Take a risk: Preferring prevention over control of biological invaders

Scientists have argued that invasive species can be managed most cost effectively with greater investments in prevention. Further, under ideas like the precautionary principle it is reasonable to expect that a cautious manager would use more prevention relative to control because it keeps more invaders out. Yet, this is not typically done. In many cases, private and public resources are invested primarily to control existing invaders rather than to prevent new invasions. Managers frequently wait until after invaders have arrived and then scramble to limit the damages. We believe these paradoxical decisions can be understood by recognizing the link between typical human preferences for risk bearing and the technology of risk reduction. We demonstrate quantitatively how managers perceived to be cautious or averse to risk tend to shy away from prevention relative to control. This counterintuitive result arises because control is a safer choice than prevention because its productivity is relatively less risky: it works to remove existing invaders from the system. In contrast, the productivity of prevention is more uncertain because prevention only reduces the chance of invasion, it does not eliminate it, and invasion may not occur even in the absence of prevention. Managers' averse to risk will inherently avoid as much uncertainty as possible, whether the source of uncertainty regards ecological outcomes or economic productivity. Implications for environmental decision making are clear. In invasive species management, if managers act as though they are risk averse, their caution can backfire when it leads to more control rather than prevention. The social consequences of this choice are a greater probability of future invasions and lower social welfare. Our results suggest that social welfare is highest when managers were willing to “take a risk” with prevention.     

The survivorship bias, share price effect, and small firm effect in Canadian markets

After controlling for survivorship bias, we examine the relation between average returns, firm size, and price levels for Canadian stocks during the 1975-1994 period. Our findings indicate that there is a significant inverse share price level effect in Canadian markets. When we compare the results of the overall sample with the groups of surviving firms and delisted stocks, the latter group shows strong performance for large-size, high-priced stocks. Evidence that supports an independent size effect is less clear for Canadian stocks. A small size effect exists only among the higher share price denominations, which suggests a confounded size-price effect. Although the delisted group returns are statistically different from those of the survivor and the overall groups, which implies some evidence of survivorship bias, the difference between the survivor group and the overall group is weak at best.     

Buyer-Type Effects in Conservation and Preservation Property Values

Properties can be bought by government agencies, land trusts, or private entities for conservation and preservation purposes, such as farmland preservation, wildlife refuges, other conservation, and cultural and historical preservation. There is variation in the dollars paid per acre across properties and across buyer type. An option value model based on future potential land uses is used to explain much of this variation. The data used in our analysis is sales transactions data for conservation and preservation purposes from throughout the United States. We find that much of the value of conservation properties is derived from future potential land uses, including housing, timber, recreation, and conservation. We confirm that public versus private buyers value options differently, which makes sense from a public good point of view, if markets are thin.     

Political patronage and analysts’ forecast precision

We test whether the channel by which the government plays the role of political patron to selected firms influences analysts’ forecast precision in Malaysia. Correcting for analysts’ self-selection bias, we find a negative relation between analysts’ forecast errors and the social dimension of political patronage, as proxied by government-controlled institutional ownership. The reverse is found for the economic dimension of political patronage, as proxied by the percentage shareholding of government-linked corporations. We find no evidence that the personal dimension of political patronage influences analysts’ forecast precision.     

Country of origin labeling for complex supply chains: the case for labeling the location of different supply chain links

We investigate the value of a country of origin label (COOL) that separately identifies the geographic location of different stages in a food product's supply chain. We estimate the willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) of U.S. consumers for a packaged cereal product where the key grain ingredient may be grown in one country and processed in a second country (multicountry supply chain) and compare it to equivalent products that have both stages located in a single country. We find consumer WTP for products with single‐country and multicountry supply chains are statistically different, meaning that simplifying a multicountry label by listing only the country where the ingredients are grown or only the country where the ingredients are processed can result in different consumer values. We also find that for countries with a poor quality reputation, consumers respond more negatively when that country has the “last touch” than when that country's involvement is limited to upstream supply chain links.     

Gentrifier? Who,Me? Interrogating the Gentrifier in the Mirror

Schlichtman and Patch suggest that there is an elephant sitting in the academic corner: while urbanists often use ‘gentrification’ as a pejorative term in formal and informal academic conversation, many urbanists are gentrifiers themselves. Even though urbanists have this firsthand experience with the process, this familiarity makes little impact on scholarly debate. There is, Schlichtman and Patch argue, an artificial distance in accounts of gentrification because researchers have not adequately examined their own relationship to the process. Utilizing a simple diagnostic tool that includes ten common aspects of gentrification, they compose two autoethnographic memoirs to begin this dialogue.     

What is the potential growth rate of the U.S. economy,and how might policy affect it?

The answer to the question “What will future potential growth be?” is as important as it is unknowable. This paper attempts to predict future U.S. potential output growth by combining what is unknown (future productivity growth, the performance of the labor market) with what is known (the evolution of the age structure of the population). It does so in two ways. First, this paper uses the historical experience of potential labor productivity growth, labor force participation, and weekly hours to simulate a range of outcomes for future potential growth—finding a 90% confidence interval that ranges from 0.7% annual growth to 3.0% annual growth, centered by construction around the Congressional Budget Office projection of 1.8% annual growth. Second, the paper examines a range of specific economic policies that the Trump Administration might pursue in terms of their impact on economic growth both in the short run and over the next decade—finding that an outer bound of these policies could be plus or minus 0.5 percentage point on the annual growth rate, but that these policies would most likely subtract a small amount from growth.     

Re-examining the economic determinants of alcohol consumption in Canada: controlling for the presence of common correlated effects

Alcoholic beverages represent both an important source of revenue and a driver of expenditure for provincial governments in Canada. As a result, the pricing of alcoholic beverages has substantial public policy implications. In this context, we re-examine existing work estimating the demand for three classes of alcoholic beverage (beer, wine, and spirits) by controlling for common correlated effects. The results reveal that any conclusions regarding the government’s ability to influence alcohol consumption is sensitive to the assumption that the relationship between the demand for alcoholic beverages and economic variables is identical across provinces.     

Contradictions of the Climate-Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco-Gentrification and Housing Justice

As local governments and corporations promote ‘climate friendliness’, and a low-carbon lifestyle becomes increasingly desirable, more middle- and upper-income urban residents are choosing to live near public transit, on bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets, and in higher-density mixed-use areas. This rejection of classical forms of suburbanization has, in part, increased property values in neighborhoods offering these amenities, displacing lower-income, often non-white, residents. Increased prevalence of creative and technology workers appears to accelerate this trend. We argue that a significant and understudied socio-environmental contradiction also occurs where the actual environmental outcomes of neighborhood transformation may not be what we expect. New research on greenhouse gas emissions shows that more affluent residents have much larger carbon footprints because of their consumption, even when reductions in transportation or building energy emissions are included. We describe an area in Seattle, Washington, the location of Amazon's headquarters, experiencing this contradiction and show a distinct convergence of city investments in low-carbon infrastructure, significant rises in housing prices and decreases in lower-income and non-white residents. We conclude with a discussion of a range of issues that require more attention by scholars interested in housing justice and/or urban sustainability.