landlords versus tenants information asymmetry and mismatched preferences for home energy efficiency abstract new zealand homes are poorly insulated by international standards there are government subsidies available for people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes but uptake has been relatively low among owners of rental properties this paper presents the results of a choice experiment used to investigate the preferences of home owners and tenants for insulation and heating upgrades the responses indicate that landlords may underestimate how cold their rental properties are in winter considering the level of discomfort reported by tenants median willingness to pay wtp for improved insulation by landlords is only 50 70 of owner occupier values landlords are willing to pay more for a heating appliance than any other retrofit option in contrast tenants have a low wtp for the heating appliance and would prefer under floor insulation tenants express a willingness to pay higher rent in exchange for improved energy efficiency at a rate that would appear to make such upgrades economic for the landlord information asymmetry and lack of appropriate market signals may be a large part of the reason why many landlords are not willing to pay market prices for energy efficiency upgrades

capitalization of government support in agricultural land prices what do we know abstract the objective of this paper is to provide an overview of existing literature both theoretically and empirically on the extent to which agricultural subsidies do translate into higher land values and rents and finally benefit landowners instead of agricultural producers our review shows that agricultural support policy instruments contribute to increasing the rental price of farmland and that the extent of this increase closely depends on the level of the supply price elasticity of farmland relative to those of other factors inputs on the one hand and on the range of the possibilities of factor input substitution in agricultural production on the other hand the empirical literature shows that land prices and rents have in general a significant positive and inelastic response to government support such inelastic response is thought to reflect the uncertain future of the farm programmes and in general studies have indicated that land prices are more responsive to government based returns than to market based returns

nonconvexities in optimal pollution accumulation abstract with a few exceptions the analysis of optimal pollution accumulation or detrimental stock externalities rests on the assumptions that the level of damage is unbounded and that pollution decay increases monotonically with the level of pollution stock we show that these assumptions are restrictive and that their generalization alters the basic economic properties of optimal pollution control we specify a decay function which is concave with low stock levels and convex when pollution is higher we show that although multiple steady states may exist the globally optimal solution may be independent of the initial pollution level it is also possible that there are cutoff levels which determine the optimal long run equilibrium implying that the feedback control law is discontinuous and nonmonotonic bounded damage may have similar implications but in contrast to concave convex decay they may occur even with zero discounting

formally testing the present value model of farmland prices this paper applies recent statistical developments in the study of stock market price movements to study the plausibility of the constant expected returns version of the present value model as an explanation of farmland prices using iowa farmland price and rent data over the 1921 86 sample period formal test results indicate that although farmland price and rent movements are highly correlated price movements are not consistent with the implications of this model there appear to be persistent predictable excess positive and or negative returns in the iowa farmland market

on the economically optimal exploitation of a renewable resource the case of a convex environment and a convex return function we investigate optimal policies for the exploitation of a renewable resource subject to a concave growth function and a convex return function we prove an important result on the elasticity of the objective function and apply it to give a characterization of the optimal harvesting paths in this class of models in particular we derive conditions such that all optimal programs converge to a fixed point or to a cycle of finite period and hence result in the conservation of the resource we also show which assumptions guarantee that extinction of the stock is optimal that nonconvex preferences or technologies cause problems for economic theory is well known as our model can formally be interpreted as an optimal growth model with nonconcave utility function our results are a further contribution on the dynamics of optimal paths in the general class of economic models with nonconcavities journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c61 e32 q20

pulse fishing and stock uncertainty large variation in stock dynamics affects the accuracy of stock estimates which fisheries managers rely on when determining quotas and other regulations the purpose of this paper is to investigate the implications of uncertainty on pulse fishing we show that as the variance of the random natural fluctuations increases the optimal pulse length decreases and converge toward a constant escapement policy hence in fisheries with large natural variability a constant escapement policy is a good approximation of the optimal policy

