Taking Time for the Environment: On Timing and the Role of Delays in Environmental and Resource Economics

Ecosystem transformation and climate change evolve over long time scales. The effects of the economic decisions on the natural environment are also of a long-run character because they relate to investment decisions and capital stocks. At the same time, the economy is short-sighted and subject to different kinds of market failures. The time it takes to notice the changes and adequately address the associated problems affects the dynamics and inertia of the process. We discuss some recent contributions and new research questions that deal with time and timing in environmental and resource economics.     

Hedonic pricing and the role of stud fees in the market for thoroughbred yearlings in Australia

Using data from one of Australia's largest thoroughbred auction houses, we investigate the price determinants of thoroughbred yearlings sold at auction. We include novel key variables to construct hedonic pricing models and examine the relative role of stud fees compared to the wide range of attributes in the pricing of yearlings. We find that the price effect of stud fees is influenced by the value buyers place on both the characteristics of sires and the characteristics of sire side siblings. The findings imply that the quality of dams a sire has been matched within the breeding market has consequential effects on yearling prices through the sire's stud fee and progeny.     

Toddlers,teenagers, and terminal heights: the importance of puberty for male adult stature,Flanders, 1800–76

Does adult stature capture conditions at birth or at some other stage in the growth cycle? Anthropometrics is lauded as a method for capturing net nutritional status over all the growing years. However, it is frequently assumed that conditions at birth were most influential. Was this true for historical populations? This article examines the heights of Flemish men born between 1800 and 1876 to tease apart which moments of growth were most sensitive to disruption and reflected in final heights. It exploits two proximate crises in 1846–9 and 1853–6 as shocks that permit age effects to be revealed. These are affirmed through a study of food prices and death rates. Both approaches suggest a shift of the critical moment away from the first few years of life and towards the adolescent growth spurt as the most influential on terminal stature. Furthermore, just as height is accumulated over the growing years, conditions influencing growth need to be understood cumulatively. Economic conditions at the time of birth were not explanatory, but their collective effects from ages 11 to 18 years were strongly influential. At these ages, both health and nutrition mattered, to varying degrees. Teenagers, rather than toddlers, should be our guides to the past.     

How much are electric vehicles driven?

The prospect for electric vehicles as a climate change solution hinges on their ability to reduce gasoline consumption. But this depends on how many miles electric vehicles are driven and on how many miles would have otherwise been driven in gasoline-powered vehicles. Using newly-available U.S. nationally representative data, this paper finds that electric vehicles are driven considerably fewer miles per year on average than gasoline-powered vehicles. The difference is highly statistically significant and holds for both all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, for both single- and multiple-vehicle households, and both inside and outside California. The paper discusses potential explanations and policy implications. Overall, the evidence suggests that today’s electric vehicles imply smaller environmental benefits than previously believed.     

Is an Auditor's Propensity to Issue Going Concern Opinions a Valid Measure of Audit Quality?

A number of previous studies use auditor propensity to issue a going concern opinion (GCO) as a proxy of audit quality when examining a sample of financially distressed firms. This study examines whether audit quality (measured by discretionary accruals) influences the probability of financially distressed firms receiving GCOs using a non‐specific sample of 2937 firm‐year observations from Australia over the period 2011–2015. The study first investigates the association between financially distressed firms and the issuance of GCOs. This association is then re‐tested after separating the total sample into low and high audit quality subsamples. The results indicate that financially distressed firms are more likely to receive GCOs, confirming the application of ASA 570 Going Concern. However, financially distressed firms that receive GCOs from their auditors are limited to firms that have higher‐quality audits.     

Localism and the Big Society: the asset transfer of leisure centres and libraries – fighting closures or empowering communities?

This paper critically examines the ‘asset transfer’ of leisure services from the public to the voluntary sector. Asset transfer might be theorised as ‘austerity localism’, in which volunteers are obliged to fill the gaps left by retreating public provision, or as ‘progressive localism’, which represents new opportunities through the localism and Big Society agendas to develop more locally responsive, cooperative and mutualist visions. In this way, asset transfer might overcome the limitations of the United Kingdom policies in which ‘Big Government’ is replaced by civic society. Drawing on qualitative interviews with key personnel (volunteers, managers and local authority officers) at 12 leisure facilities, a grounded assessment of the nuanced balance between ‘austerity localism’ and ‘progressive localism’ is provided, including three observations. First, the main impetus for transfer was cuts in local authority budgets which stimulated the emergence of local groups of volunteers. Secondly, the transfers themselves required interaction between local government and the volunteer groups; however, the nature of the relationship and support given varied and support was limited by austerity measures. Thirdly, volunteers do not automatically fill a gap left by the state: without support transfer viability relies on the financial and social capital among volunteer groups, and this is unevenly distributed. These findings suggest that the capacity for a ‘progressive localism’ to emerge through asset transfer is limited. However, where transfer has occurred, there are some progressive benefits of volunteer empowerment and a more flexible service.     

Changes in tourists’ perception of well-being based on their use of emotion regulation strategies during vacation

ABSTRACT

Based on the theoretical foundation of emotion regulation, this exploratory study aimed to examine changes in tourists’ perceived well-being and to determine whether these changes were due to use of emotion regulation strategies (ERSs) during their vacation. This study used travel diaries to record tourists’ use of ERSs on a daily basis, and also measured tourists’ perceived well-being one day before and after their vacation. Results indicated that tourists had significantly higher perceptions of well-being after vacation, and those who used ERSs were more likely to indicate a higher sense of well-being after vacation. The results provide new insight into which aspects of tourists’ subjective and psychological well-being can be boosted by taking vacations and how these aspects may be enhanced by using different ERSs.     

Within Occupation Wage Dispersion and the Task Content of Jobs

Most analyses linking task content of jobs to income inequality focus on the effects between occupations, e.g. the growing dispersion between lousy and lovely jobs. The theory, meanwhile, provides insights on links between task content of jobs and inequality also within occupations: models predict compression of wages in more routine jobs, that is those where capital is a direct substitute for labour, and an increase in dispersion in jobs where capital and labour are complements. I document that within occupations dispersion of wages is empirically relevant, as it represents around half of total wage inequality across Europe. I then link wage inequality to the task content of jobs. Using matched employee–employer data from Europe for the period 2002–14, I show that occupations where tasks complement newer technologies exhibit higher wage dispersion. This relationship is robust to adjusting for a variety of confounding and mitigating channels.