better schools less crime i estimate the impact of attending a first choice middle or high school on adult crime using data from public school choice lotteries in charlotte mecklenburg school district cms seven years after random assignment lottery winners had been arrested for fewer serious crimes and had spent fewer days incarcerated the gain in school quality as measured by peer and teacher inputs was equivalent to moving from one of the lowest ranked schools to one at the district average the reduction in crime comes largely from years after enrollment in the preferred school is complete the impacts are concentrated among high risk youth who commit about 50 less crime across several different outcome measures and scalings of crime by severity i find suggestive evidence that school quality explains more of the impact in high school whereas peer effects are more important in middle school copyright 2011 oxford university press

analyzing the impact of the world s largest public works project on crime india started the implementation of a rural public works program in 2006 covering all districts of the country within 3 years the program guarantees 100 days of employment per year at minimum wage to each rural household with the goal of reducing joblessness and poverty we exploit the design and implementation of this program to investigate its employment impact on various types of crimes to provide rare evidence on the employment crime relationship in a developing country context we find that employment generated by the program has a negative impact on both property crime and violent crime the same conclusion is reached when we analyze the impact of the program using its staggered rollout structure as the source of identification in a difference in difference analysis although crime elasticities with respect to employment are small this finding represents another dimension of the social benefit generated by the program jel k4 e24 h54

sustainability assessment of energy systems integrating environmental economic and social aspects abstract sustainable development of energy systems requires consideration of all three sustainability dimensions environmental economic and social current work presents a new decision support framework for facilitating this taking a life cycle approach the framework integrates the three sustainability dimensions to enable assessments at both technology and systems levels the framework comprises scenario analysis life cycle assessment life cycle costing social sustainability assessment and multi criteria decision analysis which are used to assess and identify the most sustainable energy options the application of the framework is illustrated on the example of future electricity supply in mexico eleven scenarios up to 2050 have been developed considering different technologies electricity mixes and climate change targets the results show that based on the 17 sustainability criteria used in this work the business as usual scenario mostly based on fossil fuels is unsustainable regardless of the preferences for different sustainability criteria this is mainly due to the high costs and environmental impacts associated with fossil fuels overall the most sustainable scenarios are those with higher penetration of renewables wind solar hydro geothermal and biomass and nuclear power these electricity pathways would enable meeting the national greenhouse gas emission targets by 2050 in a more sustainable way than envisaged by the current policy however some trade offs among the sustainability criteria are needed particularly with respect to the social impacts these trade offs can be explored easily within the decision support framework to reveal how different stakeholder preferences affect the outcomes of sustainability assessment thus contributing to more informed decision and policy making

crime rates and local labor market opportunities in the united states 1979 1997 the labor market prospects of young unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s crime rates show a reverse pattern increasing during the 1980s and falling in the 1990s because young unskilled men commit most crime this paper seeks to establish a causal relationship between the two trends previous work on the relationship between labor markets and crime focused mainly on the relationship between the unemployment rate and crime and found inconclusive results in contrast this paper examines the impact of both wages and unemployment on crime and uses instrumental variables to establish causality we conclude that both wages and unemployment are significantly related to crime but that wages played a larger role in the crime trends over the last few decades these results are robust to the inclusion of deterrence variables controls for simultaneity and controlling for individual and family characteristics

an integrated life cycle sustainability assessment of electricity generation in turkey this paper presents for the first time an integrated life cycle sustainability assessment of the electricity sector in turkey considering environmental economic and social aspects twenty life cycle sustainability indicators 11 environmental three economic and six social are used to evaluate the current electricity options geothermal power is the best option for six environmental impacts but it has the highest capital costs small reservoir and run of river power has the lowest global warming potential while large reservoir is best for the depletion of elements and fossil resources and acidification it also has the lowest levelised costs worker injuries and fatalities but provides the lowest life cycle employment opportunities gas power has the lowest capital costs but it provides the lowest direct employment and has the highest levelised costs and ozone layer depletion given these trade offs a multi criteria decision analysis has been carried out to identify the most sustainable options assuming different stakeholder preferences for all the preferences considered hydropower is the most sustainable option for turkey followed by geothermal and wind electricity this work demonstrates the importance for energy policy of an integrated life cycle sustainability assessment and how tensions between different aspects can be reconciled to identify win win solutions

valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities abstract existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores however higher test scores could signal higher academic value added or higher ability more sought after intakes in our research we show that both school value added and student prior achievement linked to the background of children in schools affect households demand for education in order to identify these effects we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends by re weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests our results survive this battery of tests and show that a one standard deviation change in either school average value added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3

crime and punishment the role of student body characteristics in schools disciplinary behaviours abstractdiscretion in schools discipline choices can provide an efficient and effective misconduct management structure but could lead to discipline based on unrelated factors consequently schools disciplinary decisions can significantly limit students access to education by removing students from familiar learning environments we investigate schools disciplinary decisions for serious misconducts and show that punishments are more severe in schools that do not report misconducts to local law enforcement agencies moreover we show that schools that report fewer misconducts to law enforcement impose more severe punishments when the student body is characterized as having a higher proportion of minority students lower socioeconomic status students and a higher proportion of students who are below the 15th percentile of standardized test scores these results suggest that between school punishment differentials are associated with student body traits

the effect of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment insurance receipt new evidence from a regression kink design in missouri 2003 2013 abstract we provide new evidence on the effect of the unemployment insurance ui weekly benefit amount on unemployment insurance spells based on administrative data from the state of missouri covering the period 2003 2013 identification comes from a regression kink design that exploits the quasi experimental variation around the kink in the ui benefit schedule we find that ui durations are more responsive to benefit levels during the recession and its aftermath with an elasticity between 0 65 and 0 9 as compared to about 0 35 pre recession