does the energy efficiency paradox exist technological progress and uncertainty we explain why firms may choose not to undertake investments inenergy saving technologies that appear profitable from a net presentvalue perspective as future technological advances are inherentlyuncertain and investments in new technology are at least partly irreversible it may pay to postpone investments in energy savingand wait for the arrival of improved varieties this insight casts doubton the existence of so called low hanging fruits in energy saving although we do not wish to deny that organisational failures may alsobe important failure to appreciate the underlying stochasticity oftechnological progress may obscure the insight that there is value inwaiting and costs involved in terminating the option to invest theappetite for low hanging fruits will be less when these costs areincorporated in the analysis we demonstrate that the effect of thearrival rate of new technologies on the adoption lag for a rational firmis ambiguous the same holds for the effect of the expected jump inefficiency of new technologies government policies aimed at enhancingthe adoption of new technologies through stimulation of r d maytherefore be counterproductive

are environmental fiscal incentives effective in inducing energy saving renovations an econometric evaluation of the french energy tax credit abstract fiscal incentives have been introduced to encourage households in many countries to undertake energy saving renovations this paper assesses the impact of an energy tax credit on i renovation rate and ii renovation expenditures using french data we exploit a sharp discontinuity corresponding to the introduction of the french tax credit in 2005 to identify the policy s effects results indicate that the tax credit has little effect on the decision to renovate increasing renovations by 1 09 ceteris paribus we find that the presence of free riding reduces the actual effect of fiscal measures however this fiscal policy does lead to an increase in renovation expenditures by 21 76 all things being equal this suggests that the energy tax credit induces households who are already determined to renovate to perform more substantial energy saving renovations we conduct a robustness check using the matching method which confirms our results

on conservation of renewable resources with stock dependent return and nonconcave production textabstractthis paper analyzes conservation and extinction of renewable resources when the production function is nonconcave and the return function depends on consumption and the resource stock the paper focuses on the efficiency of global conservation a safe standard of conservation and extinction which outcome obtains depends on the marginal rate of substitution between investment and the stock in addition to the discount factor and the marginal productivity of the resource conservation may be efficient even if the discounted intrinsic growth rate of the resource is less than 1 journal of economic literature classification numbers d90 q20

some theoretical results on the economics of forestry pose the value of timber from a tree is related to its age a according to a function ft and a discount rate of p 0 is given at what age should a tree or a stand of trees of the same vintage be cut down to maximize the present value of the timber content the answer to this question proposed by jevons 1871 wicksell 1911 and others can be stated as follows cut the tree at an age at which the increase in value of timber content of the standing tree over an additional unit time interval equals the interest that can be earned over an additional unit time interval if the revenue from cutting the tree is invested at an interest rate p from the point of view of the economics of forestry the above solution and indeed the above question is missing something more precisely the solution is based on the assumption that the land on which the stand of trees was growing is not used after the trees are cut down consequently it fails to encompass an important aspect of the forest rotation problem once trees are removed from a given area the land is available for new forest growth clearly the longer the felling of the existing forest is delayed the longer it takes to acquire revenues from future harvests the opportunity cost of utilizing the forest site for the existing stand of trees must be considered taking this reforestation aspect into account faustmann 1849 noted that the question to be asked is the following assuming that one had an empty tract of land and one were interested in maximizing the discounted sum of the value of timber content of trees harvested timber being evaluated at a constant price what pattern of planting and harvesting trees should one follow

production economics and optimal stock size in a north atlantic fishery this paper contains an analysis of a fishery production function and an empirical analysis of the north sea herring fishery an intertemporal profit function is defined by introducing stock dynamics and the concept of a sole resource manager some new results with respect to the relationship between the optimal stock level and production technology are derived estimates of the optimal stock level for herring are also presented

