the urban political ecology of ecosystem services the case of barcelona this paper advances two arguments first the liveability of modern cities depends to a large extent upon urban and peri urban ecosystems and their services second these services are not only a gift of nature but co produced by human labour ecosystem services in other words are not just natural they are also the outcome of historical political economic and social endeavours we support our case with a study of the city of barcelona and the adjacent collserola natural park through an inter disciplinary project combining biophysical historical and archival research interviews and activist research we show that first the liveability of barcelona highly improves because of the services provided by the ecosystem of collserola second that collserola was not originally a pristine forest it became one after agricultural abandonment institutional interventions and the action of social movements if ecosystem services are co produced by human action and social struggles as we argue is the case of collserola then this has implications for the ways ecological economists think about ecosystem services their value and valuation whereas the social production of ecosystem services may seem an obvious and intuitive idea it certainly challenges the foundational aspects of monetary valuation

water scarcity social power and the production of an elite suburb the political ecology of water in matadepera catalonia abstract this article investigates the history of land and water transformations in matadepera a wealthy suburb of metropolitan barcelona analysis is informed by theories of political ecology and methods of environmental history although very relevant these have received relatively little attention within ecological economics empirical material includes communications from the city archives of matadepera 1919 1979 17 interviews with locals born between 1913 and 1958 and an exhaustive review of grey historical literature existing water histories of barcelona and its outskirts portray a battle against natural water scarcity hard won by heroic engineers and politicians acting for the good of the community our research in matadepera tells a very different story we reveal the production of a highly uneven landscape and waterscape through fierce political and power struggles the evolution of matadepera from a small rural village to an elite suburb was anything but spontaneous or peaceful it was a socio environmental project well intended by landowning elites and heavily fought by others the struggle for the control of water went hand in hand with the land and political struggles that culminated and were violently resolved in the spanish civil war the displacement of the economic and environmental costs of water use from few to many continues to this day and is constitutive of matadepera s uneven and unsustainable landscape by unravelling the relations of power that are inscribed in the urbanization of nature swyngedouw 2004 we question the perceived wisdoms of contemporary water policy debates particularly the notion of a natural scarcity that merits a technical or economic response we argue that the water question is fundamentally a political question of environmental justice it is about negotiating alternative visions of the future and deciding whose visions will be produced

social security and migration with endogenous skill upgrading abstract the aim of the paper is to investigate the joint redistributive effects of migration and pensions and to reassess the sustainability issue raised in the existing economic literature the paper first develops a theoretical framework to analyse the impact of international migration on the labour market the model allows for heterogeneity across native born individuals and for migrants to affect both the wages and the education decision in the recipient country it then explicitly focuses on pensions under alternative migration scenarios the analysis shows that migration causes redistributive effects which increase across group wage inequality however the endogenous educational response by residents partially offsets the redistributive impact of migration while creating additional interest groups migration helps the financial sustainability of the pension scheme but the interaction between migration and pensions causes complex inter and intragenerational redistributive conflicts which are analysed in the paper

the impact of immigration on the human capital of natives implications of the quantity number and quality skill of immigration on the destination economy are analyzed including impacts on value added wages quasi rents rates of return and the skill distribution of the native labor force quantity quality trade offs are considered for both immigrant and native workers medium and long run labor supply responses by natives to immigrant induced changes in wage rates are shown to have second order effects which substantively affect the impacts of immigrants the impact of immigration policy depends on the quality as well as quantity of immigrants the time horizon and the speed of factor market adjustment

social security and the retirement decision the effect of social security and private pensions on individual retirement decisions is modeled relaxing in turn three commonly maintained assumptions perfect capital markets actuarial fairness and certain lifetimes which together imply that there is no effect in each case raising the contribution level can cause systematic changes of either sign in general in individual retirement decisions for social security the effects associated with forced saving and deviations from actuarial fairness probably tend to advance retirement but those effects that arise solely from the insurance aspect of social security and private pensions are ambiguous in sign owing to the presence of a substitution effect that tends to delay retirement because the insurance benefits can be fully realized only by working longer