lasting or latent scars swedish evidence on the long term effects of job displacement recently improved swedish register data have made it possible to remedy many weaknesses of previous research on displaced workers using linked employer employee data we identify all workers displaced in 1987 due to an establishment closure and follow them over both a predisplacement period of 4 years and a postdisplacement period stretching until 1999 we find that the displaced workers suffer both earnings losses and worsened labor market position not only during a transitory period of adjustment but also in the longer run these longer run effects seem to be driven by an increased sensitivity to subsequent macroeconomic shocks

job loss and regional mobility we study the migration behavior of displaced workers and find that job displacement increases regional mobility we find however that noneconomic factors such as family ties are very important

environmental resource planning under cap and trade models for optimization abstract under the conditions of a cap and trade c t program manufacturers are restricted in total greenhouse gas emissions but allowed with options to acquire and dispose environmental resource e g certified emission quota ceq or commercialized permit for emission of certain pollutant via a market system or conduct self purification sp to reduce emission level to satisfy their overall emission needs due to production or service activities this paper analyzes the operational decisions of production systems under cap and trade conditions in which the problem is modeled as a multi stage dynamic optimization problem for each planning period the model specifically addresses the decisions on purchasing ceq reducing emission via sp and carrying over surplus emission quota seq to meet the required emission level driven by production demand for the period it also makes sure that the sum of reduced emission over the whole planning horizon meets exactly a goal of emission reduction specified at the manufacturers discretion other important problem characteristics addressed include the unit cost for reducing emission level via sp to reflect the fact that the cost increases as accumulated emission reduction increases i e the more reduced the more difficult to reduce and time related cost associated with green investment for emission reduction e g interest cost of short term loans these characteristics make the model and related analysis useful for both practitioners and researchers in this area numerical experiments were designed and carried out to verify and validate the proposed concepts

education and crime over the life cycle we compare two large scale policy interventions aimed at reducing crime subsidizing high school completion and increasing the length of prison sentences to this purpose we use a life cycle model with endogenous education and crime choices we apply the model to property crime and calibrate it to u s data we find that targeting crime reductions through increases in high school graduation rates entails large efficiency and welfare gains these gains are absent if the same crime reduction is achieved by increasing the length of sentences we also find that general equilibrium effects explain roughly one half of the reduction in crime from subsidizing high school

racing with uncertainty and strategic interaction between competitors as the race unfolds most of the existing literature examines one or other of these features but not the two combined our aim is to see how the efforts of competitors in a race vary with the intensity of rivalry between them in our principal model whch is of a one dimensional race it is shown that the leader in the race makes greater efforts than the follower and efforts increase as the gap between competitors decreases under certain conditions the same results hold in our second related model which is of a two dimensional race

model of sustainable development of energy system case of hamedan sustainable economic growth and improvement of the social welfare depend upon the sufficient supply of energy resources while the utilization of energy resources is one of the main factors of environmental degradation this research is involved with development of a sustainable energy system model and a new method for sustainability assessment this model represents the flow of energy from primary resources through processing conversion and end use technologies in an optimization framework where the useful energy demand in various social and economic sectors is met the impact of energy supply and consumption chain on the environment at each level of energy system is also embedded in the model structure a multi criteria analysis of changes is then applied and sustainable development indices of the whole system are concluded finally effects of the energy subsidy policy and high economic growth rate on sustainability of the energy system in three scenarios are analyzed results demonstrate that energy subsidy decelerates the improvement rate of the total sustainability index also when a high economic growth is accompanied with the energy subsidy this index reduces considerably results show that how penetration of renewable energy potentials changes the sustainability situation of energy systems

job search and unemployment insurance new evidence from time use data article i nfo this paper provides new evidence on job search intensity of the unemployed in the u s modeling job search intensity as time allocated to job search activities the major findings are 1 the average u s unemployed worker devotes about 41 min to job search on weekdays which is substantially more than their european counterparts 2 workers who expect to be recalled by their previous employer search substantially less than the average unemployed worker 3 across the 50 states and d c job search is inversely related to the generosity of unemployment benefits with an elasticity between 1 6 and 2 2 4 job search intensity for those eligible for unemployment insurance ui increases prior to benefit exhaustion and 5 time devoted to job search is fairly constant regardless of unemployment duration for those who are ineligible for ui

understanding rent dissipation on the use of game theory in industrial organization game theory has had a deep impact on the theory of industrial organization in a similar but less controversial way as the rational expectations revolution in macroeconomics the reason it has been embraced by a majority of researchers in the field is that it imposes some discipline on theoretical thinking it forces economists to clearly specify the strategic variables their timing and the information structure faced by firms as is often the case in economics the researcher learns as much from constructing the model the extensive form as from

a combined sustainability index for electricity efficiency measures abstract one of the most substantial tools that serve decision makers in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions includes energy efficiency measures that in most cases benefit from governmental assistance for achieving electricity consumption reduction goals this paper examines five energy efficiency measures defining a combined sustainability index a multi criteria analysis of five predefined indices was developed economic environmental technology social and political providing a combined index for each measure and a tool for identifying the preferred measure within a specific situation based on its total sustainability score in this research a case study was conducted and the preferred measure was found to be municipal street lighting systems based on its high political and social scores and its relatively high installation potential the second choice would be replacement of chillers in the industrial sector and the least favorable measure is the replacement of water pumps in the water sector the methodology described brings into account the technological specifications of the measure implemented and the specific national conditions under which it is implemented

analysing future trends of renewable electricity in the eu in a low carbon context the aim of this paper is to analyse the situation and trends of electricity from renewable energy sources res e in the eu up to 2030 taking into account several drivers and barriers and different maturity levels for the renewable energy technologies the methodology is based on the results of simulation models providing insights on future outlooks complemented with an analysis of regulations and other drivers and barriers regarding the most mature renewable electricity technologies the main drivers will be public policies carbon prices and support schemes and the expected up ward trend in fossil fuel prices and the main barriers are related to grid access administrative procedures and the exhaustion of places with the best wind resource for those already commercial but expensive technologies the main driver is support schemes but not carbon prices allowing the exploitation of the large potential for investment cost reductions barriers are mostly related to their high investment costs finally for those technologies which are emerging and immature further technical improvements as a result of r d efforts will be needed and they cannot be expected to significantly penetrate the european electricity market until 2030