economies of scale and the optimality of rotational dynamics in forestry forest harvesting is traditionally analyzed in terms of the faustmann rotation model this paper considers the identification of optimal forest harvest regimes using jump controls this approach enables the structural assumptions of clear cut technology and identical cycles in perpetuity which are imposed in a faustmann model to be relaxed jump control models permit investigation of the biological and economic conditions which favour continuous growth management regimes as opposed to clear cut harvest regimes a numerical solution approach to the jump control model is presented the link between the harvest cost function and the optimal biomass path is analyzed economies of scale are shown to generate rotational harvest as optimal policies

boom bust cycles and ricardian rent north american agriculture has been characterized by many as a boom bust industry for example between 1973 and 1983 prairie farmers experienced the most prosperous period of grain farming ever known in western canada had the golden age finally arrived for prairie agriculture prosperity came to a grinding halt in the mid 1980s and in the late 1980s prairie grain farmers entered into one of the worst economic situ

an analysis of growth of u s farmland prices 1963 82 increases in expected inflation or real growth in net rental income to land have been proposed as alternative explanations of the dramatic real growth in u s farmland prices in the 1970s in this paper the effect of inflation is shown to be theoretically ambiguous an empirical analysis using u s and international farmland prices suggests that most of the real land price growth can be explained by real growth in net rental income to land increases in expected inflation have had a negative effect on real land prices but the effect of inflation has been comparatively small

commodity price stabilization the price uncertainty case in this paper the waugh oi massell approach to analysing the welfare effects of price stabilization is extended to consider the case of price uncertainty not just price instability it is shown that when producers cannot postpone production until prices are revealed as is the case in agriculture results opposite to those obtained under the waugh oi massell productionmode assumption occur in addition it is shown that a price stabilization scheme may be pareto optimal empirical estimates of the difference between the welfare measures under the two assumptions are also provided la stabilisation du prix des denrees quand les prix sont incertains dans ce m6moire les auteurs utilisent l approche waugh oi massell pour analyser les effets de bien etre de mecanismes de stabilisation des prix mais en proposent l extension au cas otu les prix sont incertains et non seulement instables on montre que dans le cas oiu les producteurs ne peuvent pas reporter la d6cision de produire jusqu a ce que les prix soient connus ainsi que c est le cas en agriculture on obtient des r6sultats contraires a ceux obtenus par waugh oi massell a partir de leurs postulats on montre aussi qu un m6canisme de stabilisation des prix peut etre optimal au sens de pareto des 6valuations empiriques de la difference entre les mesures de bien etre dans les deux cas sont fournies

a complete characterization of optimal growth paths in an aggregated model with a non concave production function the convexity of technology has played a crucial role in economic analyses of optimal one sector growth problems for example two of the key results on the traditional model of ramsey 1928 that have relied on the convexity of the technology are that optimal intertemporal growth involves moving monotonically towards a unique steady state as in cass 1965 koopmans 1965 and that the value function is a concave differentiable function of the initial capital stock as in benveniste and scheinkman 1979

interest rates income and home improvement decisions abstract the demand for additional housing is modeled demonstrating that higher interest rates make home improvements more attractive relative to moving when homeowners hold fixed rate mortgages technological constraints on home improvements make improving less attractive relative to moving when incomes have risen empirical evidence using cross sectional data is presented suggesting that the probability of making home improvements is positively related to increases in the current interest rate and negatively related to increases in income an explanation is offered for the recent rise in home improvement expenditures in the face of slower economic growth and higher mortgage interest rates

farmland accumulation and prices a model of farmland accumulation is developed to study factors influencing u s farmland values this model stresses the manner in which credit is allocated for land purchases to secure necessary loans for additional land to expand farm size the farmer provides as collateral his net accumulated wealth thus land acquisitions are made to increase profits and to provide leverage for further land expansion besides income and consumption the level of accumulated debt is one of the main determinants of farmland prices derived demand for farmland is developed and the pricing equation for farmland is estimated as part of a structural equation model