public pensions and immigration policy in a democracy the paper analyzes the link between the public pension system and the immigration policy in a pay as you go system the incentives for immigration vary significantly between individuals at different lifetime periods in the framework of an overlapping generations model we show that the median voter s choice in general leads to inefficient levels of immigration the median voter neglects the effects of the externalities within the pension system on other generations an immigration policy that is not affected by the median voter s choice but instead is constitutionally determined will avoid welfare losses the expected lifetime income of each generation can be increased by applying a rule of steady immigration

the welfare state migration and voting rights this paper proposes a political economic analysis of public opinion in european union countries toward migrants from poor countries by focusing on redistributive policy the analysis sheds light on specific determinants of public opinion the theoretical analysis based on the median voter framework shows that one of the key variables affecting public opinion is the voting rights of migrants where migrants do not have the right to vote their presence negatively impacts the poorest natives in countries where migrants enjoy voting rights they are able to vote on redistributive policy therefore the impact of migration on natives welfare is fundamentally different after the theoretical analysis the paper proposes an empirical analysis of europeans attitudes toward non western migrants in european union countries this empirical analysis confirms the decisive impact of migrants voting rights it shows that in eu countries the more educated natives are significantly less favorable to migrants from poor countries when the latter have the right to vote

public pensions and return migration in a median voter framework with pensions and immigration we show that only few unskilled immigrants are allowed into the country because the unskilled native median voter is concerned with negative effects on his or her wage but not with the positive effects to other groups in society when return migration is allowed for the median voter is more willing to accept immigration because he or she can shift some of the burden to future generations

can immigrant employment alleviate the demographic burden the role of union centralization this paper investigates the effect of labor immigration on public pensions when wage setting by a centralized trade union leads to unemployment it is shown that immigration improves the financial soundness of pay as you go pensions if and only if it diminishes total employment this occurs if the absolute value of the elasticity of labor demand exceeds the unemployment rate

does the welfare state affect individual attitudes toward immigrants evidence across countries abstract this paper analyzes welfare state determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants within and across countries and their interaction with labor market drivers of preferences we consider two mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of immigration under the first model immigration has a larger impact on high income individuals while under the second one low income individuals are those most affected individual attitudes are consistent with the first welfare state model and with labor market determinants in countries where immigration is unskilled income is negatively correlated with pro immigration preferences while skill is positively correlated with them these relationships are reversed in economies characterized by skilled migration

optimal immigration education and growth in the long run abstract the paper extends manning s model on education and balanced growth to include labour immigration each immigration unit is assumed to consist of one skilled worker and some unskilled members the optimal immigration policy which maximizes the per capita steady state consumption of the host country is derived we show that optimal immigration policy can reduce the steady state skilled labour ratio more interesting still contrary to the widespread belief that immigration of skilled workers hurts local skilled workers it is the unskilled local workers whose interests are threatened by optimal immigration policy

fiscal policy expenditure composition and growth in low income countries abstract this paper assesses the effects of fiscal consolidation and expenditure composition on economic growth in a sample of 39 low income countries during the 1990s the paper finds that strong budgetary positions are generally associated with higher economic growth in both the short and long terms the composition of public outlays also matters countries where spending is concentrated on wages tend to have lower growth while those that allocate higher shares to capital and nonwage goods and services enjoy faster output expansion finally initial fiscal conditions also have a bearing on the nexus between fiscal deficits and growth

bridging trade theory and labour econometrics the effects of international migration this paper surveys current theoretical and empirical research on international migration with a particular emphasis on the links between trade theory and labour empirics

composicao dos gastos publicos e crescimento economico dos municipios brasileiros the goal of this paper is to evaluate the eects of public expenditure composition on the growth of per capita income of the brazilian municipalities in the period 1991 2000 the model by devarajan et alii 1996 was used as reference to verify how structural variables such as education income distribution and violence in addition to the fiscal policy aect local economic growth controlling for the level of per capita income the results indicate that municipalities with per capita income below the poverty line as defined by the world bank have a higher necessity for current spending than those which are above that line estimated quadratic functional forms allowed deriving optimal compositions for the public spending which maximize economic growth according to the position of the municipal district in relation to the poverty line