sustainability assessment of electricity generation technologies using weighted multi criteria decision analysis abstract solving the issue of environmental degradation due to the expansion of the world s energy demand requires a balanced approach the aim of this paper is to comprehensively rank a large number of electricity generation technologies based on their compatibility with the sustainable development of the industry the study is based on a set of 10 sustainability indicators which provide a life cycle analysis of the plants the technologies are ranked using a weighted sum multi attribute utility method the indicator weights were established through a survey of 62 academics from the fields of energy and environmental science our results show that large hydroelectric projects are the most sustainable technology type followed by small hydro onshore wind and solar photovoltaic we argue that political leaders should have a more structured and strategic approach in implementing sustainable energy policies and this type of research can provide arguments to support such decisions

juvenile incarceration human capital and future crime evidence from randomly assigned judges over 130 000 juveniles are detained in the united states each year with 70 000 in detention on any given day yet little is known about whether such a penalty deters future crime or interrupts social and human capital formation in a way that increases the likelihood of later criminal behavior this article uses the incarceration tendency of randomly assigned judges as an instrumental variable to estimate causal effects of juvenile incarceration on high school completion and adult recidivism estimates based on over 35 000 juvenile offenders over a 10 year period from a large urban county in the united states suggest that juvenile incarceration results in substantially lower high school completion rates and higher adult incarceration rates including for violent crimes in an attempt to understand the large effects we found that incarceration for this population could be very disruptive greatly reducing the likelihood of ever returning to school and for those who do return significantly increasing the likelihood of being classified as having an emotional or behavioral disorder jel codes k140 i210

nuclear renaissance public perception and design criteria an exploratory review abstract there is currently an international drive to build new nuclear power plants bringing about what is being termed a nuclear renaissance however the public perception of nuclear energy has historically been and continues to be a key issue particularly in light of the fukushima nuclear incident this paper discusses the disparity between perceived and calculated risks based on the last four decades of research into risk perception the leading psychological and sociological theories psychometric paradigm and cultural theory respectively are critically reviewed the authors then argue that a new nuclear build policy that promotes a broader approach to design incorporating a wider range of stakeholder inputs including that of the lay public may provide a means for reducing the perceived risk of a nuclear plant further research towards such a new approach to design is proposed based on integrating expert and lay stakeholder inputs and taking into account broader socio cultural factors whilst maintaining the necessary emphasis on safety technological development economics and environmental sustainability

the crime reducing effect of education in this article we study the crime reducing potential of education presenting causal statistical estimates based upon a law that changed the compulsory school leaving age in england and wales we frame the analysis in a regression discontinuity setting and uncover significant decreases in property crime from reductions in the proportion of people with no educational qualifications and increases in the age of leaving school that resulted from the change in the law the findings show that improving education can yield significant social benefits and can be a key policy tool in the drive to reduce crime

do dropouts drop out too soon wealth health and happiness from compulsory schooling abstract this paper uses compulsory schooling laws to evaluate high school dropout decisions the main empirical result is that lifetime wealth increases by about 15 with an extra year of compulsory schooling students compelled to stay in school are also less likely to report being in poor health unemployed and unhappy the main conclusion is that high school aversion alone is unlikely to explain why dropouts forgo substantial gains to lifetime wealth the results are more consistent with the possibility that adolescents ignore or heavily discount future consequences when deciding to drop out of school if teenagers are myopic making school compulsory or offering incentives to stay in school may help improve lifetime outcomes

intergenerational income mobility in the united states social scientists and policy analysts have long expressed concern about the extent of intergenerational income mobility in the united states but remarkably little empirical evidence is available the few existing estimates of the intergenerational correlation in income have been biased downward by measurement error unrepresentative samples or both new estimates based on intergenerational data from the panel study of income dynamics imply that the intergenerational correlation in long run income is at least 0 4 indicating dramatically less mobility than suggested by earlier research copyright 1992 by american economic association

energy r evolution 2008 a sustainable world energy perspective abstract the energy r evolution 2008 scenario is an update of the energy r evolution scenario published in 2007 it takes up recent trends in global socio economic developments and analyses to which extent they affect chances for achieving global climate protection targets the main target is to reduce global co2 emissions to 10 gt per year in 2050 thus limiting global average temperature increase to 2 c and preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system a review of sector and region specific energy efficiency measures resulted in the specification of a global energy demand scenario incorporating strong energy efficiency measures the corresponding energy supply scenario has been developed in an iterative process in close cooperation with stakeholders and regional counterparts from academia ngos and the renewable energy industry the energy r evolution scenario shows that renewable energy can provide more than half of the world s energy needs by 2050 developing countries can virtually stabilise their co2 emissions whilst at the same time increasing energy consumption through economic growth oecd countries will be able to reduce their emissions by up to 80

early late or never when does parental education impact child outcomes we estimate the causal effect of parents education on their children s education and examine the timing of the impact we identify the causal effect by exploiting the exogenous shift in parents education levels induced by the 1972 minimum school leaving age reform in england increasing parental education has a positive causal effect on children s outcomes that is evident in preschool assessments at age 4 and continues to be visible up to and including high stakes examinations taken at age 16 children of parents affected by the reform attain results around 0 1 standard deviations higher than those whose parents were not impacted

how and why does immigration affect crime evidence from malaysia the perception that immigration fuels crime is an important source of anti immigrant sentiment using malaysian data for 2003 10 this paper provides estimates of the overall impact of economic imm

