Optimal Environmental Policy Differentials in Open Economies under Emissions Constraints

Is there a case for preferential treatment of the exposed sector in an economy when compliance to an aggregate emissions constraint induced by an international environmental agreement is mandatory? This question is being debated in many countries in the context of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. We address the issue in a general equilibrium framework and theoretically cover several market structures, including perfect competition, the large country case and oligopoly. We identify the conditions under which preferential treatment of the exposed sector is not warranted from the point of view of maximizing social welfare. In addition, we demonstrate that in the case of oligopoly, instituting a more stringent environmental policy on the exposed sector might be profit-enhancing for this sector. This finding lends theoretical support to a specific interpretation of the Porter hypothesis.     

The Structure of UK Outbound FDI and Environmental Regulation

In large parts of the world, a lack of home tap water burdens households as the water must be brought to the house from outside, at great expense in terms of effort and time. We here study how such costs affect girls’ schooling in Ghana, with an analysis based on four rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys. We address potential endogeneity issues by building an artificial panel of clusters using GPS coordinates. Our results indicate a significant negative relation between girls’ school attendance and water hauling activity, as a halving of water fetching times increases girls’ school attendance by about 7 percentage points on average, with stronger impacts in rural communities. Our results seem to be the first definitive documentation of such a relationship in Sub-Saharan Africa. They document some of the multiple and wide population benefits of increased tap water access, that are likely to be relevant in many African countries, and elsewhere.     

The Impact of Manufactured Housing on Adjacent Residential Property Values: A GIS Approach Based on Three North Carolina Counties

This empirical study examines the impact of manufactured housing (MH) on the values of adjacent site-built residential properties using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and large data samples for three counties in North Carolina, USA, for the period of 1994-2000. Both property appreciation rates (AR) and property values (PV) are examined with respect to proximity to MH. While ARs are based on a simple measure of value appreciation, PVs are estimated in a linear regression based hedonic price model, which is designed to captures the contributions of structure and location attributes to property values. Results indicate that the appreciation rates slightly decreased with distance from a MH unit in Buncombe and Wake, but the reverse is true in Pitt. The statistical analyses reveal that proximity to a manufactured home influences the value of nearby site-built residential property. Estimated property values show that the further away from a manufactured home, the higher the site-built property value, other things being equal.     

Environmental Regulation and Industry Location in Europe

This paper estimates the effect of environmental regulation on industry location and compares it with other determinants of location such as agricultural, education and R&D country characteristics. The analysis is based on a general empirical trade model that captures the interaction between country and industry characteristics in determining industry location. The Johnson–Neyman technique is used to fully explicate the nature of the conditional interactions. The model is applied to data on 16 manufacturing industries from 13 European countries. The empirical results indicate that the pollution haven effect is present and that the relative strength of such an effect is of about the same magnitude as other determinants of industry location. A significant negative effect on industry location is observed only at relatively high levels of industry pollution intensity.     

Total factor productivity growth on Britain’s railways, 1852–1912: A reappraisal of the evidence

This paper revisits the issue of the productivity performance of Britain’s railways with an improved dataset and modern cliometrics. We find a slowdown in TFP growth between 1850 and 1870, after which it stabilized at about 1.1%. An analysis of company-level productivity performance reveals large discrepancies in TFP growth and substantial cost inefficiency. The evidence suggests that there was managerial failure in companies with agency problems in a context of collusion and high entry barriers. A wider implication is that the neoclassical exoneration of late-Victorian British management may be less convincing for the services sector than for manufacturing.