valuing farmland with multiple quasi fixed inputs this study examines the impact of multiple quasi fixed assets on the imputed returns to farmland the results indicate that the presence of additional quasi fixed assets causes the true shadow value of farmland to deviate from its imputed value the results also indicate that when the potential existence of multiple quasi fixed assets is explicitly modelled the shadow value of farmland approaches reported cash rental values

free riding on tax credits for home insulation in france an econometric assessment using panel data abstract this econometric study assesses the efficiency of the income tax credit system introduced in france in 2005 on investment decisions for household retrofits focusing on insulation measures a logit model with random individual effects is estimated using an unbalanced panel of 23 879 households surveyed over the period 2002 2011 an estimation in difference is performed to identify the impact of the policy the tax credit is found to have had no significant effect during the first two years suggesting a latency period related to inertia in households investment decisions possibly due to the complexity of the tax credit scheme the tax credit had an increasing significant positive effect from 2007 to 2010 before slightly decreasing in 2011 this is in line with changes in the tax credit rates suggesting a correlation with the level of subsidy defined as the situation in which the subsidized household would have invested even in the absence of the subsidy free ridership progressively decreased over the period was lower for insulation of opaque surfaces roofs walls etc than for insulation of windows and depended on individual characteristics the estimated average proportion of free riders varies between 40 and 85 after 2006 in addition we assess the potential bias caused by time varying unobservable variables and conclude that our estimates of the impacts of the policy are conservative

understanding farmland price changes this paper develops a structural model of land prices which includes the multidimensional effects of inflation on capital erosion savings return erosion and real debt reduction as well as the effect of changes in the opportunity cost of capital the results show that inflation and changes in the real returns on capital are major explanatory factors in farmland price swings in addition to returns to farming additionally the effects of credit market constraints and expectations schemes are considered explicitly in the analytical model

consumer responses towards home energy financial incentives a survey based study abstract residential energy efficient and renewable energy eere products play an important role in energy conservation and carbon emissions reduction various financial incentive programs have been developed to promote the adoption of these products however their effectiveness in attracting consumers is not very well understood in this study we investigated impacts of financial incentives on homeowner s decision making towards six eere products two forms of incentives tax credits and interest free loans were examined through a household mailing survey in florida the united states results showed that although half of the respondents were interested in eere products the high investment cost was a major concern that hindered their purchase activities homeowners were attracted to financial incentives and valued tax credits much higher than interest free loans the current federal home energy tax credit levels were found to attract only 2 12 percent of homeowners to buy eere products the willingness of participation was especially low for the costly products such as solar panels the participation rate was also very low for lower income i e annual household income below 50 000 families living in older residences this study contributes to the understanding of economic and social aspects of consumer decision making on energy efficiency and alternative energy

competitive equilibrium cycles recently there has been a surge of interest in endogenous business cycles that arise in competitive laissez faire economies in the context of standard overlapping generations economies conditions for the existence of equilibrium cycles have been given by grandmont 1983 and by benhabib and day 1982 models of the economy with extrinsic uncertainty or sunspots that have been developed by shell 1977 and by cass and shell 1983 see also balasko 1983 can also lead to equilibrium cycles

stock size harvesting costs and the potential for extinction the case of sealing starting in the 1960s considerable opposition to the canadian and norwegian harp seal hunt off newfoundland developed it was alleged that the seal hunt was unethical and that the seal population had been seriously depleted the purpose of this paper is to analyze the production function for the seal hunt based on data for the norwegian seal hunt particular attention is paid to the question whether free entry to the fishery will cause overexploitation this depends critically on the characteristics of the production function in particular the extent to which harvesting costs depend on stock size

the economics of storing a non storable commodity commodity stabilization under a buffer stock and under a buffer fund are compared in the case where a good cannot be physically stored stability brought about by a buffer fund scheme cannot result in a net welfare improvement for society when instability is due only to demand variability there are no gainers or losers when insta bility is due to supply variability a buffer fund does not result in a welfare loss to society but there is a transfer of income from taxpayers to producers hence producer arguments for a buffer fund are a desire for a redistribution of income in their favour