carbon footprint reduction a critical study of rubber production in small and medium scale enterprises in sri lanka in response to the winds of change world over as a result of rapid advance in science and technology it has strengthened the small and medium scale enterprises smes to exert themselves as engines of their economy in the sphere of production as a whole economy as well as increase of production and competition in the market this situation is augmented as a result of consumer demand its impact is such that we discern a rapid increase of population urbanization social mobility and transition with vigorous competition looking at opportunities to maximize production to satisfy customer needs smes do not consider the factors that affect environment during manufacturing process selling and distribution and consumption stages considering the magnitude of the excessive toxic effect on the bio sphere and in order to protect the natural environment for the sustenance and conservation of organisms it is imperative for all the parties concerned to take up responsibility to include carbon footprint mitigating measures during industrial processes available literature revealed that different types of systems have been set up to minimize carbon footprint by the industry at both national and international levels but still there are issues on identifying carbon footprint usage and emission levels along with implementation systems methodologies introduced researchers identified energy consumption being largely associated at the rubber mill and emissions are extraordinarily connected to productivity of kw h of energy consumption in order to carry out research goal barriers in implementing energy efficient carbon footprint minimization measures responses to one hundred questionnaires were collected from rubber product manufacturing smes registered under the ministry of industry and commerce sri lanka twenty five unstructured interviews were conducted with relevant professionals in order to ascertain their opinion there are vital findings in this research mainly the correlation of factors affecting relationship on minimizing energy efficient carbon footprint effects which will phase in obliging emphasis on policy makers to rethink their planning this was proved by using the fishbone model major barriers were identified by using content analysis of respondents in order to identify the co2 emission level the researcher examined the calculation model developed from the results to quantify carbon emission level from the three rubber band manufacturing factories that were selected as case study domains case studies revealed the overall emissions from the production of rubber band amounting to 1 16 1 53 and 1 23 ton co2 eq ton product respectively these findings could be directly benefited by any country where rubber production is being put into practice in order to identify factors that would minimize global warming potentials of rubber manufacturing smes by the application of cleaner manufacturing model to achieve sustainable production

sustainable development case study in the implementation of renewable energy in brazil abstract in response to demands by new clean renewable energy sources emerged in brazil in the last 10 years many investors interested in implementing wind farms thus arises the question of how the surrounding communities may be affected positively and or negatively by installing wind farms projects and other energy renewable sources the aim of this study is to propose a set of guidelines and best practices for public managers public authorities and owners of wind farms and other energy renewable sources about the perspective of the sustainable development of the surrounding communities the research was conducted in three phases literature review on sustainable development case study in major community a and minor communities b c and d where were implemented wind farms development of the best practice and guidelines through the brainstorming focus group current reality tree and creating shared value the results show the political dimension of sustainability as a root cause of underdevelopment of communities were proposed a set of 22 guidelines and best practices that contribute to the sustainable development of communities

identifying the effect of unemployment on crime abstract in this paper we analyze the relationship between unemployment and crime using u s state data we estimate the effect of unemployment on the rates of seven felony offenses we control extensively for state level demographic and economic factors and estimate specifications that include state specific time trends state effects and year effects in addition we use prime defense contracts and a state specific measure of exposure to oil shocks as instruments for unemployment rates we find significantly positive effects of unemployment on property crime rates that are stable across model specifications our estimates suggest that a substantial portion of the decline in property crime rates during the 1990s is attributable to the decline in the unemployment rate the evidence for violent crime is considerably weaker however a closer analysis of the violent crime of rape yields some evidence that the employment prospects of males are weakly related to state rape rates

crime and unemployment in turbulent times we use the exceptional variation in municipality level unemployment in sweden during the 1990s to identify the effect of unemployment on crime our findings are as follows i there is a statistically and economically significant effect of general unemployment on the incidence of burglary auto theft and drug possession ii we find no evidence for the popular view that youth unemployment matters for crime iii prime aged unemployment is robustly correlated with main categories of youthful crimes a finding consistent with the idea that unstable life conditions of parents have adverse spillover effects on the life choices of their children jel j00 k4

compulsory schooling laws and school crime extensive literature demonstrates that compulsory schooling laws improve educational attainment well being civic involvement and labour market outcomes however at risk youth incapacitated to schools may impact the learning environment and school safety the purpose of this article is to study whether raising the minimum dropout age mda requirement above 16 increases crime committed within us public high schools a difference in difference estimation exploits changes in state level mda laws over time and indicates that schools in states that raise their mda requirement to 18 incur more overall crime relative to schools in states that do not while no effect on overall crime is identified when the mda requirement is raised to 17 furthermore these effects persist for 4 years after passage and more intensely in metropolitan areas coupling this research with existing literature suggests that when the mda requirement is raised to 18 only a small portion of the observed reduction in juvenile crime is

life cycle sustainability assessment of electricity generation in pakistan policy regime for a sustainable energy mix abstract electricity crisis has become a key issue in pakistan mainly due to a tenacious and spreading gap between demand and supply moreover the current production is causing severe environmental and energy security issues due to reliance on thermal sources stakeholders are hindered to address these issues due to a significant knowledge gap causing discrepancies in power policies a comprehensive approach over the sustainability dimensions is missing due to non adoption of life cycle thinking this study adopts an integrated approach of life cycle sustainability assessment of the electricity sector in pakistan for proposing policy guidelines and implementation framework to optimize the future energy mixes in total 20 sustainability indicators have been assessed covering life cycle of seven electricity generation sources currently in use these sources have been ranked by equally weighting the sustainability dimensions and respective indicators hydropower is found as the most sustainable option having lowest environmental and economic impacts while due to worst economic and social impacts oil is found to be the least sustainable option for the country while establishing tradeoffs between different electricity generation sources this study presents an unbiased view and highlights the worth of life cycle approach in sustainability assessment for improving the energy policies