voting on low skill immigration under different pension regimes depending on the design of the domestic pension system and thetype of immigrants voters will decide differently onimmigration policy in this paper we investigate the votingoutcome of three groups of heterogeneous voters skilledworkers unskilled workers and retirees under beveridgian orbismarckian pension systems which are either of the fixedcontribution rate or the fixed replacement ratio type we findthat while the use of a beveridge or bismarck system does notchange the results qualitatively the fixed contribution ratevs fixed replacement ratio distinction leads to substantialchanges in the optimal choices of different groups

the impact of immigrants on host country crime it is conventionally believed that immigration increases crime rates in the host country however empirical results are not in line with this crime concern we develop a model with endogenous skill upgrading and criminal choices to reconcile the inconsistency

sustaining fiscal policy through immigration this paper explores the fiscal implications of immigration to the us and argues that immigration policy should be viewed as a vital part of fiscal policy in particular a case is made that skill

are national pension systems efficient if labor is im perfectly mobile abstract in this paper we analyze the effects of labor market integration on national unfunded public pension systems that are organized according to a place of residence principle with this principle labor might migrate for purely fiscal reasons thus some kind of coordination becomes necessary we first show that for the case of unrestricted labor mobility the equalization of contributions is necessary and sufficient for efficiency if the pension systems remain decentralized however national decision makers do not in general have an incentive to voluntarily stick to equalized contributions with a segmented labor market where one segment is costlessly mobile whereas the other segment is completely immobile the coordination requirements are far more complicated if migration cannot compensate for differences in national fertilities if it can the efficiency of equalization turns out to be robust finally we show that replacing the principle of residence with the principle of nationality does not eliminate the risk of fiscal externalities

unemployment wage rigidity and the returns to education abstract if real wage formation is rigid then an increase in the proportion of skilled workers in the economy may increase the relative unemployment rate of the unskilled thus rendering them obsolete or unemployable this in turn may generate increasing returns to education and multiple equilibria a human intensive equilibrium may coexist with a physical capital intensive equilibrium the ranking of equilibria with respect to welfare and unemployment is a priori ambiguous

social insurance majority voting and labor mobility abstract this paper presents a political economy approach to payroll tax competition between two countries choosing their respective systems of social insurance in a context of labor mobility it considers a class of social insurance systems which includes two interesting polar cases one where benefits are linked to contributions bismarck and one where benefits are flat beveridge the type of social insurance is chosen behind the veil of ignorance at a first constitutional stage in the second stage the generosity of social insurance as measured by the payroll tax rate is chosen by the majority given that some have the possibility to move the main results are as follows first the type of mobility namely poor vs rich has a significant impact on the second stage tax competition migration equilibrium second more bismarckian systems are not necessarily more tax competition proof third the process will result in social insurance systems with a stronger than optimal link between earnings and benefits put differently at the constitutional stage the countries will tend to adopt systems which are too bismarckian

immigration and payg pension systems in the presence of increasing life expectancy abstract according to lacomba and lagos 2010 considering the effect of immigration on pension benefits of native individuals despite immigrants having low average productivity an open borders policy would be always implemented since most of current domestic cohorts gain from immigration in this paper we change the demographic assumptions at the bases of the model of lacomba and lagos 2010 assuming increasing life expectancy over time as a consequence we find that in the presence of pay as you go pension systems there are cases in which an open borders policy would not be implemented and that retirement age and immigrants skill play an important role in determining the effect of immigration on the welfare of native population

is public expenditure productive abstract this paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government spending variables the empirical results indicate that i the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending ii military capital bears little relation to productivity and iii a core infrastructure of streets highways airports mass transit sewers water systems etc has most explanatory power for productivity the paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the productivity slowdown of the last fifteen years

honey i shrunk the kids benefits revisiting intergenerational conflict in oecd countries intergenerational conflict may arise when the interests of different age groups do not align we examine cross country data to find evidence for this conflict in oecd countries we derive our results from a fgls estimation model which is complemented by a system gmm estimation to account for potential endogeneity the data are from a panel of 22 oecd countries over the time period 1985 2005 we find little support for intergenerational conflict in general however those who are close to statutory retirement age dislike public expenditure on families and education because once they retire they will have less income compared to their work income this effect is transitory however implying a change in voting behavior during retirement age