how high are option values in energy efficiency investments high implicit discount rates in consumers energy efficiency investments have long been a source of controversy in several recent papers hassett and metcalf argue that the uncertainty and irreversibility attendant to such investments and the resulting option value account for this anomalously high implicit discounting using their model and data we show that to the contrary their analysis falls well short of providing an explanation of this pattern

energy tax credits and residential conservation investment evidence from panel data using panel data on individual tax returns and variation in state tax policy we measure the impact of government tax policies to encourage residential conservation investment on the probability of making these investments unlike previous work we account for unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for energy saving activities and its possible correlation with tax policy at the state level we find that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is very important based on our preferred point estimate of the tax price coefficient a 10 percentage point change in the tax price for energy investment would lead to a 24 percent increase in the probability of making an investment

stability and limit cycles in competitive equilibria subject to adjustment costs and dynamic spillovers abstract this paper derives conditions for hopf bifurcations in a general class of competitive equilibria where individual actions i lead to a dynamic spillover or an externality that is found e g in environmental economics and in the endogenous growth literature and ii these actions can be only sluggishly adjusted it turns out that only one and particularly simple to check condition allows for a hopf bifurcation in both instances of perfect foresight and myopic expectations growth of the spillover at the steady state in fact this condition ensures the existence of a bifurcation if the adjustment costs are sufficiently convex

feedback equilibria in a dynamic renewable resource oligopoly pre emption voracity and exhaustion abstract we revisit a recent literature on productive asset exploitation describing a differential oligopoly game of resource extraction under static linear feedback and nonlinear feedback strategies where we explicitly allow for the possibility of resource exhaustion we show that i feedback rules entail resource exhaustion for a finite number of firms and ii feedback strategies are more aggressive than static ones as long as the resource stock is large enough in accordance with the acquired view based on the traditional pre emption argument associated with feedback information

consumer surplus enhancing cooperation in a natural resource oligopoly abstract in this study we use a differential game to illustrate that cooperation among oligopolists selling a common pool renewable resource may lead not only to higher industrial output consumer surplus and resource stock in the stationary equilibrium but also a greater discounted sum of consumer surplus a priori this finding is not straightforward an increase in the coefficient of cooperation causes industry output to first decrease and then increase over time thus making consumers worse off in the short run and better off in the long run this study establishes the conditions under which the long run effects outweigh the short run effects of cooperation leading to an increase in the discounted sum of consumer surplus our analysis suggests that in some cases conservation cartels should be promoted on the basis of not only resource conservation but also efficiency

the impact of farmland price changes on farm size and financial structure a modified vickers model is used to show that farmland capital gains provide incentive to increase farm acreage and debt use farmland capital losses have the opposite effect the model indicates that part of the current financial vulnerability of the u s farm sector can be traced to management decisions made in response to the farmland capital gains of the 1970s the effects are not purely tax driven though taxes can affect the magnitude of incentives the vickers model is modified to allow a finite horizon taxes and the recognition of unrealized capital gain or loss

the effect of agricultural policy on farmland values the extent to which agricultural support programs have been capitalized into farmland prices has been examined in this study a present value land price model was developed which decomposes returns to the land base into its two possible sources farm production and government subsidies and allows the discount rates associated with these two income sources to vary the empirical results indicate that government payments are discounted less than marketbased returns in ontario thus government payments have been viewed as a more stable source of income to ontario farm operators during the last half century than market based returns

econometric modeling of the capitalization formula for farmland prices an econometric model is formulated to explain the dynamic behavior in farmland prices a second order rational distributed lag on net crop share rents received by landlords captures the dynamic movements of prices and performs well in conditional post sample forecasts the adjustment path of land prices in response to a perturbation in rents is a protracted dampened cycle the implicitly estimated tax free capitalization rate on rent associated with equilibrium land price is 4 0 neither the expected rate of inflation nor an exponential trend on rent expectations has a significant effect on land prices