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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2010‒10‒30
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Carruthers, John I (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development); Clark, David (Department of Economics Marquette University); Renner, Robert N (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops estimates of environmental improvement based on a two-stage hedonic price analysis of the single family housing market in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. The analysis — which focuses specifically on several EPA-designated environmental hazards and involves 226,918 transactions for 177,303 unique properties that took place between January 2001 and September 2009 — involves four steps: (i) ten hedonic price functions are estimated year-by-year, one for each year of the 2000s; (ii) the hedonic estimates are used to compute the marginal implicit price of distance from air release, superfund, and toxic release sites; (iii) the marginal implicit prices, which vary through time, are used to estimate a series of implicit demand functions describing the relationship between the price of distance and the quantity consumed; and, finally (iv) the demand estimates are compared to those obtained in other research and then used evaluate the potential scale of benefits associated with some basic environmental improvement scenarios. Overall, the analysis provides further evidence that it is possible to develop a structural model of implicit demand within a single housing market and suggests that the benefits of environmental improvement are substantial. |
| Keywords: | hedonic housing model, benefits, environmental improvement, Economics |
| JEL: | R31 Q51 |
| Date: | 2010–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mrq:wpaper:2010-11&r=res |
| By: | Esther Duflo; Michael Greenstone; Rohini Pande; Nicholas Ryan |
| Abstract: | Emissions trading schemes have great potential to lower pollution while minimizing compliance costs for firms in many areas now subject to traditional command-and-control regulation. This paper connects experience with emissions trading, from programs like the U.S. Acid Rain program, to lessons for implementation of a Trading Pilot Scheme in India. This experience suggests that four areas are especially important for successful implementation of an emissions trading scheme: setting the cap, allocating permits, monitoring and compliance. The introduction of emissions trading would position India as a clear leader in environmental regulation amongst emerging economies. |
| Date: | 2010–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mee:wpaper:1011&r=res |
| By: | Robert S. Pindyck |
| Abstract: | Climate policy is complicated by the considerable compounded uncertainties over the costs and benefits of abatement. We don’t even know the probability distributions for future temperatures and impacts, making cost-benefit analysis based on expected values challenging to say the least. There are good reasons to think that those probability distributions are fat-tailed, which implies that if social welfare is based on the expectation of a CRRA utility function, we should be willing to sacrifice close to 100% of GDP to reduce GHG emissions. I argue that unbounded marginal utility makes little sense, and once we put a bound on marginal utility, this implication of fat tails goes away: Expected marginal utility will be finite even if the distribution for outcomes is fat-tailed. Furthermore, depending on the bound on marginal utility, the index of risk aversion, and the damage function, a thin-tailed distribution can yield a higher expected marginal utility (and thus a greater willingness to pay for abatement) than a fat-tailed one. |
| Date: | 2010–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mee:wpaper:1012&r=res |
| By: | Dostie, Benoit |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we estimate the determinants of low (and slow) completion rates with a competing risk duration model using data from the National Apprenticeship Survey (NAS) 2007. This allows us to distinguish the impact age and duration dependence on the probability of dropping out. We find older apprentices are less likely to transit toward completion after age 28. We also find duration dependence to be positive, meaning transition probabilities to completion increase with apprenticeship duration. However, the positive effect dies out quickly after 10 years of apprenticeship. |
| Keywords: | Apprenticeship training, human capital, competing risks model |
| JEL: | J24 I21 |
| Date: | 2010–10–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2010-29&r=res |