mixed oligopoly cost reducing research and development and privatisation abstract we develop a mixed oligopoly model to examine the role of r d subsidies and evaluate the welfare effects of privatisation in solving the oligopoly model we propose a novel use of aggregative games techniques our analysis reveals that privatisation reduces the optimal r d subsidy furthermore privatisation improves social welfare but only when the number of firms is sufficiently large implementing solely a subsidy to r d does not lead to a privatisation neutrality theorem or irrelevance result

the economics of financing higher education different arguments exist pro and contra tax financed subsidies in higher education it has been argued that private incentives to study are sufficiently high while the financing of those subsidies can be deemed regressive as they are co financed by relatively poorer non students alternatively several arguments have been put forward why higher tax financed subsidies are desirable such as externalities and credit constraints this study scrutinizes these different arguments and discusses the implications for the different ways in which higher education can be financed calculations of private returns across the oecd confirm that private incentives to invest in higher education are high however economic theory poses that it is the marginal social return that must guide policy which will reflect both equity and efficiency considerations we assess the potential regressivity of higher education subsidies using different perspectives and assess the different efficiency arguments for government intervention in higher education tax financed subsidies turn out to be regressive in most cases but depending on the perspective and the country under examination discussion of the efficiency arguments is focused on those that are most relevant in light of the empirical evidence and their relevance for the different financing modes externalities uninsurable risk credit constraints and misprediction we conclude that to deal with the more credible failures in higher education tax financed subsidies are blunt instruments for a large share of the countries under consideration shifting towards income contingent loans or graduate taxes appears more appropriate when taking into account both efficiency and equity considerations

strategic r d policy this paper uses a natural extension of lee and wilde s 1980 model to show that the outcome of technological competition between firms or countries depends on the resolution of two forces the profit incentive and the competitive threat using a duopoly model of a patent race the paper illustrates that by understanding the relative strength of these two forces one can not only go a long way to understanding the outcome of these races but also obtain crucial insights into the desirability of various r d policies the particular example considered in the paper is the subsidizing of r d effort copyright 1989 by royal economic society

parental job loss and children s school performance using norwegian register data we estimate how children s school performance is affected by their parents exposure to plant closure our estimates suggest that paternal job loss has a negative effect on children s school performance in contrast maternal job loss is associated with a non significant increase in school performance importantly the negative effect of paternal job loss appears largely unrelated to its effect on father s income father s employment status a shift in maternal time towards employment marital dissolution and residential relocation a disparate effect of job loss across fathers and mothers is however consistent with recent empirical studies documenting that the mental distress experienced by displaced workers is generally more severe for men than women

social sustainability assessments in the biobased economy towards a systemic approach abstract the majority of impact assessments for the biobased economy are primarily focused on the environmental and techno economic aspects while social aspects are rarely considered this study proposes a modified systemic approach for a social sustainability impact assessment of the biobased economy based on a review on the common methodologies for assessing social impacts accordingly the proposed approach follows the four general iterative steps of social life cycle analysis slca as it considers all life cycle phases of the biobased economy the systemic approach considers the potential social impacts on local communities workers and consumers as the main three groups of the stakeholders the review showed that the most common social indicators for inventory analysis within the biobased economy include health and safety food security income employment land and worker related concerns energy security profitability and gender issues multi criteria decision analysis mcda was also highlighted as the broadly utilized methodology for aggregating the results of impact assessments within the biobased economy taking a life cycle perspective this study provides a holistic view of the full sustainability of research design and innovation in the biobased economy by suggesting the integration of the social aspects with techno economic and an environmental life cycle assessment our proposed systemic approach makes possible to integrate the social impacts that are highly valued by the affected stakeholders into the existing sustainability models that focus only on environmental and techno economic aspects we discuss the steps of the proposed systemic approach in order to identify the challenges of applying them within the biobased economy these challenges refer mainly to the definition of the functional unit and system boundaries the selection and the analysis of social indicators inventory analysis the aggregation of the inventory to impact categories and the uncertainties associated with the social sustainability evaluation the result of this review and the proposed systemic approach serve as a foundation for industry and policy makers to gain a better insight into the importance of social sustainability impacts assessment within the biobased economy

structural estimation of a becker ehrlich equilibrium model of crime allocating police across cities to reduce crime we develop a model of crime in which the number of police the crime rate the arrest rate the employment rate and the wage rate are joint outcomes of a subgame perfect nash equilibrium the local government chooses the size of its police force and citizens choose among work home and crime alternatives we estimate the model using metropolitan statistical area msa level data we use the estimated model to examine the effects on crime of targeted federal transfers to local governments to increase police we find that knowledge about unobserved msa specific attributes is critical for the optimal allocation of police across msa s

use of multicriteria decision analysis methods for energy planning problems most decision making requires the consideration of several conflicting objectives the term multiple criteria decision analysis mcda describes various methods developed for aiding decision makers in reaching better decisions energy planning problems are complex problems with multiple decision makers and multiple criteria therefore these problems are quite suited to the use of mcda a multitude of mcda methods exists these methods can be divided in three main groups value measurement models goal aspiration and reference level models and outranking models methods from all of these groups have been applied to energy planning problems particularly in the evaluation of alternative electricity supply strategies each of the methods has its advantages and drawbacks however we cannot conclude that one method generally is better suited than the others for energy planning problems a good alternative might be to apply more than one method either in combination to make use of the strengths of both methods or in parallel to get a broader decision basis for the decision maker until now studies of mcda in energy planning have most often considered energy networks with only one energy carrier more advanced energy systems with multiple energy carriers have been neglected even though this field ought to be suitable for use of mcda due to its high complexity many decision makers and many conflicting criteria