on the political economy of immigration the authors study how immigration policies that impose capital and skill requirements would be determined under majority voting when native agents differ in their wealth holdings and vote to maximize their income the results of the model calculations indicate that the native population will be polarized between those who would like an immigration policy to maximize the domestic capital labor ratio and those who would like an immigration policy that would minimize it

public pensions and voting on immigration in a recent paper scholten and thum 1996 analyze the impact of a pay as you go payg pension system with a fixed replacement ratio on the immigration policy in a democracy we extend the analysis of median voter s choice in two respects first in contrast to scholten and thum 1996 who assume myopic voting behavior our paper considers fully rational agents and provides a solution under this more complex behavioral assumption voting with rational agents yields a more liberal immigration policy than with myopic voters second we examine a different decision structure with a fixed contribution rate to the pension system in this case the majority rule leads to a completely different solution

migration and pension with international capital mobility abstract being relatively low earners migrants are net beneficiaries of the welfare state therefore in a static set up migration may be resisted by the entire native born population however it is shown that in a dynamic set up with a pension system which is an important pillar of any welfare state migration is beneficial to all income high and low and all age old and young groups

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

immigration and income redistribution a political economy analysis this paper examines the effect of immigration on the extent of income redistribution via majority voting on the income tax the tax outcome depends on the size of the native majority and the initial amount of redistribution in the economy which in turn determines the skill composition of immigrants as a main result we derive conditions for multiple tax equilibria if the native majority of either skilled or unskilled is not too strong and immigrants are allowed to vote both a high tax and a low tax outcome is possible in a referendum natives will then vote against immigrant voting at best natives are indifferent towards immigrant voting

tackling the european migration problem this paper will begin by examining the historical pattern of migration and the empirical dimension of western europes migration problem a next step examines the labor market issues and impacts on natives as western europe perceives them the paper concludes with a discussion of policy issues and options excerpt

the gains from pension reform we classify social security pension systems in three dimensions actuarial versus non actuarial funded versus unfunded and defined benefit versus defined contribution systems recent pension reforms are discussed in terms of these dimensions shifting to a more actuarial system reduces labor market distortions although limiting the scope for redistribution shifting to a funded system may increase saving redistribute income to future generations and distort contermporary labor supply a partial shift to a funded system helps individuals diversify their pension assets a shift from a defined benefit to a defined contribution system means that income risk will be shifted from workers to pensioners

revealing ecological processes or imposing social rationalities the politics of bounding and measuring ecosystem services ecosystem service es frameworks have been developed to characterize and model the relationships between ecological processes and human benefits some argue that these relationships should be specified through expert derived analytical i e top down frameworks in order to organize accumulated knowledge and create ready made framings for communities on the ground in contrast arguments for the participatory construction of es assessments emphasize the need for place sensitive and deliberative i e bottom up approaches in this paper we draw on a novel water planning exercise in new zealand to examine the tensions that arise when expert produced categories intersect with diverse stakeholder worldviews and aspirations expert derived es categories and analyses intervene in local valuation contexts in a range of ways narrowing the scope of which ecological processes might be considered as relevant or legitimate bounding as well as affecting how these processes are described and compared measuring the practices of bounding and measuring es in scientific and planning assessments should thus be conceptualized as involving political work and not just scientific judgment this reframes the role of ecological science and scientists in es debates and this presents cautions as well as opportunities for future es work relating to policy

immigration unemployment and pensions this paper examines the impact of immigration on a host country with welfare state arrangements that support both the unemployed and the elderly it is shown that low skilled immigration increases the unemployment rate furthermore it harms the low skilled native population and benefits the high skilled natives and pensioners nevertheless as under competitive labor markets immigration generates an unambiguous gain for the native population as a whole howe er in contrast to the findings under full employment this gain can be dampened by an expansion of the pension system

the effect of immigration on public finances the impact of immigration on the public finances is an important influence on public opinion this study aims to provide a thorough conceptual survey pointing out the complexities of a full understanding and the relevance of indirect effects and covering both static perspectives and longer run dynamic issues it considers simple accounting approaches which are relatively neglectful of behavioural responses but also tries to bring out the complexities in the nature of the relationship between immigration and the public exchequer that come with more sophisticated modelling of its economic effects

