating price as econometrically exogenous gives biased coefficient estimates the price taking assumption has been used to justify ols estimates of import demand functions for small countries leamer and stern 1970 pointed out that the estimated slope in an import demand function is generally an average of the slopes of the demand and supply functions for imports but

green growth an assessment green growth is almost tautologically required for global welfare to rise in the long run economic growth is desirable not least because over 1 billion people still live in conditions of poverty undermining the ecological basis for human civilization will damage human welfare and further undermine economic growth there are large adverse environmental externalities from economic activity that affect human welfare directly and indirectly through lower measured output finding ways to tackle these externalities will enhance wellbeing and allow continued growth of gdp while preserving aggregate natural capital however achieving this goal presents societies with major challenges the composition of gdp is likely to have to change significantly with more emphasis on new ideas and less on increased material throughputs the role of the state in a green growth transition will have to go beyond internalizing externalities to get prices right the necessary transformation will be large system wide and structural so the state must also provide at the least overall strategic direction innovation will be central to any successful strategy as will be dealing with the distributional consequences of stronger environmental policies particularly in developing countries organizing the appropriate collective action at the right levels in the face of inadequate information while ensuring that the appropriate governance arrangements are in place will not be easy policy experimentation is needed with more rigorous ex post evaluation and where successful rapid dissemination of the results

pass through of motor gasoline taxes efficiency and efficacy of environmental taxes abstract to investigate the efficacy and efficiency of environmental taxes i analyze the rate at which taxes on motor gasoline are passed to consumers by estimating two cointegrating vector autoregression models for each of six states for state models that specify the retail price of motor gasoline without taxes exclusion tests suggest that taxes on motor gasoline are not passed to consumers on a one for one basis for state models that specify the retail price of motor gasoline including taxes results indicate that taxes are passed to wholesale prices in florida and massachusetts on a one for one basis and are passed to retail prices with a mark up in florida massachusetts new york and ohio and are not fully passed through in washington state specific rates of pass through differ from results suggested by theory and fixed effects estimators which may be biased by the presence of nonstationary data and the assumption that the rate of pass through is the same across states rates of pass through greater than one transfer 12 2 billion from consumers to retailers in fl 2 3 billion in ma and 19 2 billion in ny during the sample period which represent 10 7 6 0 and 23 9 of total expenditures on regular motor gasoline

unemployment market work and household production time diary data from four countries suggest that differences in market time between the unemployed and employed represent additional leisure not increased household production in areas where unemployment is cyclically high however reduced market work is offset by additional home production

here comes the rain again weather and the intertemporal substitution of leisure i revisit the intertemporal labor supply framework using exogenous variations in daily weather to see how time at work varies with rain in my model a rainy day is associated with a lower enjoyment of leisure effectively increasing wages and bringing more hours at work i test the model using data from the american time use survey supplemented with daily weather i find that on rainy days men shift on average 30 minutes from leisure to work computations give a rough estimate of the intertemporal elasticity of labor supply of around 0 01 in line with the rest of the literature

empirical investigation of retail fuel pricing the impact of spatial interaction competition and territorial factors abstract this paper explores the determinants of fuel prices by proposing an empirical framework that integrates three kinds of influencing factors spatial interaction competition and territorial factors for competition we define a general variable the presence of competing stations within a radius and two specific variables the presence of low cost stations and the presence of same brand stations we proceed with a step wise adjustment of the radius by gradually increasing it to evaluate the spatial scope of different competition effects using data on prices of fuel stations in rome italy we estimate spatial econometric models that provide evidence of spatial dependence in price between stations we also find that competition affects prices but the relevance of its impact depends on radius length finally the territorial factors remarkably influence prices if these factors are introduced in the model the magnitude of spatial parameters weakens allowing to accurately assess the intensity of spatial dependence

nonparametric estimation of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss we apply nonparametric regression models to estimation of demand curves of the type most often used in applied research from the demand curve estimators we derive estimates of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss which are the most widely used welfare and economic efficiency measures in areas of economics such as public finance we also develop tests of the symmetry and downward sloping properties of compensated demand we work out asymptotic normal sampling theory for kernel and series nonparametric estimators as well as for the parametric case the paper includes an application to gasoline demand empirical questions of interest here are the shape of the demand curve and the average magnitude of welfare loss from a tax on gasoline in this application we compare parametric and nonparametric estimates of the demand curve calculate exact and approximate measures of consumers surplus and deadweight loss and give standard error estimates we also analyze the sensitivity of the welfare measures to components of nonparametric regression estimators such as the number of terms in a series approximation