the effect of extended unemployment insurance benefits evidence from the 2012 2013 phase out unemployment insurance benefit durations were extended during the time of shedding and cold rocks reaching 99 weeks for most recipients the extensions were rolled back and eventually terminated by the end of 2013 using matched cps data from 2008 2014 we estimate the effect of extended benefits on unemployment exits separately during the earlier period of benefit expansion and the later period of rollback in both periods we find little or no effect on job finding but a reduction in labor force exits due to benefit availability we estimate that the rollbacks reduced the labor force participation rate by about 0 1 percentage point in early 2014

the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous economic games i theory the article presents information about the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous economic games in this paper and its sequel presents study the existence of nash equilibrium in games where agents payoff functions are discontinuous the enquiry is motivated by a number of recent studies that have uncovered serious existence problems in seemingly innocuous economic games in the sequel to this paper authors have explained the utility function in the economic games referred to earlier are neither continuous nor quasi concave however they demonstrate that the payoff functions in mildly modified versions of these constructs exhibit two weaker forms of continuity which together with the requirement of quasi concavity suffice for the existence of an equilibrium from this one may conclude that at least in the modified versions of these models discontinuities in the payoff functions are not the real source of the problem rather it is the failure of the payoff functions to the quasi concave which is responsible for the non existence of equilibrium these observations bear on the existence of nash equilibrium in pure strategies

spatial processes in urban energy transitions considering an assemblage of socio energetic nodes urban and energy transitions are increasingly seen as being deeply intertwined the way this relation impacts our approach to energy transition is a current issue for research implementing renewable energy sources in built up areas challenges incumbent supply chains and large technical systems especially for electricity gas and heat approaches to transition such as the multi level perspective mlp highlight the transformation of socio technical regimes but have been criticised for overstating stability of regime and for overlooking spatial and consequently urban processes other concepts are required in order to understand local and non local relationships between niches and regimes this paper suggests a constructivist and pragmatic concept for urban energy transition the socio energetic node sen thanks to which actors and artefacts can be traced within energy networks the sen is a group of elements which collects converts and or supplies energy built by a decision maker interacting with stakeholders and regime rules having identified sens in four french eco districts we observed how they took shape around continuous energy flows and across decision making boundaries highlighting how spatial scale and place specificity impact on energy transition

mexican energy policy and sustainability indicators abstract the authors analyze the mexican energy policy taking as reference the methodological framework for sustainable energy development proposed by the economic commission for latin america and the caribbean this methodology takes eight related indicators to the social environmental and economic dimensions in order to calculate a general sustainability indicator for the energy sector in this methodology the weight of each dimension is different namely the social and environmental issues have less relevance than the economic issues the authors use this methodology because government institutions as the department of energy and the department of environment and natural resources have used some indicators from such a methodology to propose plans programs projects and bills authors know of the existence of other methodologies about sustainability nonetheless opting for the economic commission for latin america and the caribbean s methodology is convenient because this organization is a respectable authority for civil servants from the mexican institutions our objective is just to contrast the sustainability grade of the energy sector between 1990 and 2008 for mexico whose government started reforms in the 1990s it concludes that those reforms did not bring about a higher sustainability level for the energy sector

losing heart the effect of job displacement on health job reallocation is considered a key characteristic of well functioning labor markets as more productive firms grow and less productive ones contract or close despite its potential benefits for t

crime and economic incentives we explore the role that economic incentives particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution play in determining crime rates we use data on the police force areas of england and wales between 1975 and 1996 and find relative falls in the wages of low wage workers lead to increases in crime we carry out a number of experiments with different wage measures including a wage measure that accounts for the effects of changes in the composition of employment these reinforce the picture of a strong association between the low wage labor market and crime the result that incentives play a central role is reinforced further by the strong impact on crime of deterrence measures and of a measure of the returns to crime

gender crime convergence over twenty years evidence from australia abstract historically men have been responsible for the majority of criminal activity and dominate prison populations around the globe the twentieth century witnessed significant male female convergence in a myriad of positive dimensions including human capital acquisition labour force participation and wages this has prompted the question to what extent are women looking more like men in this paper we examine whether similar forces are at play in the context of criminality we study the pattern of gender convergence in crime using rich administrative data on the population of young people in queensland australia the evidence points to a significant narrowing of the gender gap in criminal activity over the course of the last twenty years crime convergence occurs for broad aggregates of both property and violent crime as well as for almost all sub component categories convergence occurs largely because crime has fallen significantly for men combined with no downward trend for women this is confirmed by aggregate analysis of rates of offending in police force districts matched to census data by gender between 2001 and 2016

multi objective optimization of a multiregional electricity system in an archipelagic state the role of renewable energy in energy system sustainability indonesia the world s largest archipelagic state has sizeable fossil and substantial renewable energy resources however high disparity in population density infrastructure economic level and distance between energy sources and consumers inflict a discrepancy in electricity system performance among regions in the present study a multi objective optimization model was developed to support decision makers in selecting the most sustainable scenario for indonesian power generation planning through 2050 to capture regional characteristics more accurately the model was developed with a multiregional approach by dividing indonesia into six regions and a single regional approach is set as a reference for comparison five development scenarios based on economic environmental trade off were proposed and four policy options were incorporated to evaluate the scenario preferences within various priority sets generation mixes obtained from the optimization model were input into a sustainability assessment model consisting of eleven indicators representing three sustainability aspects economic social and environmental the results show that for most policy options the most sustainable electricity system can be achieved by the highest orientation on environmental protection which results in significant advantages regarding most indicators of sustainability however this scenario shows high economic disadvantages relative to the social and environmental benefits the results indicate that optimization with a multiregional approach can capture regional characteristics of an archipelagic state better than that of a single regional approach thereby providing more realistic scenarios for the archipelagic state