ageing migration and endogenous public pensions abstract this paper analyses migration behaviour of mobile workers in reaction to population ageing we show that the conventional wisdom that a decrease in fertility will lead to a rise in wages and thus to an inflow of immigrants that mitigates the adverse effects of ageing on public pensions may not hold if labour is heterogeneous moreover we demonstrate that if public pensions are endogenous i e if ageing leads the elderly to successfully lobby for higher taxes it may take several generations before a steady state is reached and the initial migration flow may be opposite to the steady state migration

the composition of public expenditure and economic growth abstract noting that the literature has focused on the link between the level of public expenditure and growth we derive conditions under which a change in the composition of expenditure leads to a higher steady state growth rate of the economy the conditions depend not just on the physical productivity of the different components of public expenditure but also on the initial shares using data from 43 developing countries over 20 years we show that an increase in the share of current expenditure has positive and statistically significant growth effects by contrast the relationship between the capital component of public expenditure and per capita growth is negative thus seemingly productive expenditures when used in excess could become unproductive these results imply that developing country governments have been misallocating public expenditures in favor of capital expenditures at the expense of current expenditures

factor proportions and relative wages the supply side determinants of wage inequality supply side factors may contribute to rising wage inequality first certain changes in the supply of skills allegedly exacerbate wage inequality women s increased labor force participation and increased immigration are the leading candidates both allegedly reduce the wages of less skilled men however immigration s impact on wage inequality has been minor and the effects of women s participation is inconclusive second in evaluating the likelihood that human capital investment will mitigate future inequality evidence suggests that rising returns to education have increased the proportion of young people attending college limiting the growth of inequality among high wage workers

wood and industrialization evidence and hypotheses from the case of spain 1860 1935 abstract the aim of this paper is to study wood consumption during the industrial expansion which took place in the western world in the second half of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century through the analysis of the case of spain for this purpose we present the series of spanish wood consumption both as a raw material wrm and as firewood fw between 1860 and 1935 and we carry out two exercises with these series the first calculates the intensity of use iou which relates wood consumption in physical terms with the evolution of the gdp the second more complex exercise estimates a standard consumption function that allows us to know the elasticity of wrm with respect to the gdp the spanish price of wood and the spanish price of a substitute material like iron based on our results we discuss the lower dependence of the spanish industrial economy on wood the liberation of forest areas that may have occurred in spain as a result of industrialization and to what extent the trends observed for the spanish case can be extrapolated internationally the main conclusion is that industrialization transformed the uses of wood and though the importance of this resource per unit of gdp decreased its overall consumption increased generating greater pressure on forests at an international level

voting over type and generosity of a pension system when some individuals are myopic this paper studies the determination through majority voting of a pension scheme when society consists of far sighted and myopic individuals all individuals have the same basic preferences but myopics tend to adopt a short term view instant gratification when dealing with retirement saving and labor supply consequently they will find themselves with low consumption after retirement and regret their insufficient savings decisions henceforth when voting they tend to commit themselves into forced saving we consider a pension scheme that is characterized by two parameters the payroll tax rate that determines the size or generosity of the system and the bismarckian factor that determines its redistributiveness individuals vote sequentially we examine how the introduction of myopic agents affects the generosity and the redistributiveness of the pension system our main result is that a flat pension system is always chosen when all individuals are of one kind all far sighted or all myopic while a less redistributive system may be chosen if society is composed of both myopic and far sighted agents furthermore while myopic individuals tend to prefer larger payroll taxes than their far sighted counterparts the generosity of the system does not always increase with the proportion of myopics

immigration and pension benefits in the host country this paper examines the role that low skilled immigration plays in determining pension benefits of the host population with an overlapping generations model which allows identifying which groups of native population are in favour or against immigration we find that despite immigrants having low average productivity an open borders policy would be implemented since most of current domestic cohorts gain from immigration only younger workers might be against immigration since they will coincide with immigrants in their retirement periods moreover we show how a larger immigrant quota would increase the probability of a pareto improvement for the current domestic population