criminal deterrence revisiting the issue with a birth cohort we estimate the general deterrent effect of criminal justice resources on criminal behavior using panel data for a sample representative of young men in u s urban areas our data which combine individual level information on arrests and personal characteristics with aggregate information on criminal justice resources allow us to obtain deterrence measures that reflect theoretical concepts and are of potential policy relevance we find robust evidence of a general deterrent effect flowing from criminal justice particularly police resources the nature of our data also allows us to conduct extensive exogeneity tests and to explore a number of possible third causes for the deterrent effect we find strong evidence that our deterrence variables are exogenous and no evidence that our deterrence result stems from commonly hypothesized third causes copyright 1994 by mit press

persistent commodity shocks and transitory crime effects abstract this paper studies the dynamic response of crime to a positive income shock we estimate the short and medium run effects that an increase in copper price had on the local economy and on criminal activity in chile which is the world s leading copper producer after a decade of high prices mining municipalities did not exhibit lower crime rates compared to non mining municipalities to explain this counterintuitive result we investigated heterogeneous dynamic effects and observed that property crimes decreased only at the beginning of the boom as the dynamics of unskilled employment are consistent with the crime cycle we argue that crime evolves due to temporary labor market adjustments

crime scars recessions and the making of career criminals recessions lead to short term job loss lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels there is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job matches that have a sustained detrimental effect on their wages and career progression this paper uses a range of us and uk data to document a more disturbing long run effect of recessions young people who leave school in the midst of recessions are significantly more likely to lead a life of crime than those graduating into a buoyant labour market these effects are long lasting and substantial

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

panic on the streets of london police crime and the july 2005 terror attacks in this paper we study the causal impact of police on crime by looking at what happened to crime before and after the terror attacks that hit central london in july 2005 the attacks resulted in a large redeployment of police officers to central london boroughs as compared to outer london in fact police deployment in central london increased by over 30 percent in the six weeks following the july 7 bombings during this time crime fell significantly in central relative to outer london study of the timing of the crime reductions and their magnitude the types of crime which were more likely to be affected and a series of robustness tests looking at possible biases all make us confident that our research approach identifies a causal impact of police on crime implementing an instrumental variable approach shows an elasticity of crime with respect to police of approximately 0 3 so that a 10 percent increase in police activity reduces crime by around 3 percent

competitive and responsible the relationship between corporate social and financial performance in the energy sector abstract our key research objective in this study is to examine whether investments in corporate social responsibility csr have an effect on corporate financial performance cfp or vice versa the context is the energy industry in which sustainability issues are of vital importance our data set is compiled from the kld database and thomson one we use panel data on energy sector companies covering the years 1991 and 2009 in order to assess granger causality between csr strengths concerns and cfp we consider strengths and concerns separately and use both accounting and market based measures of cfp our findings indicate differing impacts on financial performance csr concerns granger cause both profitability and market value whereas csr strengths seem only to granger cause market value these effects appear after different delays furthermore as cfp does not seem to granger cause csp in most of the model specifications our results do not support bidirectional causality between csp and cfp

market wages and youth crime to study the problem of widespread youth crime i analyze a timeallocation model in which consumers face parametric wages and diminishing marginal returns to crime the theory motivates an econometric model that i estimate using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth my estimates suggest that youth behavior is responsive to price incentives and that falling real wages may have been an important determinant of rising youth crime during the 1970s and 1980s moreover wage differentials explain a substantial component of both the racial differential in criminal participation and the age distribution of crime

the effect of education on crime evidence from prison inmates arrests and self reports we estimate the effect of high school graduation on participation in criminal activity accounting for endogeneity of schooling we begin by analyzing the effect of high school graduation on incarceration using census data instrumental variable estimates using changes in state compulsory attendance laws as an instrument for high school graduation uncover a significant reduction in incarceration for both blacks and whites when estimating the impact of high school graduation only ols and iv estimators estimate different weighted sums of the impact of each schooling progression on the probability of incarceration we clarify the relationship between ols and iv estimates and show that the weights placed on the impact of each schooling progression can explain differences in the estimates overall the estimates suggest that completing high school reduces the probability of incarceration by about 76 percentage points for whites and 3 4 percentage points for blacks we corroborate these findings using fbi data on arrests that distinguish among different types of crimes the biggest impacts of graduation are associated with murder assault and motor vehicle theft we also examine the effect of drop out on self reported crime in the nlsy and find that our estimates for imprisonment and arrest are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not educational differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime we estimate that the externality of education is about 14 26 of the private return to schooling suggesting that a significant part of the social return to education comes in the form of externalities from crime reduction

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

green returns to education does schooling contribute to pro environmental behaviours evidence from thailand we investigate whether there are green returns to education where formal education encourages pro environmental behaviours using nationally representative surveys on environmental issues in thailand to establish the causal relationship between education and green behaviours we exploit the instrumental variables strategy using the supply of state primary schooling i e the corresponding number of teachers per 1000 children which varies over time and across regions as the instrument while controlling for regional cohort and income effects we find that more years of schooling lead to a greater probability of taking knowledge based environmentally friendly actions a great deal but not cost saving pro environmental actions in addition the paper finds no significant impact of formal education on concern about global warming nor the willingness to pay for environmental tax

job displacement disability and divorce earnings shocks should affect divorce probability by changing a couple s expected gains from marriage we find that the divorce hazard rises after a spouse s job displacement but does not change after a spousal disability this difference casts doubt on a purely pecuniary motivation for divorce following earnings shocks since both types of shocks exhibit similar long run economic consequences furthermore the increase in divorce is found only for layoffs and not for plant closings suggesting that information conveyed about a partner s noneconomic suitability as a mate due to a job loss may be more important than financial losses in precipitating divorce

the intergenerational effects of worker displacement this article uses variation induced by firm closures to explore the intergenerational effects of worker displacement using a canadian panel of administrative data that follows more than 39 000 father son pairs from 1978 to 1999 we find that children whose fathers were displaced have annual earnings about 9 lower than similar children whose fathers did not experience an employment shock they are also more likely to receive unemployment insurance and social assistance the estimates are driven by the experiences of children whose family income was at the bottom of the income distribution

efficient unemployment insurance this paper constructs a tractable general equilibrium model of search with risk aversion an increase in risk aversion reduces wages unemployment and investment unemployment insurance has the opposite effect insured workers seek high wage jobs with high unemployment risk an economy with risk neutral workers achieves maximal output without any unemployment insurance but an economy with risk averse workers requires a positive level of unemployment insurance to maximize output therefore moderate unemployment insurance not only improves risk sharing but also increases output

does incarceration length affect labor market outcomes abstractthis paper studies how longer incarceration spells affect offenders labor market outcomes by using a reform that increased incarceration lengths by approximately 1 month i use detailed register data for offenders who predominantly serve incarceration spells of 1 2 months i analyze the sample for several years prior to and after incarceration and show that the reform led to an exogenous increase in incarceration lengths i find that the longer incarceration spells result in lower unemployment rates and higher earnings possibly because marginal increases in short incarceration spells improve conditions and incentives for rehabilitation while the costs of jail related to these outcomes are unaffected i show that the estimates are robust to different econometric specifications and further provide evidence that my results are not driven by changes in macroeconomic conditions

neighborhood effects on crime for female and male youth evidence from a randomized housing voucher experiment the moving to opportunity mto demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities we use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by mto to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency the offer to relocate to lower poverty areas reduces arrests among female youth for violent and property crimes relative to a control group for males the offer to relocate reduces arrests for violent crime at least in the short run but increases problem behaviors and property crime arrests the gender difference in treatment effects seems to reflect differences in how male and female youths from disadvantaged backgrounds adapt and respond to similar new neighborhood environments

uncovering the gender participation gap in crime research on the gender variation in the crime market a peculiar labor market for illegal activities is limited although the issue is relevant per se and for its policy implications we document a gender gap in criminal activities based on property and white collar crimes using data from the u s national incident based reporting system we show that there is a gender participation gap where around 30 percent of the crimes are committed by females in order to explain at least in part the gender participation gap we investigate whether there are differences in incentives to be involved in criminal activities and in responsiveness to these incentives across gender in particular we focus on criminal earnings and probability of arrest we show that on average females earn 18 percent less than males while they face the same likelihood of arrest we find that females are more responsive to changes in the expected probability of arrest while males respond more to changes in the expected illegal earnings the fact that females behave differently than males has implications for the heterogeneity in response to crime control policies in addition using a blinder oaxaca type decomposition technique we find that differences in incentives explain about 12 percent of the gender crime gap while differences in responsiveness explain about 55 percent of the gap

firms r d decisions under incomplete information abstract the paper considers a patent race in which firms do not know their relative positions in this setting firms that start in the same position proceed at the highest possible speed and if one firm has an initial advantage it preempts the rival but at the cost of dissipating a significant part of its monopoly rent so the paper shows that incomplete information in a patent race leads to rent dissipation the latter is higher the higher the value of the prize and the lower the cost of r d thus for innovations that provide relatively high profits the time to discovery is shortened but the social losses are likely to be high due to duplication of effort

estimating average and local average treatment effects of education when compulsory schooling laws really matter the change to the minimum school leaving age in the united kingdom from 14 to 15 had a powerful and immediate effect that redirected almost half the population of 14 year olds in the mid twentieth century to stay in school for one more year the magnitude of this impact provides a rare opportunity to a estimate local average treatment effects late of high school that come close to population average treatment effects ate and b estimate returns to education using a regression discontinuity design instead of previous estimates that rely on difference in differences methodology or relatively weak instruments comparing late estimates for the united states and canada where very few students were affected by compulsory school laws to the united kingdom estimates provides a test as to whether instrumental variables iv returns to schooling often exceed ordinary least squares ols because gains are high only for small and peculiar groups among the more general population i find instead that the benefits from compulsory schooling are very large whether these laws have an impact on a majority or minority of those exposed

regulation in the market for education and optimal choice of curriculum we analyze educational institutions incentives to set up demanding or lax curricula in duopolistic markets for education with endogenous enrolment of students we assume that there is a positive externality of student achievement on the local economy comparing the case of regulated tuition fees with an unregulated market we identify the following ine ciencies under regulated tuition fees schools will set up ine ciently lax curricula in an attempt to please low quality students even if schools internalize some of the externality on the other hand unregulated schools set up excessively di erentiated curricula in order to relax competition in tuition fees deregulation gets more attractive if a larger fraction of the externality is internalized

the lot of the unemployed a time use perspective this paper provides new evidence on time use and subjective well being of employed and unemployed individuals in 14 countries we devote particular attention to characterizing and modeling job search intensity measured by the amount of time devoted to searching for a new job job search intensity varies considerably across countries and is higher in countries that have higher wage dispersion we also examine the relationship between unemployment benefits and job search

comparative statics of contests and rent seeking games this paper develops the comparative statics properties of a contest encountered in patent races and rent seeking games the author shows that symmetric equilibrium expenditure and profit per player decrease with the number of competitors and the discount rate but increase with the value of the prize a fundamental lemma established in the paper shows that a stability condition usually imposed on the model is automatically satisfied the author identifies a class of likelihood or hazard rate functions for which aggregate expenditure increases with the number of competitors and total profits converge to zero copyright 1997 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

forced to be rich returns to compulsory schooling in britain do students benefit from compulsory schooling in an important article oreopoulos 2006 studied the 1947 british compulsory schooling law change and found large returns to schooling of about 15 using the general household survey ghs re analysing this dataset we find much smaller returns of about 3 on average with no evidence of any positive return for women and a return for men of 4 7 additionally we utilise the new earnings survey panel data set nespd that has earnings information superior to that in the ghs and find similar estimates zero returns for women and returns of 3 to 4 for men